Big Rocks under us...

Sometimes social media CAN provide us with inspiration, education and reflection that isn't callous, misguided or banal. This week, under the stars of some big sports happenings, we got lucky.

Fred Duncan, a licensed speed coach for the NHL, NFL and Olympians showed his disgust with the current training regimens of youth athletes at a seminar he was presenting at.

The big rock? "You see so many training youth athletes like they're pros!" Youth athletes are NOT small adults, they are children: with the physiology of a growing body. They need to be treated as such.

Madison Keys overcome obstacle after obstacle until she stood alone at the podium of the Australian Open. She defeated the #2 seed in the semifinal and the #1 seed in the final, despite being the #19 seed- an upset for the tennis ages.

Here Madison talks about the mental chains she unlocked going into the tournament.

The big rock? "I think I've done a lot of work to no longer need this, I really wanted this but it was no longer the thing that was going to bind me, and letting go of that burden."

How often are our athletes defining themselves by winning and losing? How often are our parents feeding that narrative by social media posts ONLY when the team wins but nothing when they lose? 

Winning and losing is random in sport: ask the #1 and #2 seeds at the Australian Open this year. Support your athlete, win OR lose, for competing, working hard and doing their best. 

Finally, Nebraska's head volleyball coach John Cook retired this week. In a tearful news conference, he told the story of the new Nebraska coach, Dani Busboom Kelly who used to play for Cook.

The big rock? "She was going to do everything possible to help that team. Whatever role she was asked to do, she would do."

For the good of the team, Busboom put aside what she wanted, did what the team needed and they won a National Championship on her back. 

These stories become more rare with each sunrise. Players trained and convinced to do one thing on the court, liberos and middles tagged at 10 and 11 years old because of their size THEN and not learning the rest of the game because they are locked into those positional cages. 

As coaches we need to teach the game. Not just one position but the whole game. Give middles the chance to get better at serve receive. Teach your setters to block and your libs to attack. Give them the tools to succeed like Dani Busboom was able to do.

Big rocks make a mountain, the ones Coaches and athletes climb everyday. Here's hoping these big rocks make a difference in your climb.

Pay Now or Pay Later...

 This is a video answer from Apple founder Steve Jobs.

The best taxi driver can get you to your destination in 15 minutes, the worst one maybe a half an hour. A minimal difference from a profession that likely will not fester with you but for more than a few minutes.  But for Jobs, a software designer is so important that the difference for him is more like 100-1.

Think about your coaches.

In a paper titled "The Artistic Accomplishment of Coaches in Youth Sport," authors Dia and Xu write, "The influence of coaches on athletes is huge. Nowadays, many coaches do not understand the meaning of the phrase "catching the heart of an athlete." As coaches, in addition to helping athletes to formulate training plans, improving their performance and helping them to achieve their maximum potential on the sports field, achieving excellent sports performance will not only focus on their performance in the competition, but also pay more attention to the development of the athletes' lives. Helping exercise to deal with 'heart' issues, such as feelings, confidence, motivation and team cohesion, and even the meaning of life, these are the necessary artistic qualities for a good coach!"

This paper was written about coaches in CHINA! Not the United States.

As the new club season dawned upon us in early November, one Club Director proudly shared the growth of his club, over 40 teams now. When asked the question, "You have 40 great coaches and 40 willing assistants?" the pivot in the conversation was palpable.

While other countries require Coaches to get a degree, go through months or years of schooling and often times an apprenticeship before they can put the lead whistle around their necks, the U.S. continues to falter in Coach education and development. 

With youth sports being a cash cow for so many, little to nothing is spent on teaching coaches to be better.

And yet BAD coaches can drive kids away from sport, into depression and the desperate roads that accompany poor self esteem and confidence. Players are scarred deeply, those which they can carry far into adulthood. 

Parents call and complain to a club director, even to a Region officer but the bottom line is, in it's current condition, if a coach doesn't want to get better, they don't have to. They can drive your son or daughter out of a sport. They can affect their lives negatively going forward.

