Exploring the feasibility of a constraints-based curriculum with British diving coaches

Contemporary coaching practices such as the Constraint-Led Approach (CLA) have gained traction in recent years within academic literature and applied practice. However, despite the growing popularity of the CLA there remains challenges with the successful implementation across applied settings. Formal education that adopts top-down hierarchical approaches and is decontextualised from coaches’ sociocultural contexts has been attributed to this challenge. To investigate this problem further, the purpose of this study was to explore the feasibility of implementing a CLA curriculum within British Diving’s Learn to Dive programme. Twenty-one British Diving coaches (10 male and 11 female) were interviewed for this study. The coaches’ insights indicated that a new model of coaching was needed to improve the learning and development experiences of the Learn to Dive participants, however, factors such as opposing philosophies about learners and the learning process, path dependency, and operational priorities were identified as potential barriers to implementation. These findings suggest that the implementation of alternative coaching methods should be considered in the context of the sport and the coaches’ needs, experience, and socio-cultural-historical biases. Documenting context specific learning experiences through qualitative research designs can start to address the challenges and provide potential solutions to successfully implementing contemporary learning designs.