Communication is “fundamental” for Edgar Moragas. The Marcet Academy A coach knows that a big part of his job is conveying messages correctly.“Without good communication, the team stops believing in you,” explains the technician. “To do my job well, the first thing is to know how to manage a group. Everything else comes later. There are coaches from top divisions who only succeed through this, even without having great tactical or methodological knowledge.”Today Edgar will have the opportunity to live (and suffer) sports communication from another point of view. Professor David Benítez is waiting for him at Marcet’s headquarters, to give him a paddle class.All the coaches of the High Performance Academy go through this process. The objective is not that they learn to play paddle tennis, but that they develop critical thinking about their roles as trainers by putting themselves in the student’s skin for an hour.“We want each technician to understand what it means to be on the other side of the learning process,” explains President José Ignacio Marcet. “Our pedagogical model is not focused on the teacher, but on the student. That is why it is essential that the coaches develop an emotional intelligence that allows them to adapt to the real needs of each player.”In order to correct Edgar and prepare a personalized report, David prepares to record the session.Being under the magnifying glass of the camera, Edgar can completely identify with Marcet students, whose training is always filmed by the Analysis Department.Through this training experiment, coaches manage to understand that the educational process is never unidirectional.Students should not be considered as taxpayers who are limited to receiving instructions. On the contrary, the path that leads to learning inevitably passes through interaction and collaboration.This is the principle of the Socratic Method: learning does not mean receiving knowledge from the outside, but awakening what is latent within us. The teacher can and should guide the student along the way, but it is the student who has to “give birth” to their knowledge.Achieving a positive connection between coach and player is key for learning to become an active process for both.The meaning of the paddle class is for technicians learn to empathize more and more with students. Not only to generate a good environment, but also because it is the only way to develop skills optimally.A few days after the paddle class, David summons Edgar to show him the report he has prepared and to analyze his performance on the court. “When you don’t master a certain subject, you can go through a process of frustration and even shame,” Edgar says.“When you become the student, you realize how the teacher’s voice can affect you, the way they tell you things. Putting yourself in that role has been very positive. Going through this process helps you communicate better, which is essential to lead a group. And this is not only limited to sports.”
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