The question becomes when does the fulcrum of bad coaches begin to affect bottom lines? That may be the only push back that will matter.

For a club director that has dozens of teams, losing an athlete here or there is a small loss on a business that shows a huge return on investment. Spending money to send their coaches to an accredited coaching clinic seems frivolous and a loss of practice time.

One admirable Club Director could grow her business, but she is limited by gym space, (not wanting two teams practicing on a court at the same time) and qualified coaches. Every season, one of her first duties is to host an accredited coaching clinic for her staff. She has made a dedicated effort for quality over quantity, for her athlete's well being and training over her bottom line.

Sadly, her Parents may not even notice.

Gym costs, travel costs, Club costs continue to rise with literally no end in sight. To pay so much for a coach to ruin your daughter's athletic career is a short runway to what some parents will see as the eventual payback, litigation.

If you think that is an empty threat, think again, it's already begun.

We hope and want to work with the notion that USA Volleyball will raise the coaching standards along with every other youth sport organization. We will look to their leadership to weed out the bad coaches and reward the good ones. Maybe at a more base level, just define the characteristics of good coaches and bad.

Imagine in 5-10 years, your club having a legal department, having to field 11 lawsuits from parents and athletes that were coached so badly they carry medical records as evidence. The lawyer fees alone are in the tens of thousands and losing a case could be in the millions. 

Or maybe we can accept that putting an "A team," as Steve Jobs called them, out on the courts coaching your club kids, would be a better answer. An "A team" that is up to date in training concepts and ideas, that knows how to treat and get the best out of athletes in the age group they are coaching, that understands basics of player mental health, diet, training and recovery. 

This seems a simple answer but one that turns bottom lines red.

The old adage, "pay now or pay later" may be making a comeback.

The Smallest Steps....

The uphill climb has begun.

The past few weeks, teams around the country have begun their seasons. And already, just a month or two into training, Coaches have been heard muttering the following:

"She can't pass" or "She can't block," etc.

"My setter is too slow."

"This team will never be able to..."

These tropes are repeated season after season, often by the same coaches. Despite every team being different, every player being different and every situation being different, we fall into the same complaints like a yearly pattern to begin the season.

“If you hear a voice within you say “You cannot paint.” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” -Vincent Van Gogh

What if this season, we told ourselves a different narrative?

"She can't pass" or "She can't block," etc. Then maybe the question to ask is, "What CAN she do?" She was chosen on your team for a reason. What is the value you can find in her as a person, as a teammate AND as a player? What are her strengths as opposed to focusing on her weaknesses?

The next step of course is coaching her up! What can we do at practice OR even as homework to get her to pass? Or help her with blocking? How can we tailor our practice plan to get her better at one or all of these areas? Raising the white flag a few weeks into the season is not only premature but shows a lack of skill for a coaching staff. Reach out for some help from other coaches in your club or in your coaching circle. 

“The difference between misery and happiness depends on what we do with our attention.” -Sharon Salzberg

Let's adress, "My setter is too slow." For some coaches, a slow setter is a non negotiable. But again, this player was chosen for a reason. Maybe her hands are butter but she struggles to get to the ball? Again, let's reframe: "How can we get our setter to MORE volleyballs?"

Can we position her off the net more, giving her a second head start to the ball? Can we teach her to read the pass better? Is she getting those opportunties in practice or are all of her reps being tossed to her by a coach? At the very least, can you spend an extra 10 minutes before or after or DURING practice with her to help her read and use efficient footwork to make the next play? 

If you have already given up on her, which is a sad scenario but often the case, then she's been scentenced to a season of feeling less than, of constant criticism and depending upon her mental makeup, has probably played her last season of competitive volleyball. Are you, as a coach, as a purveyor of personal and team growth, willing to toss her into the scrapheap to rust away?

"This team will never be able to..."

