All posts tagged: coaching

McGuigan to join England coaching team full-time from June

McGuigan to join England coaching team full-time from June

Published by Sam Flores

May 19 : Former Scotland international Byron McGuigan will join Steve Borthwick’s England coaching staff on a full-time basis from June, England Rugby said on Tuesday. The 36-year-old first linked up with the squad during the 2025 tour of Argentina and the United States and will now take on a permanent role within the management team. His responsibilities will include collision skills, the aerial contest, and working with the back three. McGuigan made over 100 appearances for Sale Sharks and earned 10 Scotland caps before retiring to pursue a coaching career. “Since arriving with us last summer, he has made a strong impact through his detailed understanding of the game and the energy he brings,” Borthwick said in a statement. “His work in supporting the development of our back-three players has already been valuable, and he has also invested a huge amount of time into individual player development across the squad. We’re excited about the contribution he will continue to make.” Source link

When tough coaching in college sports becomes emotional abuse : NPR

When tough coaching in college sports becomes emotional abuse : NPR

Published by Sam Flores

To prepare herself for basketball practice, Marta Galic said, she spent a lot of time in the bathroom. She would splash cold water on her face, practice the Superman pose in the mirror and make sure to empty her bladder. “Practices felt like entering a war zone,” she said. Her frequent bathroom trips started after one particularly damaging practice during her freshman year at the University of San Francisco (USF). The team was doing a challenging and repetitive layup drill. “People were collapsing on the floor,” Galic said. And she had to use the restroom. Galic said she asked her coach, Molly Goodenbour, if she could step off the court three times with increasing urgency, but that Goodenbour and an assistant coach told her to complete the drill first. Eventually, she lost control of her bladder. “My jersey, my pants … everything was visibly wet,” she said. Galic said that she approached her coach again, asking to go to the restroom to clean herself up, and that Goodenbour refused. Marta Galic’s twin sister, Marija Galic, …

Tottenham’s Jermain Defoe reveals he was turned down for coaching role

Tottenham’s Jermain Defoe reveals he was turned down for coaching role

Published by Daniella Wilson

Tottenham legend Jermain Defoe would love to help out at his former club as they battle for Premier League survival. Spurs have gone 11 Premier League games without a win and, after Thursday’s 3-1 defeat to Crystal Palace, are now just a point above the bottom three, with relegation to the Championship a very realistic danger. The 43-year-old, who made more than 350 appearances for the North Londoners, told Radio Times in an exclusive interview in February that he believes the squad would welcome the input from former players who understand the club’s DNA – and revealed he’d been turned down for a first-team role during Ange Postecoglou’s tenure. Speaking at the Soccer Aid 2026 launch at the London Stadium prior to Thomas Frank’s sacking, he said: “We’ve seen it at other clubs. Some clubs enjoy that model, having ex-players in. “I actually went back to Tottenham when I finished playing for two years. I was in the academy, I did the U18s and U21s for two years. Completed my badges. “It was a question …

Gong launches ‘Mission Andromeda’ with AI sales coaching, chatbot and open MCP connections to rivals

Gong launches ‘Mission Andromeda’ with AI sales coaching, chatbot and open MCP connections to rivals

Published by skeptic

Gong, the revenue intelligence company that has spent a decade turning recorded sales calls into data, today launched what it calls Mission Andromeda — its most ambitious platform release to date, bundling a new AI-powered coaching product, a sales-focused chatbot, unified account management tools, and open interoperability with rival AI systems through the Model Context Protocol. The release arrives at a pivotal moment. The revenue technology market is consolidating at a pace that would have been unthinkable two years ago, and Gong — still a private company with roughly $300 million in annual recurring revenue — finds itself at the center of a category that Gartner only formally defined three months ago. Mission Andromeda is Gong’s answer to a basic question facing every enterprise AI vendor in 2026: Can you move beyond surfacing insights and actually change how people work? “The whole show, Andromeda, is basically a collection of very significant capabilities that take us a huge step forward,” Eilon Reshef, Gong’s co-founder and chief product officer, told VentureBeat in an interview ahead of the …

