Coaching Philosophy: Inheritance to Integrity

(Page Update 9/29/25)

Page At-A-Glance

From 2009 to 2025, the concept of "coaching philosophy" follows a clear arc: inheritance (what we took from classic philosophy), interrogation (what institutions and slogans actually do in practice), and integrity (stating assumptions, testing them under pressure, and revising them). This page reframes that journey utilizing the principle of Performance as The Way of PIE (Purpose, Integrity, and Experience) and the LPPC cycle (Development, Performance, Research, Activation), so philosophy becomes a lived system rather than a mere motto.

Context: From inheritance to interrogation to integrity

Inheritance (2009): Modern coaching stands on familiar stones: Socratic dialogue and questioning, Cartesian analysis and method, empiricism (Locke, Hume) with its emphasis on observation and habit, Kantian duty and the ethics of a "good coach," and Deweyan pragmatism and reflective practice. Those threads were the soil in which I grew. They explained why my early years focused on form, mechanics, and rational breakdown; why reflective practice felt natural; and why the question "what counts as good?" never left.

Interrogation (mid-2020s): Field studies and critiques revealed that in many institutions, the "coaching philosophy" serves as a symbolic badge, rather than a practical one. The phrase can legitimize a program without changing how Tuesday looks. That intuition forced me to strip slogans down to bedrock and ask: What do I assume exists here? And what existence actually is. What counts as knowledge? What counts as good?

Integrity (the present task): First, verbalize your ontology (what exists and matters here), your epistemology (what counts as knowledge for you), and your axiology (what counts as good). Then, audit context and power. And finally, test under pressure and revise in public. Within this process, we find that PIE and LPPC do their real work.

Purpose: Why this page exists

June 1968. I stood at a crossroads that defined the rest of my life. I was a promising young athlete, fresh from high school in Sunnyvale, California, with a reputation for speed, balance, and toughness. College football offers were on the table. The path of sports seemed ready for me to walk. But the world outside the stadium looked different. I could not ignore the reality pressing in: a world obsessed with physical power, love driven by emotional imagination, and caught in shallow, idiotic reasoning. I asked a question then that has followed me for decades, shaping every choice, every success, every failure, and every discovery: "What the hell is wrong with this power-crazy, imaginings-of-love, and idiotic-reasoning world of ours?"

This page tells how that question pulled me, step by step, from inherited ideas about coaching toward a more integrated practice—one I could test, refine, and offer as a resource for your own self-research. This page was born in the consciousness of the scholar where language tightens, systems replace slogans, and philosophy becomes usable. The tools I rely on are PIE, LPPC, and the three aspects of existence: matter, motion, and consciousness. That way, the work of coaching stays grounded in bodies and schedules, in rhythms and change, and in meaning and choice.

Integrity: Performance as the Way of PIE

The shortest path to integrity is performance. Not performance as trophies, but performance as proof; the disciplined willingness to let results, context, and time pressure correct your claims.

Purpose ↔ Axiology: Say what "good" means here and now—this team, this season, this phase. Avoid halo words. Be local and concrete.
Integrity ↔ Ontology & Epistemology: Name what exists for you (skills, roles, constraints, rhythms) and what counts as evidence (video, outcomes, player voice, health).
Experience ↔ Context & Power: Spell out the calendars, incentives, and hierarchies that shape what actually happens. If the incentives reward something other than your stated values, call it out and choose deliberately.

PIE is not a banner. It is a working alignment that keeps Purpose, Integrity, and Experience tethered to reality.

Experience: Broadcasts that trained attention (1965-1985)

Before the scholar emerged, my attention was trained by a steady drumbeat of events that doubled as lessons:

1968 Assassinations and upheaval: the anchor question hardens.
1969 Apollo 11: disciplined systems reach the moon even as society frays.
1972 Title IX: who develops, who decides, who is included.
1974 Watergate: systems fail; integrity matters more than rhetoric.
1980 "Miracle on Ice": strategy, psychology, belief—the scoreboard is never just physics.
1984 Los Angeles Olympics: spectacle and systems; performance as global choreography.

These were ontological and axiological lessons disguised as news. They pushed me beyond statements of value into the structures that actually produce results.

LPPC Model: The scholar's method in motion

LPPC (Psychology of Lifespan Performance & Perceptual Control) treats development and performance as coupled loops, guided by research and activation, and reiterated in real-world contexts, situations, and circumstances. The LPPC model insists that words like "consistency," "process," or "player-centered" must be grounded in identifiable perceptual levels, with observable feedback and control. That is how language stays honest.

Please Note: Echoing LPPC: The rest of this section follows the four working headings (development, Performance, Research, and Activation):

1. Development

Development refers to what we are deliberately working on at any stage of our lifespan. Not everything can grow at once, but everything we've been working on remains in our subconscious until it is activated. The scholar's task is to choose, then connect those choices to perceptual control.

What are we growing now? It might be a motor pattern, an attentional habit, a principle that steadies decision-making under stress, or a system concept (how we want the game to look). Or the integration of your personality (the levels of being human): physical-etheric, emotional, and mental-causal.
Which perceptual levels are underdeveloped? If an athlete can recite "process" but crumbles under pressure, perhaps the gap lies in a relationship or a category perception, not effort.
Where do values collide with incentives? The calendar favors "win now"; your stated aim is long-term versatility. That contradiction is not failure—it is data.

