Same coach, different approach? How masters and youth athletes perceive learning opportunities in training

While traditional, coach-directed pedagogies have dominated youth sport coaching practice, little is known about how coaches orient their approaches to facilitate adult athletes' learning. This study explored a group of Masters athletes' and a group of youth athletes' perspectives of their common canoe/kayak coach's approaches, with an aim to understand if and how the coach's approaches differed based on the age cohort she was coaching. Four focus group interviews (two with each age cohort lasting 60-90min) were conducted with nine youth (five male, four female; 14-15 years old) and 12 Masters athletes (six male, six female; 27-70 years old). Data were inductively analysed resulting in three higher order themes: (1) communication, exchanges, and interactions; (2) coaching on the basis of the athletes' self-concept; (3) norms, goals, and expectations for learning within the climate. Results indicated that Masters athletes felt their coach responded well to their need for information, gave them room to make decisions, and engaged them in collaborative conversations. Youth athletes described their coach's approaches as more directive: she made decisions for when and how they trained, provided information linearly, and maintained a climate of highly competitive expectations. Whereas coaching approaches with Masters athletes closely paralleled andragogical principles, those for youth aligned with more directed instructional methods. Findings illustrate how one coach's approaches varied on a continuum from coach-directed (i.e. traditional pedagogical) to athlete-directed (i.e. andragogical) styles, both evident to some degree with each cohort.