...A Hard Pass...

 The Los Angeles Rams just won the Super Bowl in the final minute of the game. Look no deeper than that, and it is a great accomplishment for a program and a team who haven't won a Super Bowl in 22 years.

But INC. magazine's Justin Bariso did dig a little deeper into the success of the Rams, writing a piece titled, "The Los Angeles Rams Used a Simple Rule of Psychology to Win the Super Bowl."

Positive psychology.

Not that being positive is that grandiose a revelation, but in the NFL where negativity, abusive behaviors and punishments are the norm, the Rams joined those teams who have seen the light and are using the powers of the human brain to get the best out of their athletes.

Rams offensive tackle, Andrew Whitworth, a 40 year old veteran, said of Coach Sean McVay's coaching style, "We don't have coaches out there screaming at people. That's not allowed on our field. It's about having energy and positivity and belief that no matter what happens on one snap, the next snap's the next best one you can have." 

Wait a minute. All those sports movies where Coaches are yelling and screaming and breaking down their athletes all season to get the big game, and then they give them the rousing speech in the locker room that propels the comeback win against all odds, isn't this how it's supposed to be?

Excuse my language, but hardass is a hard pass.

You need look no further than downtown Phoenix where at the time of this blog, the Phoenix Suns are rocking the best record in the NBA coming off a Finals appearance last season and one of the prohibitive favorites this season.

Coach Monty Williams has put in place a culture of respect, integrity and fun. You don't see Williams yelling at this players on the sidelines, he doesn't have to. He has put them in positions of success, communicated their roles and given a team that prior to his hiring in 2019, hadn't made the playoffs in a decade. The team has bought into his coaching style and culture that even on the days they get off during the season, they still come to the gym to see their teammates and put extra work in.

Williams holds his team to high standards but also said in a 2021 interview, “I hope that when our players are around our staff, and in particular me, they know I’m here to serve them in any way that I can,” he said. “I want to help guys get better. I want to help them get paid. I want to help them win games, but I want to do it in a way that allows for them to think, ‘That guy cares about me. He cares about my family. He cares about me as a person.'"

These are young, professional men being paid a lot of money to play football, baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, etc. Some coaches have figured out that the human brain shrinks from negativity, corralling other bodily resources and rarely getting the best out of an athlete.

Fear works for a while. Players are afraid of punishment, to get screamed at, to be embarrassed in front of their peers. Coaches too!

In a 2012 paper titled, "Handshakes, BBQs, and bullets'; self -interest, shame and regret in football coaching," author Paul Potrac detailed his time coaching an elite soccer program. In it, he talks about coaches "looking out for themselves," how "coaches come and go," how coaches need to "watch their back," and "seize any opportunity." When Potrac realized the human toll on his character, he left the profession.

Go to a youth sporting event and count the number of teams, courts, fields with coaches raising their voices at children: berating and embarrassing them. At times, you will see a coach get angry and call a time out just so they can punish their players IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MATCH with running lines or pushups.

Seemingly, this coach feels embarrassed and their reflex is to embarrass those who they think embarrassed them.

As that coach, it may work for a while. But eventually players will tire of these theatrical and baseless punishments and leave that coach, that club or sadly, perhaps the sport.

Are you that coach? Not sure?

If you have an assistant coach, have them pull out their phone and record your voice during a match. Is it positive or laced with things NOT to do, insults and volume?

If you don't have an assistant coach, ask a Parent to film you during a match. Is your body language positive? Are you bringing more anxiety to your team with your antics or are you a calming presence for them?

None of this is easy. Hollywood has taught us that being a hardass = success. Early professional coaches in every sport league were part of this blueprint. It's all we knew at the time.

But now that the wiring of our brains is under academic eyes, we see now that this isn't the best way to teach, to learn or to inspire. Those coaches are not only becoming extinct because they refuse to adapt, but the videos, lawsuits and complaints pile up upon their terminations. It can be an ugly send off.

Coach, teach responsibly and with your athletes' learning at the forefront of what you do and how you do it. No one likes to be embarrassed, yelled or screamed at, insulted or berated.

Need more research? E mail us. Want some feedback? E mail us. Want a clinic to help coaches adapt to a positive, player centered runway to coaching? E mail us.

We're here to help.

Low Hanging Fruit...

In December of 2021, the Arizona Region held their semi annual Coaches Education Weekend. The preeminent Youth Coaching guru in the US headlined a cast of cadre that included a former NBA coach and author, a lynchpin of the science community of Motor Learning and new author, a USA Women’s National Team assistant coach who talked about scouting at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, a gold medal Paralympian in Sitting Volleyball and one of the best Cadres in USA Volleyball.

The line up was announced 70 days before the event. In 2019, affectionately now known as “pre pandemic,” Education weekend hosted over 120 coaches between indoor and beach presentations. So this clinic was going to be a home run! People had been locked down for a year or more. Now was the time for coaches to come out and learn. With over 1000 coaches in the Region now, registrations opened and on the first Friday night of Education Weekend, we had our number!

22.

.02% of the coaches in the Az. Region attended.

What had we done wrong? Reaching out to some coaches, they complained that it was a busy weekend. There were a few preseason tournaments going on, but not everyone was playing in them. .02%? One coach joked that maybe the coaches in the Region thought they knew everything already. Maybe they weren’t far off…

This is not a reprimand but a call to action. Coaching is THE silver bullet. A great coach can make up for a mediocre or poor club, but a great club cannot make up for a poor coach.

YOU are part of the equation of athletes improving, enjoying the sport, pushing themselves to their limits and beyond.
YOU can also be part of the equation of athletes quitting the sport, feeling insecure about themselves and their performance and inflicting physical and mental harm.