Across time, development is not a list; it is a sequence that revisits earlier levels with better coordination. That is how a program's language stops being camouflage and starts directing attention.

2. Performance

While performing under the lights or a clock, the reference perceptions we claim to control for either appear as behavior or they don't. So, the scholar yields to his lab technician side, the one who checks tape, mood, and momentum with the same calmness used to check a drill list.

What changed because we used that word? If "player-centered" self did not alter a meeting plan or sales rep distribution, then for now it is only an aspiration.
Do our constraints match our claims? If "build resilience" is on the wall but recovery windows are ignored, the environment is teaching a different philosophy than our mouths are.
Are we measuring the right thing? Scoreboards and wellness metrics are not enemies. Together, they tell a story closer to the actual performance across a season than either can alone.

Performance is not the verdict on a causal self; it is the mirror that keeps language from sliding into fantasy.

3. Research

Research is not a faculty lounge; it is everyday noticing, disciplined into a habit.

Keep a contradiction log. Note every time declared aim collides with lived incentive; every time stated care collides with calendar pressure; every time espoused process collides with time-to-result.
Treat philosophy as clarification. When a knot in language appears, untangle it. Ask: Where, exactly, does "consistency" live—setup, tempo, breath, self-talk, spacing?
Test and retest. A better definition is only better if it moves behavior in the right direction under stress.

This loop—notice → name → test—makes philosophy an instrument, not a poster.

4. Activation

Activation turns clarified insight into cadence.

Translate revised commitments into drills, meeting structures, checklists, and calendar rhythms.
Restate PIE for the current phase in plain US English: This month, "good" means X; we'll know it by Y; these are our trade-offs; here is our evidence.
Schedule the next review. Environments change, and integrity adapts. Build the review into the season's skeleton so you don't "mean to" and then forget.

Activation is the end of the process by which ideas become predictable, ordinary, and durable. Once they are ordinary, progress begins again at Research for Development. LPPC: The psychology of lifespan performance and perceptual control; the law of self-activation contains the whole thing.

The Scholar Emerges

When the scholar emerges, language becomes more precise and systems replace slogans. Purpose stays anchored to the 1968 question. Integrity is maintained by aligning ontology, epistemology, and axiology with reality. And now, with a worldview built on integrity, experience grounds everything in the mysterious hylozoic aspects of notion/energy/will, consciousness, and matter. The existential context of autobiography, shared history, and the cultural zeitgeist attract attention.

Scholarship, in this sense, is not merely academic distance; it is a process of developing by serving mankind, evolution, and unity. It is respect for law, structure, and feedback. It is how philosophy becomes usable.

A compact lineage map (2009–2025)

2009 Inheritance: Classic influences organize how we question (Socrates), analyze (Descartes), observe and learn (empiricism, Dewey), and judge (Kant). Good soil; incomplete on its own.
2022 Clarification: Philosophy for coaching—untangle language, define by use, and reject reified doctrine.
2023 Lived ecology: Coach education, mentors, and trauma co-produce a philosophy, and it evolves with context.
2024 Deconstruction: In many settings, "philosophy" functions as a symbolic device; examine field, capital, habitus.
2025 Reconstruction: State ontology, epistemology, and axiology; audit context and power; shift from creed to commitments.

How the three aspects of existence stay in view

Motion: Rhythms and transitions—practice plans, periodization, season phases, fatigue and recovery, the tempo of change. Will to power, will to love, will to reason, and will to unity.
Consciousness: Meaning, attention, choice—what we notice, what we value, what we permit ourselves to learn under pressure. The meaning and goal of life is the evolution of consciousness.
Matter: Forms, ideas, laws, limits—bodies, lanes, implements, schedules, logistics. Everything in existence contains matter (primordial atoms).

Coaching becomes a place where all three aspects stand together. In that alignment, integrity is not a moral pose—it is structural coherence.

Five practices that operationalize integrity (start here)

Write your local "good." Define what "good" means this month—this team, this phase. Avoid halo words.
Name your assumptions. What exists for you (skills, roles, constraints)? What counts as evidence (video, outcomes, player voice, health)? Write it down.
Audit context and power. Who sets constraints—league calendars, facility access, talent models, administrators, parents? State your trade-offs.
Clarify language. Choose three overused words in your program and show what visibly changes this week because of each word.
Install feedback loops. Weekly or monthly, compare commitments with lived practice. Revise aloud so the environment hears you.

How to use this page (quick start)

Run the five practices with your staff this month.
Pick three words your program uses too easily; decide what visibly changes this ek because of each word.
Book a 20-minute end-of-phase PIE review. Compare stated commitments with lived constraints. Revise publicly.

Reflective invitation

This site is not about teaching, coaching, or leadership. This research is offered as a resource. If something here steadied your attention, if an idea held up under your own lights, clocks, and constraints, use it. And if it didn't, rerun the loop. That is the work: to take inheritance, move through interrogation, and arrive, if only briefly, at integrity, before the world shifts and the cycle begins anew.

Back To: The Anchor Story: 1968 And Beyond