Show Notes
Craig Morris spent 20 years as Podium Technical Coach at Paddle UK, coaching across three Olympic disciplines - kayak, canoe and kayak cross - and overseeing three athletes to four Olympic medals across Tokyo and Paris 2024. At Paris he coached Kimberley Woods to double bronze and Adam Burgess to silver in the men's canoe. Since leaving British Canoeing he has moved into coach development, working across multiple sports.
Three Key Messages 1. Prepared, not planned Craig's game plan contribution is one of the most immediately useful ideas in the whole series, and it came directly from one of his athletes, Adam Burgess, during a review of the Tokyo Olympics campaign. The idea sits on a continuum. At one end, meticulously scripted practice with everything timed and controlled. At the other, turning up with no intention or direction whatsoever. Neither extreme serves the athlete well. The sweet spot in the middle is what Craig calls a zone of presence - leaning into what you know to be stable in your sport while staying genuinely open and responsive to what emerges. In canoe slalom, the river doesn't care about your plan. The best performers are the ones prepared for anything, not the ones who've rehearsed everything.
2. Coach alongside, not above A thread that runs through the whole conversation. Craig describes the shift in his coaching from a place of technical certainty, where he had the model, he had the answers, and the athlete's job was to fulfil his vision, to something far more collaborative and genuinely curious. Coaching with, not to. Situating yourself alongside the performer rather than above them. He talks about sessions becoming noisier, more joyful, athletes taking more ownership and showing more patience with problems. And athletes having longer careers because they found a new love for the sport.
3. What do we need to let go of to see things as they truly are? Craig's closing question to coaches is one of the most honest things anyone has brought to the game plan. It comes from a long personal journey of recognising that when you have a rigid technical model of performance, you risk seeing only what you want to see rather than what's actually happening. What might you be getting in the way of?
Other Things Worth Knowing The wisdom of not-knowing Craig co-authored a paper with Keith Davids and Carl Woods called On the Wisdom of Not-Knowing: Reflections of an Olympic Canoe Slalom Coach, published in Sport, Education and Society. The paper questions whether coaches in high performance environments have come to rely too heavily on secondary information - data, reports, analysis - at the expense of what the world is sharing with them directly. It's a genuinely thought-provoking read and sits right at the heart of everything Craig talked about in this conversation. Well worth tracking down. Read it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13573322.2022.2140135
Verbs above nouns A small but significant idea that Craig picked up from researcher Carl Woods. Thinking about coaching in terms of verbs rather than nouns. Response-able as a skill, not just responsibility as a concept. Performing as an ongoing verb, not a fixed outcome.
The adaptability folder A very practical idea. Craig used to keep a folder on his desktop collecting clips of moments where his athletes adapted brilliantly, situations that previously might have been labelled mistakes, but reframed as evidence of responsiveness and skill. Over time his athletes started bringing moments to him, asking for them to be added. They were actively looking for opportunities to be adaptable.
Skilled intentionality Craig introduces this idea, keeping as many options open for as long as possible, as the hallmark of the best performers. He draws on the work of a coaching colleague who describes it as poker not chess - always playing with a rich hand available rather than committing too early. It's a useful lens for thinking about what you
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