This is the part 2 of turning a head case into a powerhouse athlete.
Your athlete is a human being with all sorts of things going on in his/her life. You must remember, at all times that these are kids who have not figured out their identity or their personal power and are going through all sorts of crazy changes like the following:
- Some have been bullied
- Some have major family problems.
- Some are dealing right now with the biggest stressor of all for kids: Not fitting in.
You don’t have to be an amateur child psychologist, however, it’s to your advantage to listen to and address these issues as you notice them, without feeling like you have to solve all of their problems. You don’t have to.
I think the only thing that holds coaches back from doing more of this is the idea that they think they don’t need to! Well, the fact is the more you do it, the better the performance. You want better performances don’t you?
Steps In Getting A Better Performance To Your Athletes
FIRST STEP
Start by being flexible and letting go of your ego. This is the hallmark of all therapists and what it means is that you have to be what your athlete needs you to be at any given moment if you want their peak performance.
In other words, you will be 10 times more effective if you don’t try to force every athlete to go along with your model of the world. That you don’t try to force your favorite saying down their throat when you see that it doesn’t work. Yes, that’s what you can do at the professional levels, because there is more talent than positions and everyone is expendable. Instead, seek to listen to what is going on inside their head and ask yourself:
“What does this person need to hear from me right now to make him/ her feel powerful and confident and give me their all?”
What most coaches do is they hear a problem, check into their memory banks and they ask themselves:
“What has worked in the past?”
SECOND STEP
and then they apply it without thinking. Every athlete is different and unique! Slow down, open up your possibilities and trust your intuition to say “just the right thing” instead of going with knee-jerk pat responses you’ve always used. Stop trying to force square blocks into round holes! Your way isn’t always the most efficient way. Flex with the player’s personality.
Managers at big corporations have long ago learned that each employee responds to different motivational techniques. Take a clue from the business world here as billions have been spent on getting greater productivity from humans, and your athletes are humans. You hold a magic wand as someone they look up to. Time to start using it!
I’ve got tons of ideas here in the Mental Toughness Academy to help you out and Aaron Locks youth sports coach program as well. If you want that competitive advantage for your young athletes, learn the mental game and start using it!
Let’s do this,
I’m Craig Sigl