Maseel wants PBF to send educated former boxers for coaching courses

KARACHI: Former Asian Games silver medallist boxer Zaigham Maseel on Saturday urged Pakistan Boxing Federation (PBF) to strengthen its coaches pool by sending educated and learned former boxers for coaching courses.

“Coaching is the most vital part in boxing promotion. We have only two AIBA 3-star coaches and for the last 13 years or so we have not added any 3-star coach to the pool and it’s a big issue of Pakistan’s boxing,” Zaigham told ‘The News’ in an interview from Bahrain on Saturday.

Pakistan has two AIBA 3-star coaches in former Asian champion Ali Bakhsh and Olympian Arshad Hussain. AIBA conferred 3-star diplomas on the duo in the first decade of the current century.

Ali has retired from K-Electric and Arshad has retired from Army.

As per international rules only AIBA 3-star coach can act as head coach of a national team.

When asked about the coaching calibre of Pakistan’s AIBA 3-star coaches, Zaigham said: “No doubt, they are good coaches but they don’t have academic qualification enough to develop a team to do research and find the latest boxing and motivation techniques and to generate confidence, excitement and enthusiasm and provide psychological support to fighters,” the three-time South Asian Games gold medallist said.

“We are just trying to copy our former foreign coaches without understanding the context of the whole work that includes fitness training, techniques, tactics and mental preparation,” said Zaigham, who serves as Director Sports in a Pakistani school at Issa Town, Bahrain.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have the capacity to analyse the current condition of our coaching and we don’t have an idea to improve its setup because we don’t have any active coaching commission. We don’t see any sensible and educated coach who could lead the team in the right direction for taking required actions,” Zaigham pointed out. “A very big gap is perceived in coaching field due to improper arrangements and lack of creative thinking. The education set-up for our young coaches is not in a proper shape.

“It is alarming that our young coaches will not be able to replace the previous coaches in future,” he observed. “I want to share second shocking news that we had another golden time when we led the world in boxing coaching. Coaches from different countries of the world wanted to learn from our coaches. Now the situation is we are being taught boxing coaching by instructors from small countries of our region,” Zaigham said.

He said that the experts say that coaches have the responsibility to assist athletes in developing their potential. “They are supposed to analyse their performances, instruct them in relevant skills and provide encouragement,” said the former Navy boxer. “Consequently the role of a coach will be diverse and varied, as an instructor, assessor, adviser, mentor, facilitator, demonstrator, supporter, fact finder, motivator, counsellor, organiser, planner and friend,” he explained.

“In relation to sports, the role of the coach is to create right conditions for learning to happen and to find ways of motivating the athletes. Most of the athletes are highly motivated and therefore the task to maintain the motivation and to generate excitement and enthusiasm becomes more difficult. So, sports coaches should be able to assist athletes for preparing training programs, to communicate and assist them to develop new skills, and predict performance by using an evaluation to monitor training progress effectively,” Zaigham said.

“Therefore, it is a very difficult task and requires a very special person as coach,” the former boxer was quick to add.