AI chatbots generate weight loss coaching messages perceived as helpful as human-written advice

AI chatbots generate weight loss coaching messages perceived as helpful as human-written advice

Published by José Betancourt

Artificial intelligence systems are increasingly being tested for their ability to support personal health goals. A recent study published in the Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science provides evidence that AI chatbots can generate weight-loss coaching messages that are perceived as helpful as those written by human experts. The findings suggest that large language models may soon offer a scalable way to provide personalized support for individuals managing obesity. Obesity remains a significant global health challenge. It affects a large percentage of the adult population and increases the risk of conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. While losing a moderate amount of weight can reduce these risks, accessing consistent and personalized coaching is often difficult and expensive. Many people rely on mobile health applications that send automated messages to help them stay on track. Current automated systems typically rely on pre-written templates. These messages often function on simple rules. For example, if a user does not log their food, the system sends a generic reminder. Previous research indicates that users often find these messages repetitive …

Meta-backed Hupo finds growth after pivot to AI sales coaching from mental wellness

Meta-backed Hupo finds growth after pivot to AI sales coaching from mental wellness

Published by skeptic

When Justin Kim, co-founder and CEO of Hupo, first launched his company about four years ago, it wasn’t selling AI-powered sales coaching to banks, finance services, or insurance companies. The company originally began as Ami, a mental wellness platform focused on how people manage pressure, form habits, and change behavior over time. “I’ve always been a big sports fan – basketball, football, Formula One, MMA – and what draws me to all of them is performance. In my free time, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what actually drives human performance. People are very different, but across sports, there are clear patterns in how performance shows up,” Kim said in an interview with TechCrunch. His curiosity eventually shaped his professional focus. Kim started exploring what drives performance at work, and one theme kept surfacing: mental resilience. That idea led him to found a startup in 2022. Early work with Meta, which backed this startup in the seed round, helped sharpen some hard-earned lessons: software only works when it fits into daily behavior like …

OpenAI to acquire the team behind executive coaching AI tool Convogo

OpenAI to acquire the team behind executive coaching AI tool Convogo

Published by skeptic

OpenAI is kicking off the new year with yet another acqui-hire. The AI giant is acquiring the team behind Convogo, a business software platform that helps executive coaches, consultants, talent leaders, and HR teams automate and improve leadership assessments and feedback reporting.  An OpenAI spokesperson said the company is not acquiring Convogo’s IP or technology, but rather hiring the team to work on its “AI cloud efforts.” The three co-founders — Matt Cooper, Evan Cater, and Mike Gillett — will join OpenAI as part of what a source familiar with the matter called an all-stock deal. Convogo’s product will be wound down.  The startup began as a “weekend hackathon” sparked by a question by Cooper’s mother, who is an executive coach: Could an AI tool automate the drudgery of report writing so she could spend more time on the human coaching work she loves? Over the past two years, Convogo has helped “thousands” of coaches and partnered with the “world’s top leadership development firms,” per an email bearing news of the acquisition sent by Convogo.  …

How coaching could help solve the UK’s teacher crisis

How coaching could help solve the UK’s teacher crisis

Published by skeptic

The UK’s schools are facing a worsening teacher shortage, with heavy workloads and burnout pushing staff out of the profession. Coaching has been introduced as a possible solution. In simple terms, coaching is a structured conversation that helps teachers reflect on their practice and find their own solutions. Rather than being told what to do, teachers work with a trained coach who uses careful questioning and feedback to build confidence, self-awareness and professional growth. For example, a coach may help a teacher explore why classroom management feels difficult, set realistic goals and then reflect on what works best. It’s a way to help teachers and, ultimately, improve outcomes for pupils. But can it really make a difference? Or will it go the way of so many other short-lived education initiatives? A recent review by my colleagues and I of 22 UK studies suggests that, when done well, coaching can boost teacher confidence, resilience and job satisfaction. And it can even improve pupil engagement and learning. But it also warns that poor implementation and lack of …