Coach, your job is one of the most important authority positions a young person will encounter and you have tremendous power to influence them…if you use it wisely.

I know you care a lot about winning and I want you to keep that desire…it’s a good thing! The video below is your first step toward that end.  And when you’re done with this video, go to this one where I will give you the shortcut secret to getting much more out of your athletes than you currently get.

In this Article/Video you will learn about the Coaches: Develop Mental Strength In Athletes Through Flexibility.

I am forever preaching to coaches about the tremendous impact they have on young athlete’s performance and more importantly, their lives outside of sports.

Many coaches vastly underestimate the power of being an authority figure and need to understand that especially younger athletes take the words they use very seriously.

Of course kids in their teens have a thicker skin than 10 year old, but even so, I have helped countless athletes of ALL ages clear the interference patterns and fear that come from coach’s thoughtless comments.  

Fear is the biggest block from any athlete achieving their mental strength and coaches must protect young athletes from creating it or they risk throwing away talent and harming their own success goals.

 

The philosophy coaches and parents must understand if they want to get the most out of young athletes is that you can’t treat all athletes the same and expect them all to rise that narrow method of bringing out their best.

 

In other words,  coaches and parents get stuck on the “Well this worked for me growing up so it should work for my young athlete.”

 

Coaches tend to be even more stubborn with attitudes like:  “I have had success doing it THIS way and therefore everyone should fall in line.” (My way or the highway)

Both attitudes completely ignoring the fact that maybe they or their past successful methods happened to be a good match for those particular athletes, but the athlete(s) they are dealing with now are a complete mismatch.

Always remember:  Every athlete is unique.

Sports is a unique laboratory environment for studying performance.  In the business world, it’s been long known that to get everything out of an employee, you have to find what motivates each individual employee and exploit that.

Contrast that to sports where coaches at high levels of competition can afford to be rigid because there are always players waiting in the wings to take the place of the current starting players.  There’s a never-ending supply of players to fill slots vacated by players who “can’t hack it.”

What I’m really trying to say in this article is:  Many coaches throw away as much talent as they develop with their one-size-fits-all mentality.

They would be so much more effective by studying the psychology of what makes players tick like such successful coaches as Phil Jackson, Tom Landry and Sparky Anderson.  These coaches could take any players and guide them to their best.

Getting back to coaches impact on youth athletes. If you were to interview a hundred kids in sports and ask them about things coaches have said to them,  at least 50 would tell you about something that really hurt them at the time and many of those would still be carrying around the detrimental effects.

I know, I’ve heard them all… for years.

Even things that adults would think would be minor or designed to inspire a kid are really taken to heart, especially the younger ones.

Coaches:  everyone is working hard out there. Every coach pushes hard work. That’s a given. If you want the winning edge, it’s in the minds of your athletes (not yours) and it’s your job to find that and inspire it.

Do not ever think you have the perfect winning formula.  Be Flexible. Continue to learn, especially about the mental game.

Let’s do this,

Craig Sigl