Functional Path Training

Some Coaching Advice to Make You A Better Coach

Here is some practical actionable advice from an old coach raised in an analog age:

Leave your iPhone and iPad in the office. Put the Go Pro away.

              STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!

Heighten and sharpen your observational skills

Don’t worry about bar speed. Watch the lift

Turn off the GPS and watch the athlete move – See how they generate those numbers you have been gathering

Throw away the wellness questionnaire – Talk to the athlete. Get to know them as people.

Forget the Triphasic workout – all movement involves coordinated eccentric, isometric and concentric muscle action.

              JUST COACH!!!!!

You will be surprised at what you have been missing. Use technology to complement what you do, not to replace it. Know yourself and your athletes, never forget you are coaching people who run, jump, and throw.

Coaching Excellence - Part Four

Change is a constant. One of the discriminating factors that differentiate between a good and great coach is how they deal with change. Good coaches are reactive and change manages them. They fear change and go out of their way to avoid it. Great coaches lead change they are proactive and embrace the challenge of change. In fact great coaches are change engineers, they are at the cutting edge always looking for a better way.

Coaching is learning to manage risk. For athletes to improve they must push the envelope in training. It is the coach’s job to know the athletes and they capabilities in order to guide them in their quest. Sometimes we undershoot and sometimes we overshoot but in either case if we have a good plan then it becomes a learning opportunity and another experience that makes the coach and athlete better. Failures are learning opportunities if they are put in context. From the ashes of failure rises some of the greatest success in sport. Objective evaluation of success and failure and understanding the why is the characteristic of coaching excellence. The highs are not too high and the lows are not too low because everything has a context - the pursuit of the ultimate goal.

What is the measure of coaching excellence? Oftentimes we measure a coach by wins and losses, by championship trophies lifted. To me that is not the sole measure of a coach. Some the greatest coaches are coaches you have never heard of they are not in the EPL, the NFL, they may never have had an Olympian but they are still great. How can that be? They take the talent they have and make it better everyday out of the spotlight. They consistently do the most with what they have.

Preparation is a given in coaching excellence. John Wooden would spend two hours planning a two-hour practice. He was the best of the best partially because of the impeccable daily preparation. It helps to think of preparation this way – tomorrow began yesterday. Preparation is an ongoing process. Make self-reflection part of the daily routine.  Don’t be afraid to be hard on yourself. Each training session is not only an opportunity for your athletes to improve it is an opportunity for the coach to get better, to learn what to do and what not to do. There are lessons in and opportunities in each training session. My mantra is to try to do something that no one else in my world is doing and to do it better everyday

 

Coaching Excellence - Part Three

Good coaches have mentors and role models. My first mentor and role was my high school basketball coach. He was the most influential person in my life up to that time aside from my parents. He taught me the value of structure and self-discipline. He also instilled in my teammates and me that it is was more than the ninety minutes of practice that made you better it was lifestyle. He did not call it the twenty-four hour athlete but that was what he was teaching us. It was a total commitment to the pursuit of excellence.

We cannot do it alone. It always helps to have guidance from someone who has been there before. No need to make the same mistakes and relearn the lessons they learned, learn from others experiences. That being said it is important to forge your own coaching style that suits your personality that maximizes your strengths minimizes your weaknesses. Seth Godin put it quite well when he said “don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.” Be yourself.

Excellent coaches are learners. The learning can be formal or informal, the key is to keep learning and growing. Arie de Geus said it best “Probably the only sustainable competitive advantage we have, is the ability to learn faster than then opposition.” To be the best demands that you expand your horizons that you go outside you’re your coaching specialty and outside of sport to seek continual improvement and find new ideas. I will never forget asking Eddie Jones, current coach of England Rugby, where he got an idea and his answer was quite revealing: from the Belgium women’s filed hockey team! That is why he is a great coach; he leaves no stone unturned in his pursuit of being the best. Frankly great coaches who epitomize coaching excellence innovate, they are open to new ideas and are constantly learning. The coaches who are average imitate, they do what they have always done, and they never risk and try anything new for fear of failure, so they end up failing.

How much time do you devote each day and each week toward your professional development? Joe Vigil PHD, a great coach and mentor does an hour of professional development reading each morning at 5:00 am. He has been coaching for close to 70 years and is now 88 years old! Nort Thornton, one of the greatest swim coaches ever, shares ideas from books we have read and challenge each other’s ideas on training on a periodic basis. He has been coaching for sixty plus years and is in his late seventies. You are never too old or too knowledgeable to stop learning.  Keep learning and keep growing.

Never stop learning and challenging yourself to get better. Just about the time you think you have it figured out, some new ideas will arise to challenge you. Stay ahead of the curve, be proactive, do not copy and follow, innovate and lead. Get out of your comfort zone, for me it is mastering technologies that will make me better and more productive. The only way you can do that is continual professional development. Christopher Morley said it best "Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity." 

Coaching Excellence - Part Two

It is absolutely necessary to have a clearly defined philosophy of coaching. It was be more than just words. It must live in your everyday actions as a coach. To help guide your philosophy and stay on course it is necessary to have a working compass oriented to true north. Nothing changes under pressure, adversity or with challenges. You stay the course because your philosophy is the foundation of your coaching beliefs and the beacon that guides you.

