Between sessions
A journal for solo coaches. Short essays on the part of the work nobody sees. The noticing, the remembering, the small acts of attention that hold a practice together.
- / 01
Jude Bellingham and the coach who still picks up the phone
Jude Bellingham joined Birmingham City as an under-eight. The coach who worked with him from that age was Mike Dodds. Ten years later, and after a World Cup, the thing Dodds is proudest of is not the football. It is that they still talk.
6 min read
- / 02
The girl who wanted a one-handed backhand
A ten year old in a small indoor hall in East Tyrol asked to rebuild her most important shot. Two coaches, her father Stephan and a New Zealander named Mark Carruthers, said yes. Seven years later she became the first Austrian to win the girls singles title at Roland Garros.
7 min read
- / 03
Make Staying the Strategy
Most coaches want more clients. The quieter work is becoming more valuable to the ones already in the room.
6 min read
- / 04
The girl who kept passing to the girl who had not yet scored
Sophie Cunningham grew up in Columbia, Missouri, in a sporting family, played several sports, and was known at Rock Bridge as a team-first player long before she was a national name. A note on what her early coaches saw, and what the scoreboard tends to miss.
10 min read
- / 05
The gym in West Des Moines
Liang Chow opened a gym in West Des Moines in August 1998. Two months later a six year old named Shawn Johnson walked in. He coached her for the next fourteen years, from a suburban club that most of the gymnastics world had never heard of.
7 min read
- / 06
The violinist who kept coming back
Iyengar taught Yehudi Menuhin privately for forty seven years. What a lifetime one to one teaching relationship looks like from the teacher's side of the room.
8 min read
- / 07
The yoga teacher who would not name a school
Vanda Scaravelli began yoga in her 50s, after her husband died, in a chalet in Gstaad. She spent the rest of her life teaching small groups at home above Florence, and asked her followers not to name her method after her.
7 min read
- / 08
The science of getting good
Getting better is not a mystery, but it is rarely as simple as trying harder. The research points to a quieter pattern: attention, difficulty, repetition, rest and support.
8 min read
- / 09
Fifty-four percent
In his Dartmouth commencement speech, Roger Federer gave the graduates a number smaller than the one they were expecting. It says something quietly useful about doing difficult work for a long time.
6 min read
- / 10
Harry Kane and the coach who kept picking him
Harry Kane was released by Arsenal at nine. The story of how he became England's leading scorer runs through a park pitch in Chingford, a coach called Dave Bricknell, and four difficult loans nobody wanted to remember.
7 min read
- / 11
Knowing which days to leave the routine alone
Aimee Boorman coached Simone Biles from the age of seven to the Rio Olympics. What she is best known for, quietly, is knowing which days to leave the routine alone.
6 min read
- / 12
The year Gukesh was asked to put the engine away
When Gukesh was eleven, his coach Vishnu Prasanna asked him to set the chess engine aside. It looked like the wrong decision. It quietly built the world champion.
6 min read
- / 13
When the lesson changes because the person changes
David Archuleta walked into a small vocal studio in Utah at the age of ten. His teacher, Dean Kaelin, has been beside him ever since. Some of the most careful teaching happened when the voice was in trouble.
6 min read
- / 14
The small coaching setup behind the big performances
In a training group in the north west of England, Jenny Meadows and Trevor Painter coach middle distance runners in a way that looks, from the outside, almost domestic. Keely Hodgkinson’s Olympic gold came from inside it.
6 min read
- / 15
The Stopwatch Does Not Tell the Whole Story
Times, distances and qualifying standards feel like objective truth. But a young athlete is a body in motion across years, not a single split printed on a results sheet.
14 min read
- / 16
Junior tennis development is not a straight line
An essay on junior tennis development and how parents and coaches can hold ambition and patience in the same hand.
18 min read
- / 17
The golf lesson does not end on the range
The hour on the range is the smallest part of a golf lesson. The rest is the week the pupil spends alone with the change, and whether the coach can pick that week up in their hands when the pupil comes back.
6 min read
- / 18
Good coaching has a memory
The hour itself is the visible part. The thread that runs from one hour to the next is the work.
5 min read
- / 19
The lesson before the lesson
Five quiet minutes before a client walks in. Reading the last note. Remembering what changed. The preparation that no one sees and the hour rests on.
5 min read
- / 20
When a client feels known
The difference between being managed and being remembered. Why it matters in private coaching, teaching and tutoring, and how it shows up in the smallest moments.
5 min read
- / 21
A private tutor's week, from the inside
Five days in the working week of a solo private tutor. The prep, the no shows, the tiny breakthroughs, the invoices, the follow up. The part of the job almost nobody describes.
