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As professional coaches can we learn from our sports coaching colleagues?

Written by: Terry Ingham

Article Overview: In this article, I have set out to identify examples of ‘best practice’ in sports coaching in order to be able to ‘steal with pride’ as one of my colleagues so eloquently put it once.

As professional coaches can we learn from our sports coaching colleagues?

Introduction

If we desire our coachee’s to perform to their fullest possible potential then the answer is probably yes!

We often hear people talking about our coaching origins being in sport. In fact the origins of coaching go back much further than that and can justifiably be credited to Werner Erhard, founder of the Landmark Forum or back even further than that to the likes of Mentor of Greek mythology fame who was tasked with teaching the son of Odysseus all he knew while Odysseus was away – ‘on business’. But I don’t intend to go there, this article is about modern day sports coaching.

My particular field of sport is Judo and back in 1977 when I first qualified as a judo coach coaching was really about instruction. ‘Not like that’ ‘Do it how I told you,’ and ‘ What are you doing???’ were common ‘coaching’ phrases you would hear in many a sports club, not just in judo clubs.

So what, if anything has changed?

Well quite a lot and it’s thanks to the likes of forward thinking coaches whose careers started in sport. People like Tim Gallwey, Sir John Whitmore, David Hemery and more recently Sir Clive Woodward. Of all these Gallwey had the greatest affect on me. His now famous book ‘The Inner Game of Tennis’ (called inner game in recognition of the importance of the mental mindset) was written back in 1986 and is still relevant today. What made Gallwey’s work unique was that he set out the difference between ‘instruction’ and ‘coaching’. He was the first to suggest that players could improve their game through ‘inner learning.’ What he meant by this was that people learnt better and faster by thinking through what they needed to do and by going through the process of discovering solutions for themselves. What was even more profound for many ‘coaches’ was his belief that the process of coaching was just as important as the technical content itself. Yes, the requirements of fitness and skill are important but in top level sport where these requirements are becoming an ever narrowing difference it will come down to the mental character of the player. Things like attitude, belief, focus, determination and motivation all become critical and it is in these areas where the coach’s influence can be crucial.

Attitude is everything - or nearly

PMA – Positive Mental Attitude was the model I was taught when I was learning to coach. I was also told that positive attitude was everything and it is - but it’s only the start of ‘everything’ because it’s useless without action - positive action! So the model I now use is the PMA+A model which centres on thinking and acting positively.

This is how PMA+A works: -

• Listen to your own language and be aware of what you say because what you say, you do. So only think and say positive things.
• Don’t accept limiting beliefs about what you want to do. Eliminate all negativity from your vocabulary i.e. phrases like, can’t, will never, it’s no use, etc
• Replace negativity with positivity by using phrases like When I? Why not? What do I need to do different? What I will do, etc
• If you are developing a skill that’s not yet honed and need to discuss it, talk positively about it, i.e. I haven’t quite mastered that technique – yet, this implies to your brain you will master it and your brain listens to everything you tell it - so tell it positive things
• Imagine what it will be like to do what you want to do – create your future desired state in your mind - think you can and invariably you will, and remember if you want to do something differently you have to start by thinking about it differently because new thinking = new results
• And finally do it!

Limiting Beliefs - we are what we believe.

Often the most common thing holding a player back from achieving their full potential is themselves. They simply don’t believe they can do whatever it is they want to do. Gallwey calls this the opponent within. He believes that what is going on in our heads is often more formidable than what our opponent is doing. He goes on to say that through coaching we can help our players to overcome such obstacles, and by doing so we will empower our players to go on to perform with a new found level of natural ability and fluidity - yet no new skill or technique will have been acquired or learnt, just a new found belief.

Our beliefs are powerful things, Michael Heppall in his book ‘How to be Brilliant’ says we all look for supporting evidence to back up our beliefs. He uses the metaphor of a table and describes our beliefs as the table top (see fig below) going on to say that as with any good table top it needs legs to support it and describes the legs as our supporting evidence. As coaches we can help our players to disassociate from their limiting beliefs and change their evidence. We can do this by helping them to experience things in a different way (see Limiting Beliefs on the back page). By helping our players to ‘do it the way they want to’ we release them from their limiting beliefs by providing them with new evidence that will, as it becomes routine change their belief system.

Motivation – The carrot or the stick?

Sport has a distinct advantage over business when it comes to motivation because all the ingredients necessary to empower the performer are in place already so all we need to do is learn from best practice. So what are the key ingredients? What can we learn from sport?

First of all establish the difference between your players needs and wants.

• Needs are fundamental requirements they must have and
• Wants are wishes they desire or would like to have

Top Tip:

It’s a useful exercise to establish the difference between needs and wants through discussion with your player. Establishing a players needs and wants identifies what can be used to motivate and to reward them. Try doing it as a brainstorming exercise.

