Dr Anna Stodter is a Senior Lecturer in Sport Coaching at Leeds Beckett University, a rugby coach, and a researcher whose work sits right at the intersection of coach learning and applied coaching practice. Her research has explored how coaches filter and make sense of new ideas, how experimentation drives development, and more recently, how coaches can help players engage with contact in rugby more safely and confidently. She is one of those rare people who can take a complex academic idea and make it genuinely useful for coaches working at any level. This one was a real treat.

Key Messages

1. You are your own filter Anna's coffee filter analogy, published in the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal, is one of the most useful frameworks for understanding coach learning you'll come across. The idea is simple but profound. Your biography; the sum of your experiences, values, beliefs and knowledge, acts like a filter for every new idea you encounter. Some things get rejected because they clash with what you already believe. Some sail straight through because you already do them. And some land in the middle, they feel relevant, they might just work, but they need adapting for your context before you taste them properly. Understanding your own filter is the starting point for becoming a more intentional learner.

2. Coaching is a swampy lowland, embrace it Drawing on the work of Donald Schon, Anna describes coaching not as a precise science with predictable outcomes, but as a constantly shifting environment where the ground is always moving beneath your feet. That's not a problem to be solved, it's the nature of the work. And it means that experimentation isn't optional. Trying things out, tweaking, adapting, sometimes rejecting and starting again - that reflective cycle is how coaches grow. The coaches who thrive are the ones who get comfortable with not always knowing what's coming next.

3. Take a learning snack One of the most immediately stealable ideas in this conversation. You don't need to overhaul your entire coaching practice to keep developing. Anna introduces the idea of the learning snack. A small, intentional moment in a session where you try something new, notice what happens, and reflect on it. It could be a different type of question, filming yourself for the first time, or asking your athletes to rate their confidence at the start and end of a session. Small bites, consistently taken, add up to real development over time.

Some other things…

The coffee filter in full Anna's original research followed football coaches over the course of a year, tracking how they engaged with new ideas and what actually changed in their practice. The coffee filter metaphor emerged as a way of bringing that theory to life. You can find the full diagram and explanation in the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal, Volume 8. Well worth a read.

Film yourself coaching Anna's game plan contribution is a simple but important one. Film yourself coaching. It's confronting, there's nowhere to hide, and your voice never sounds like it does in your head. But the perspective it offers is like nothing else. Watch it back with a colleague, pick one thing to focus on, and just chat through what you see. Anna used it to count the types of questions she was asking - and what she found genuinely surprised her. You might be surprised too.

Contact Confident Anna has been working on a brilliant freely available resource for rugby coaches called Contact Confident, developed with colleague Dr Katrina MacDonald and in collaboration with World Rugby. It brings together principles from judo and other contact sports to help coaches build player confidence with contact. Gradually, safely, and without it feeling like a big scary event. Short, sharp one-minute videos that coaches can dip into and adapt for their context. Find it on the Leeds Beckett University website.

Get in Touch

Tom's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomhartleycoaching/

Anna's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-anna-stodter-990a0855/