Author: Vernon Gambetta
Your Brand
In a traditional sense a brand is a name or a symbol. In coaching and teaching it represents you and what you stand for. You are your brand. Who you are? You action and your words define who you are to others. How honest you are with yourself will clearly define you. Be yourself and true to yourself. Live your core beliefs. Be the brand you want to be. A good place to start is genuine concern for others through your actions and words.
Failure and Risk
In order to succeed you must take risks, you must operate well out of your comfort zone. Risk implies that there is a chance of success or failure. Most of what holds coaches and athletes back from achieving ultimate success is not fear of failure, but fear of success. If they succeed, then they must do it again and probably be expected to do it better. This brings pressure, most of which is self-imposed. That being said to be highly successful failure must be an option. Learning from failures opens up the path to success. Failure is a learning opportunity, it is what you do with it and how you handle it. Let it define you and defeat you then yes then you have failed, build upon it define yourself and rise above it then you are a success. Johnny Cash, a man who certainly had his share of public and private failures and rose above them summed it up quite well: "You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space."
Good Enough?
What are you doing to get better? Are you the best you can be at what you do? How do you know how good you are – How do you measure your performance? What exactly do you do? Are you doing what you do because everyone is doing it or are your forging your own path? Are you a coach or a supervisor? Are you a good coach when you have talent and average coach when you don’t or are you the same coach regardless of talent level of your athletes? Do you know what you know? Conversely do you know what you don’t know? How good you are is up to you – now do something about it!
Learning to Move
If you want to learn how to move spend some time watching kids play. I mean free non-directed play with no adult supervision or guidance. There are no limits, few inhibitions and no constraints. There is an unbelievable flow to what they do. We can learn from this. The more we encourage our athletes to be kids again the better movers they will be. Instead we start “coaching” them at young ages through explicit learning drills and skill “progressions” that turn them into robots. We tell them what they can’t do and because we are adults they believe us. As coaches and adults, we need to take a giant step back and reassess how we are doing what we are doing with young developing athletes. Let them be more childlike. Turn them free! Let them explore all dimensions of movement, give them a task and let them find the movement solution. It may not look like we want it to look, but then again how should some of this look anyway? We need to see movement through a child’s eyes, it will open up a whole new vista in your coaching.
Anybody Find the Compass?
“Nevertheless, the field of Strength & conditioning still remains susceptible to fads, misconceptions and zealous philosophies that have little to do with sound scientific based knowledge and careful exercise prescription for enhanced sport performance for the athlete.” (Kraemer, William J. and Hakkinen, Keijo. Editors. (2002) Strength Training for Sport. London, England: Blackwell Science, Ltd. Page 1) This was written seventeen years ago, it is just as applicable today as it was then. Somewhere along the way someone lost the compass and is navigating with an outdated map. Has anything changed? It makes me wonder where the field (I hesitate to call it a profession) is going? Are we going the way of the dinosaur and working our way to extinction because it takes too long for the message to get from the small brain to the rest of the body? Or are we like a bunch of lemmings following the leader off the cliff? We all need to wake up and take a close look at what we are doing. We must get beyond the weight room and become professionals that are capable of serving all sports in a manner that that is applicable to each specific sport. There is a plethora of certifications, but who is producing real coaches? Coaches who can adapt, who can think and design and implement sensible appropriate training programs that address all elements of physical preparation. As a field in order to become a profession we need to orient the compass to true north, get an updated map that reflects current reality in sport and gets on a path to relevance or we will be rendered obsolete
Coaching is Teaching
How do you teach? How you teach determines your effectiveness as a coach. It was drilled into me when I was in college and student coaching that coaching was teaching. Fortunately, early in my career I was mentored by and coached with some great teacher /coaches. As I reflect on that I realize how fortunate I was to have those influences. When I look at young coaches today I don’t see the same emphasis on teaching. I see technical knowledge, which is wonderful, but can you impart that to the athlete? As coaches our classrooms and laboratories are the track, fields, courts or the pool. Everything we do as coaches is based on our ability to teach. Make you goal to be a better teacher and you will be a significantly better coach.
The Three L’s – Laps, Lines & Lectures
“Let’s go – take two laps and then we will get started with training.” “If you miss this shot then you will have to run.” Think about it, you see this all the time at all levels of sport, talk about a practice killer! Practice time is precious; it is a daily opportunity to improve skill, tactics and sport specific fitness, and wasting time slogging laps to “warm-up” or extra sprints for punishment does not optimize the opportunity to improve. It does nothing to make the athlete better and a lot to make them tired and diminish motivation. Be creative how you start practice because what you do to start practice sets the tempo for the practice. Start with a brief explanation of the days practice and then do something that is meaningful and mindful to get them into the practice. The same with mindless jogging for a cooldown, do something that will set-up tomorrows training session. Make what you do meaningful and motivational; every step of practice should be directed to making the athlete better. Laps waste time and do not make the athlete better. Lines are a killer. I was watching a soccer practice recently where 18 players were doing a shooting drill; there were two lines of nine with two balls. Do the math how many times did each player get to practice a shot in a five-minute period? Answer: not enough to be meaningful, not to mention the lack of instruction. Let’s be clear lines are important for organization and efficiency but learn to use lines to be effective. If the drill demands speed and high-quality work then make it a line of five – One athlete executing the drill, the second person in line coaching the drill, third person rehearsing, fourth person observing and fifth person recovering. Everyone should be actively involved in the drill to optimize practice time. If the objective of the drill is game fitness or speed endurance oriented then divide the group into lines of three with one athlete executing the drill, one coaching and one recovering. I stress the important of peer coaching to take advantage of the Mirror Neuron Phenomenon. The brain of the athlete coaching the drill perceives that that are doing the drill, hence it is an opportunity to get better faster – in essence the athlete coaching gets another quality repetition. This also insures that everyone is fully engaged in the practice. Lines can be effective, but it demands thorough practice planning to make the lines or formations fit the objectives of the practice. Starting practice with a long lecture is a surefire way to ruin the training session. Coaches love to talk, but the start of practice is not the time and place. Recognize that the athletes are there to train, not to listen to a lecture. My rule of thumb is three minutes of talking maximum that consists of very specific instructions pertaining to the training session. We know how long we can hold someone’s attention – not long – so use that knowledge. Make it short, sharp filled with action words that are directed to the desired actions during the training session. It should be information rich and positive. If you don’t know what to say, then don’t say anything. Think of it this way: Know your point, make your point, stay on point and summarize with a clear call to action based on the points of emphasis. Coaches like to talk, that does mean you should. Some of the best advice I got early in my career was to remember that we have two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason. Watch and listen more and talk less.
No Secrets
Always good for a laugh when I see a new article or a post on the unveiling of the latest secret training method. I will let you in on a little secret there are no secrets! There are no shortcuts to the podium. You can keep looking if you want but you are wasting your time. Know the basics, master the basics repeat them until they are flawless. Individualize the training and adapt the technique so it fits the athlete; don’t try to fit the athlete to the event. Practice with purpose and direction and realize that it will take time. A little talent helps, but a little talent can go a long way if it is maximized. There are no secrets!