Secondly if you want to motivate people positively always make sure these key success factors are in place: -

• Everyone is involved because they want to be (self motivated)
• Rewards are clear (everyone wants to win – usually at least) and
• The performer has response – ability for the performance (so genuinely empowered)

And finally give praise - but make sure it is appropriate praise. Why do we have such a problem with giving praise? Why is it, even when we do give praise, it so often feels hollow? I believe it’s because of a lack of authenticity. Praise to be effective must be authentic and in sport it usually is. So here are my top tips on how to make praise really special: -

Always make it…

S pecial
P ersonal
E motional
C lear
I mportant
F actual
I mmediate and
C elebrate it

So the challenge is clear, if we want our players to be motivated make sure these ingredients are in place.

Goals - Question: How do you eat an elephant? Answer: In bite size pieces one mouthful at a time.

When I started coaching Judo, goal setting was unheard off. Nowadays things are much more structured. Coaches are using planning tools to map out a player’s goals and plans with them and the model that seems to be most in use is SMART i.e. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound or the SMART-A model which adds Agreed to the agenda which I think is better. One model I liked that I came across, while doing my research, was the 3 Ps, which stands for: -

• Personal “I will…”
• Positive “I can/I do…”
• Present Tense “I am….”

Whatever model you use to goal set be sure you are clear and unambiguous when setting out your players goals and make sure you distinguish between the end goal i.e. the goal which is the players final objective (which may be outside their control) and the performance goal which is the goal in your players control. Nothing frustrates and de-motivates a player quicker than having a goal outside their control.

Top Tip

Goals should: -

• Be written down, clear and unambiguous
• Use ‘hot words’ in your descriptions. Hot words are words that carry emotion and meaning – for the player.
• Define precisely what it is you want to achieve – your purpose (i.e. to win the Olympic gold medal)
• State precisely when you will achieve your goal – your target date
• Be realistic and balanced – take into account all the key activities you must do to succeed (i.e. training, skill development, tournaments etc)
• Plan to achieve – put your goals into a milestone plan that leads you to your target date (i.e. 5 yrs, 1yr, 6mths, 3mths, 1mth,)
• Have a regular reviewing mechanism (i.e. weekly)
• Be challenging and stretching – understand it will be hard but you must believe its possible if everything goes your way
• Be desired – total determination, you must really, really want to do it

Goals into reality – Mohammad Ali

Mohammad Ali in his book ‘I’m a little special,’ talks about what he calls his future history. Ali probably had one of the most powerful affirmations ever, which was “I am the greatest”. Ask anyone and I guarantee you 9 out of 10 people will remember it. That’s how powerful it was. He believed it and what’s more everyone who heard him say it, believed he believed it, and that was the point! He backed up this affirmation with his pictures of the future as though they were here and now. He then built on this picture in everything he did. When he trained he would imagine the fight. He would see himself getting ready for the fight, he would see himself putting on his gloves, he would imagine the leather smell of his gloves, the smell of the changing rooms and when he walked out he would hear the crowd shouting for him ‘Ali, Ali, Ali.’ Once in the ring he would imagine seeing his opponent coming in the ring, see himself fighting his opponent, see them going down just as he predicted and when he predicted. He would imagine the count as his opponent went down and most importantly of all, he would imagine hearing the count “10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 - 1 and your out”. Then he would freeze that picture and would consider nothing else. Wow is that a goal. Would you want to go in the ring with him? I don’t think so! Does it meet the SMART-A and 3 P requirements we discussed earlier, you bet.The power of beliefs - the story of Cliff Young

Limiting Beliefs – I can’t do it!

A judoka (the term we use for a fellow judo player) came up to me one day during a training session and asked me to help him with a particular technique he was having trouble with. I asked him to show me what his problem was. This he did with great precision – even pride. ‘This is my problem’ he said ‘I can’t do this throw properly’ ‘Look this is what I mean’ he continued. I asked him to show me exactly what the problem was and he obliged me - with great detail, and showed me again, and even again, but this time with someone else, as though this proved the point he was making. I then asked him to show me how he wanted to execute the throw and he did. I said I missed that can you show me that again and he did! His only problem was his own limiting beliefs – he had decided he couldn’t do it so he couldn’t! This is not an isolated example.

Empowering beliefs vs Limiting beliefs

Cliff Young was a 61 year old farm worker who liked running. He was encouraged by his father to enter the Melbourne-Sydney road race although he had little experience of top level athletics he won the race – by a day and a half, beating some of the best athletes in the world!

The beliefs involved: -

Experienced athletes belief systems
This is specialised and needs specialist training and skills
This needs specialist equipment
The race must be run like a marathon using a run/sleep pattern of 18hrs run to 6hrs sleep time
Athlete’s beliefs were based on conventional wisdom

Cliff Young’s belief system
This needs to be practiced so run all the time.
Cliff worked on a sheep station so he ran everywhere.
Cliff ran while at work in his working clothes i.e. overalls and boots
Cliff developed a ‘shuffling’ style of running which he decided was the most efficient way to run
Cliff had no such wisdom so was not restricted by any


First published in Coach the Coach Issue 16 - 2005

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Article Tags: belief that, coach, day sports, fame, fitness, greek mythology, inner game of tennis, judo clubs, landmark forum, mentor, mindset, origins, phrases, sir clive woodward, sir john whitmore, son of odysseus, sports club, technical content, tim gallwey, werner erhard



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