Humility is a virtue than underlies coaching excellence. It requires an ability to accept criticism and deflect praise. Coaching excellence demands a strong self-belief coupled with humility. Coaching is not I, me, me, rather it is us, we and them. Great coaches are not the center of attention; they are facilitators, the conductors of the orchestra. They make sure all the pieces are in place. They know how to insure that everyone is on the bus in the correct seats and that the bus driver has a good current road map to the destination. Good coaching is athlete centered, coach driven and administratively supported, it is not coach centered. I know this is news to some of the huge egos that have prowled the sidelines over the years, but people did not come to see them, they came to watch the athletes perform. Great coaches are there in victory and defeat to lend perspective after the wins and comfort after loses.

Great coaches are leaders, not followers. They lead from the front through example, not just words. They are teachers who look for every opportunity to teach and to learn. They are always working to improve their skills, not just technical skills, but interpersonal skills. The spotlight is on the athlete; the coach’s job is to make them better people and better athletes. Coaching is FUNdamental. You can have fun while teaching and guiding people toward excellence. Coaching is not a grind.

Coaching excellence does not come easy it is a process that demands that you pay your dues. There is an old saying that you don’t enlist in the army as a general. You earn the right to progress each step of the journey. Every step of the way the coach must expect excellence and demand excellence from himself and those he is coaching. Excellence and its continuous pursuit then becomes a habit. Hard intelligent work is the price of admission for an opportunity to be the best. But it is more than hard work, it is work guided by your philosophy executed with intent and purpose.

What kind of coach do you want to be? Do you want to be the best? It is your choice! There are no boundaries or limits. Clearly define where you want to go, delineate the steps along the way, continually assess progress toward the goal and adjust if necessary. 99% of the time the only person standing in your way is you, so define your mission and if you fail, fail forward, get up and keep moving. No need to try harder, try different but keep trying.

Coaching Excellence - Part One

(Introduction - This is the first of a four part post that I think is particularly important at this time and place. These are my ideas and observations on coaching excellence and coaching for excellence. Hopefully it will stimulate some thought, discussion and most importantly action.)

The cornerstone of high performance is coaching. There can be no performance excellence without coaching excellence. For me as for any coach who wants to achieve excellence it is a journey, a journey of constant learning and practice. I have been fortunate to be a coach for 48 years and the journey continues. My goal is to share with you from my experiences what the characteristics of coaching excellence are.

As an athlete in high school I quickly recognized that coaching was the difference maker. I saw a small school the same size as my school with very similar demographics achieve a high standard of performance. I wondered why. It became apparent that the difference was coaching. That school had a coach who was different. He did not talk about excellence he demanded it, not in a dictatorial bombastic manner but in his actions. His teams were prepared, they were ready to compete, and they did not panic, they thrived in competition.

In my senior year in high we rose to a new level in basketball, why because of coaching. My coach raised the standard and all subsequent expectations. He got all of us totally committed and absorbed in the process. At a young age all of this underscored for me how important coaching was. I became of student of coaching. I was fascinated with the process. Regardless of the sport I could see that coaching made the difference. At the highest levels of sport talent is a given, but I could see that it was what was done with that talent that made the difference. It was the coaching.

Coaching is not something you do; it is something you are with every fiber of your being. Jerry Garcia sums it up quite well: “ You do not merely want to be the best of the best, you want to considered the only ones who do what you do.” Be unique, be special and make all of those around special. There is no halfway in the path to coaching excellence. The only way to be excellent is to be all in all the time. How can you expect that of your athletes if you not leading by example?

Thoughts on TEAM

You don't build a team, your grow a team. It is not a mechanistic process, it is organic like growing a garden. It requires a high degree of care & nurture. It is not my team or your team, it is a our team. Together we are better! One for all and all for one. 

More

Is more better? More miles, more tons, and more training sessions. Certainly, more can be better at various stages of a career, but and that is a very big but, you can quickly reach the point of diminishing returns. Now what? Then you are signing that old blues song the more better blues. Stop and think, analyze why and when can more be better. The longer I coach I realize the perils and pitfalls of more. I now understand that I need to do more better rather than just more. To make it better, less is more. Quality & consistent training accumulates and results in training that sticks.

The Big C – Culture

It seems that lately everyone has discovered culture. For me throughout the years I have recognized that culture is the difference maker. You have good cultures that nurture and support excellence and you have toxic cultures that breed mediocrity and failure. What is culture? It is intangible, it is the little things that make a difference. It is feeling of a unity, of commitment to a cause. Sometimes you can feel it and not see it. I know for sure it is not posters on the wall with inspirational saying, nor is t-shirts with catchy phrases, it is a feeling, a sense of purpose and alignment. It is seemingly unimportant actions like the Heisman trophy winner helping Jim Radcliffe clean up trash on the team bus. It is everyone taking ownership and responsibility for their actions so that everyone gets better together. It is actions more than words. Can you change culture? Sure, absolutely you can. It takes effort, constant vigilance to insure alignment with core values and observance of the actions that support those core values. Can good culture go bad? Yes, it sure can, just look at University of Oregon football when they lost their way and stopped taking care of the little things. Is culture important? Absolutely it is important if you want to achieve any level of sustained excellence, that is why I call the big C, without a sound culture there is no substance. Training becomes a grind, rules become unenforceable, bad behavior becomes the norm. Look around you. What is your team or organizations culture? Is it good or bad? If you are energized and look forward to the day I would say then you probably have the start of a good culture. You must work at building and sustaining the culture every moment of every day. Little things matter. One second late for a meeting is late – not acceptable. Not complimenting a teammate is not acceptable. Acknowledge the good and correct the bad. Once a great culture is achieved it takes more work and focus to sustain it. You can never relax and think you have it. It takes a sense of constant tension to maintain it. Great cultures are not always top down, they are led from within, everyone is all in and together with a unity of purpose.