Being better at coaching is paramount. Not just the X’s and O’s but the relationships, the psychology, the methods and philosophies of training.

So what did we do wrong?

Before the advent of YouTube and streaming services, if you wanted to watch a program, you had to be in front of the television on THAT channel at THAT time on THAT day. And to find out what happened next on the show, you had to tune in the next week at THAT channel at THAT time and THAT day again. You had to have some skin in the game. When you wanted to watch a sporting event, you had to tune into the station at the time it began. There was a commitment to that event you had to make. If you wanted to know who won the Oscars, you watched the presentation or you had to read about it the next day in the newspaper, there was no in between.

Of course, now, you can watch games hours, days or even weeks and months later. You can find most television shows streamed later and you can binge watch an entire season to your hearts content. No more waiting, no skin in the game. Oscars are streamed and if not, just pull the phone out of your pocket to see in real time who won. The same with sports. If you didn’t get to see the Super Bowl, you could have just as easily pulled up ESPN and watched the play by play. There is no more commitment. What you want is at your fingertips, when YOU want it, WHERE you are at WHATEVER time fits YOUR schedule.

Seemingly, the Netflix-verse applies to coaching as well.

If you want a coaching drill, pull up “volleyball drills” on Google and get 24,700,000 in a half a second. Type in “coaching drills” you YouTube and the scroll seems endless. Why do you need a clinic? Everything is at your fingertips on YOUR time where YOU are at THAT moment.

Following this logic, how many of you would be comfortable rewiring the electricity of your house watching a YouTube video? How about learning to surf or base jumping with a wind suit? Why not? Because there is the potential for disastrous and life changing results.

Yet isn’t coaching the same? How many bad coaches in youth sports leave a scorch earthed landscape in their wake? Kids quitting sports, feeling insecure or suffering from mental and physical anguish- how is this not disastrous and life changing?

How many questions are asked during these video or google interactions? How much feedback can coaches get from these quick hits? Further, is the coach able to disseminate the drill to see if it fits the skill set, age, playing level of their athletes. Is it a drill that fits with the ideas of how athletes learn best; motor learning principles and philosophies and the optimal ideas of teaching?

An organized clinic is an exceptional learning environment. How many times have you, as a coach, gone to a college practice to watch how that coach does it? The ASU coach, Sanja Tomasevic, recently commented that in her five years at the helm of the Sun Devil program, she has had 4 coaches e mail her and come watch her practices.

4.

True learners have skin in the game. They are reaching beyond the comfort of their couch and mouse. They venture to other avenues to gain more knowledge. Imagine the thing you are most passionate about in your life other than your family and children. How did you learn more about this? Was it by taking the easiest road possible?

E mail a college coach and ask to come watch their practice. Call the Region office and let’s set up an online or in person coaching clinic for your club coaches. Reach out to Coaching Education in the Region and let’s grab some coffee. Have a dialogue that will force your mind to work a bit more, open to ideas, debate others. This is how we learn as humans.

You can take any drill online and run it, but it is helping your team? Is it efficient and the best way for your team to learn? Or is it the lowest hanging fruit.

Imagine coaching athletes with this mentality: always taking the easiest way out, never pushing themselves and always making sure the learning they did was on their time table, where they want it to happen when they feel like it. How successful a team would you be coaching?

Excuses, rationalizations and doing it how it’s been done before is laziness in any profession. You are coaching the next generation of leaders and Mothers and Fathers and teachers. Can this be any more important?

Season 7 of Seinfeld is a Netflix subscription and two clicks away. Bringing out the best in that 14 year old learning the game shouldn’t be so easy.

Embrace the Gray

Are you Pro Vax or Anti Vax?

Are you for gun control or against it?

Are you a coach that uses random training or block training?

Do you believe in the ecological dynamics or information processing form of coaching?

It's either or. Our national debate has become binary: yes or no? Right or left? Republican or Democrat? Pro or Anti? 

Except, is this how life really is?

For fundraisers, it IS their world. The more divide, the more vitriol, the more anger they can concoct, the more money flows into their coffers.

But the rest of the country isn't so polarized. Many people are in the middle- the gray. Some like some of one side's arguments and some of the other side's arguments. For the money grab, pundits from both sides will pull hard to get these folks to choose a side. But many of us understand that these arguments have complexities and can't be decided by three paragraphs on a leaflet or a customized website with a "donate here" button attached.

The same is true for coaching. Our profession is NOT black and white!

Embrace the gray!

Random or blocked training. Why can't you use both? While our game is random and it's beneficial to train the way your game is played, can't block training help with some skill work, or help with certain athletes? Why do we have to draw a line down our gym and choose sides?

Currently, the Ecological Dynamics approach to Coaching is getting a lot of interest, discussion and argument. It is fundamentally opposite of the way most coaches were taught to coach AND the way they currently teach. Heels are dug in, the line is the sand a growing chasm every day.

But the reality is, there is a lot to look at here. Giving our athletes more autonomy is a proven scientific trope for happier and more engaged athletes. This works better with the way our brains learn. It is 100% the only way to teach? Maybe not, but as a coach, aren't we supposed to find the best ways to reach and teach our young athletes? If dipping from both ponds is a better learning environment, why would you dismiss it just because it's "new" or it doesn't align with your current teaching/coaching style?

Leonard Cohen once wrote, "There are cracks in everything, that's how the light gets in!" We have no interest in debating politics here. We are looking at coaching and asking you, as a coach, to constantly keep learning. Embrace humility, learn from others, take the good you see and jettison the bad that is unreliable and not working in your trainings. 

Binary coaching may have worked well 30-40 years ago, when options for sports and athletes was limited. But today, every athlete has 10 options for their time, dozens of sports dot the landscape and coaches are often the greatest conduit to success and failure for impressionable youth.

Embrace the gray!