When researching the concept of self-coaching, nothing could be found in the academic literature to verify the reasons why an athlete may choose to or end up in a self-coaching situation. Some information, however, was found in popular literature.
Reinhild Moeller ( 1 993), a German disabled athlete discussing disabled sports, indicated reasons why disabled athletes may choose to or be forced to self-coach. These reasons, fitting
for able or disable-bodied athletes included the fact that there were only a few qualified coaches working with disabled sports, most of whom were working with national teams. Also athletes may not be able to afford the time and money to live close to a national training centre or travel regularly to one of these centres.
Moeller ( 1 993) wrote that she was able to train without a documented training programme
and on her own, rather than at a national training centre, because she had studied physical education and sport science at university. She felt that she was able to train and coach herself better than any specialised coach could have done.
The financial cost of having a coach may also be a limitation for some athletes. For some sports, such as yachting and long distance running, it may be impractical to have a coach with one at all times, due to the expense involved (Hall, 1 997) . Hall wrote:
Wouldn't it be great to have a coach watch every move you make, in every race? Unfortunately if you think of a "coach" as an outside observer, this is expensive and impractical. There is only one person in the world who can always be there to help you improve your sailing: you (p.22).
According to Lawrence and Scheid ( 1 987), most of America' s competitive runners did not have a coach. It would be great to have a coach watch every move you make but as Hall ( 1 997) has observed, this is not always practical.
The amount of respect and confidence in the coach, or lack of, may also be the cause for an athlete to self-coach. Mal Tongue, a professional New Zealand golf coach, stated that to be a coach, " You have to try to stay with the level of the person you are coaching, to
maintain their respect and confidence in you. You have to work harder as it gets harder" (cited in Butcher, 1 994, p. 1 1 2). Coaching New Zealand agrees with this, as Chalmers ( 1 997) stated in the Foreword of The Principles of Sports Coaching Level Two Manual: "As athletes strive to achieve better and better performances, the challenge for coaches is to continually i mprove their performance to keep up with the pace".
Research completed by Bloom ( 1 985) on American Olympic level swimmers supported the experience of lacking respect and confidence in a coach. Bloom and a team of researchers studied the development of talent in children. The subjects of the study were concert pianists, sculptors, research mathematicians, research neurologists, swimmers from the 1 968, 1 972 and 1 976 Olympics and international tennis champions. They examined the processes that these individuals followed to reach the highest levels of accomplishment in their fields and to fully develop their capabilities.
The swimmers felt that they were in a bind. They wanted to defer to their coach and do as they were told, but were afraid that it would not lead them anywhere. They felt there were three paths out of their dilemma: to have a parent step in, move to another coach or take over their own coaching. To overcome the loss of confidence or respect of a coach swimmer S- 1 5 stated, "My job as a swimmer was to learn how to coach myself' (Bloom, 1 985, p. 1 63). Swimmer S- 1 3 reported:
He (our coach) was a nice guy but. .. there was something about him that made us think we could do better on our own. (So) we just kind of blocked him out a little, doing what he said but in our own way .... (My success) was all on my own, I think, or at least a lot of it was because . . .I could (have) cared less about what he thought (p. l 62).
New Zealand has another situation, which may also be relevant to other countries. In some sports it is difficult for the coach to stay with or ahead of the level of the athletes, due to the lack of the availability of general or sport-specific coaching courses and the time required attending these courses. Many coaches do not have the technical or tactical ability or the time to keep up with the progress of their athletes. This is one of the possible reasons for implementation of self-coaching in New Zealand. To support this, Keith Mair - coach of New Zealand's national basketball team the Tall Blacks, during 1 987- 199 1 and from 1 994 onwards - stated, " I don't ever remember having a coach that really left an impact on me. I always felt that was wrong. But I came from a small town - Taumarunui - and a small town like that is short on expert people in a lot of areas" (cited in Butcher, 1 994, p. 108).
Overall, New Zealand has a shortage of expert coaches. The Coaching New Zealand database reveals that since 1 995, 2803 people have completed a KiwiCoach introductory course, which was renamed to Getting Started in Coaching, with 5 1 64 people completing it in 1 998/99. During this timeframe 7 3 1 0 people completed a CNZ Level One course, 1 5 94 a Level Two course, 1 8 a Level Three course and 561 a Coaching Athletes with Disabilities course. In 1 995/96 25 - 40 coaches attended a selection of Level Four modules and 29 attended one Level Four module in 1996/97 (1. Boyd, personal communication, 1 0 November 1999). The Level Three and Level Four courses are considered "expert level" courses and only 1 8 coaches were certified at the Level Three while coach certification i s not offered for Level Four. This confirms the belief that New Zealand suffers from a lack of expert coaches.