> results are so obviously and immediately measurable

Ehm… not really – especially not the "obviously" part :)

Controlled or even abusive coaching can sometimes lead to better short-term results, but often at the cost of athletes’ mental health and long-term performance.

What’s worse, coaching culture in many countries falls victim to the "regression to the mean" fallacy. I’m sure HN readers are familiar with it, but most coaches aren’t – and they’re not trained to adjust their intuition accordingly.

Coaches tend to praise athletes when they perform well and criticize them when they don’t. But statistically, if an athlete has an unusually good day in practice, they’re likely to perform worse next time. And if they’re having a rough day, odds are they’ll improve next time. That’s just the nature of sports practice.

This creates a repeating pattern: praise followed by worse results, and criticism followed by improvement. Over time, this becomes a learned behavior pattern – reinforced by the environment and by other coaches who interpret it as validation of their approach.

Derek from Veritasium has a great video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tSqSMOyNFE