7 min read
- / 22
The coach who runs her week from a phone
A portrait of one private coach who outgrew a studio platform without ever growing into a studio, and what she reclaimed when she stopped trying to.
6 min read
- / 23
A long Danish partnership
A former Danish singles player who never won the world title. A six foot four teenager from Odense with a forehand and a serious face. The decade they spent in the same hall.
7 min read
- / 24
A nine year old at Leigh Harriers
In a Lancashire athletics club run by a husband and wife, a nine year old turned up one evening and started winning everything. The coaches who saw it first were the ones she came back to thank.
7 min read
- / 25
Padel and the beginner’s laugh
A quiet look at what happens in a beginner’s first hour on a padel court, and why the best coaches protect that feeling before they fix the technique.
6 min read
- / 26
The king of sabotage
A close look at one of the most public performer and psychiatrist relationships in British sport, and what the rest of us can borrow from it.
7 min read
- / 27
The word that changed how a generation of coaches talk
In 1998, a psychologist at Columbia ran a small puzzle study with fifth graders. The two sentences she tested at the end of it have quietly reshaped how thoughtful coaches speak to the students in front of them.
6 min read
- / 28
The session after
At some point every student has a session that falls apart. The interesting part is what happens in the gap between that hour and the next one.
7 min read
- / 29
A free class on a basketball court
In 1995, a thirteen year old in San Pedro walked into a free ballet class held on the basketball court of the local Boys and Girls Club. The woman teaching it knew, almost at once, that her week was about to change.
7 min read
- / 30
Two measures of Bach a day
At four, Yo-Yo Ma's father gave him two measures of Bach a day to memorise. A few years later, a New York teacher told him to figure a Beethoven sonata out for himself. He grew up holding both rooms at once.
6 min read
- / 31
Six months of only breath
A young soprano arrives in Pesaro with the kind of voice teachers dream about. Her new teacher refuses to let her sing for six months.
6 min read
- / 32
A phone going off at a tennis tournament
On Oscars night in 2024, a retired choir teacher was at a tennis tournament with no signal. By the time her phone reconnected, the world had already heard her name.
6 min read
- / 33
The coach who stayed in Rosario
Lionel Messi left Argentina at thirteen. Ernesto Vecchio, the youth coach who watched him most closely in Rosario, did not. A story about the kind of coach a great player never forgets.
8 min read
- / 34
What the summer does to a coaching practice
Summer is the quiet season nobody warns you about. Clients drift, payments slip, the thread between sessions goes loose. Here is what happens, and what the coaches who get through it well do differently.
6 min read
- / 35
Progress notes, and why the two minutes after a session matter most
A walkthrough of how progress notes are captured at the end of a session, by voice or by hand, and how those small notes quietly write the monthly summary that goes to the client or parent.
7 min read
- / 36
When a junior player grows before their game does
A grounded piece on growth spurts in junior tennis, what changes in the body, and how a good coach can keep a young player confident while their timing catches up.
8 min read
- / 37
What separates good coaches from great ones
The job of a coach is more than teaching the skill. It is to hold a relationship over months and years. Here is how the great ones do it.
9 min read
- / 38
Signs your child's coach is doing right by them
How to tell, as a parent, whether the person teaching your child is paying attention. A quiet checklist for the things that matter.
8 min read
- / 39
How to walk on court already knowing where you left off
A small daily ritual that quietly separates the coaches who feel present from the ones who feel scattered. It takes ninety seconds. It changes how every session begins.
8 min read
- / 40
The parent and the music teacher
Behind every child who keeps playing for ten years is a quiet, ongoing relationship between a parent and a music teacher. It is one of the most underrated partnerships in private teaching.
7 min read
- / 41
The long arc with one music student
Private music teachers know something most professions never learn: what it feels like to teach the same person every week for nine years.
7 min read
- / 42
What Darren Cahill teaches us about listening
A quiet study of one of the great modern tennis coaches, and the small habit at the centre of his craft.
7 min read
- / 43
Fernando Belasteguín and the quiet craft of the padel coach
The most decorated padel player of all time spent sixteen years as world number one. The way he speaks about coaching now tells you almost everything about how the modern padel pro thinks.
6 min read
- / 44
Padel coaching, and the different shape of the work
A quiet look at why a padel coach’s week feels different from a tennis coach’s, and what that means for the way the relationships are built.
6 min read
- / 45
How to become a music teacher with a private studio
A calm walk through what it takes to teach music privately. Not the institutional path. The studio of one, with a bench, an instrument, and a slowly growing list of families who keep coming back.
8 min read
- / 46
What tennis coaches earn, and what it costs to keep showing up
A quiet, honest look at the working life of a club tennis coach: where the money comes from, where it goes, and the small things that make the difference between a season and a career.
7 min read
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