Again, on the reframing of the statement, "What CAN they do?" If you have a small team and you want them to be able to block their way to wins, have you set them up for failure? Have you, as a coach, always used a certain offense or defense but see it not working well with this group of athletes? Is it them or is it your stubborness to find the right systems to fit these athletes? 

Can you think outside the box, taking into account the age level skills that are important to your team? Can you find solutions to earn points, stop points and win in transition? Or again, a month into the season, have you already raised the whtie flag and proclaimed this a "lost season" because your round pegs don't fit into your square holes?

“Everything can be taken from a man but…the last of the human freedoms– to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.” -Viktor Frankl

Any great coach is resilliant, is adaptable and is always trying to find ways to make their athletes the best version of themselves. If you have fallen short on these three qualities, what can you do to gain some traction in acquiring them? Take those small steps at the beginning of this uphill climb and build instead of destroy, enhance instead of devalue, lead instead of complain.

The smallest steps begin every journey...

Small steps, Huge gains

A recent article in the New York Times quoted a Brookings Institution survey of over 66,000 young people with the following tragedy: “In third grade, 74 percent of kids say they love school. By 10th grade, it’s 26 percent.”

The article by Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop entitled, “Giving Kids Some Autonomy Has Surprising Results”   follows the spiral of students as they are given less and less opportunities to think and act for themselves as they move further up the educational ladder. The result is disengagement and a lack of social and work skills needed for their future.

Quoting Anderson and Winthrop, “There’s a reason the system isn’t serving people well, and it goes beyond the usual culprits of social media and Covid. Many recent graduates aren’t able to set targets, take initiative, figure things out and deal with setbacks — because in school and at home they were too rarely afforded any agency.”

This isn’t a new phenomenon. In their oft cited and groundbreaking study, Gabriele Wulf and Rebecca Lewthwaite talked about autonomy in their 2016 OPTIMAL theory of sportdevelopment. “Allowing individuals to exercise control over the environment may not only satisfy a basic psychological need but may be a biological necessity. Studies with both humans and other animals have shown that both prefer an option leading to a choice than an option that does not, even if this option results in greater effort or work— suggesting the existence of an inherent reward with the exercise of control.”

What does this have to do with your dozen 15-year-olds coming to practice tonight? Great teachers who are in turn great coaches understand this idea and apply it during their training periods.

What it doesn’t mean is turning the asylum over to the inmates. Anderson and Winthrop conclude, “Giving kids agency doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want. It doesn’t mean lowering expectations, turning education into entertainment or allowing children to choose their own adventure. It means requiring them to identify and pursue some of their own goals, helping them build strategies to reach those goals, assessing their progress and guiding them to course-correct when they fall short.”

As coaches, this should be our blueprint. Telling an athlete what you expect out of them while never consulting or asking them is a great way to lose credibility with them. Have that conversation. Meet them where they are but always push a little further, let them know your expectations but in the same conversation creating a scenario you BOTH workshop as a way to get there.

In practice, coaches follow their practice plan, careful to make sure everything is completed. In that plan is there any room for the athletes to make some choices?

For example, if your team plays the first 10-15 minutes of practice, can the team pick the game? If you are playing half court or short court, how about letting the athletes pick a constraint for that game? Maybe let them choose the boundaries of the court? Can they choose the final drill or game of practice from a list of three you have given them?

These are small dents in a greater plan, and they don’t cost you anything. The athletes are still getting touches, still competing and since they are playing, probably engaged. The benefits are enormous.

When you can, in the coming weeks, make a note in your practice plans with a star in those points in practice where your team can make some choices. It’s a small step to greater gains.

The Hands of a Sherpa...

 

This blog was started a few years ago with the title and idea of helping coaches, and maybe some parents and athletes, to navigate the fluid world of youth sports in a sometimes feral atmosphere.

The depths can be frightening and paralyzing, sometimes causing the principle irreparable harm and a possible future career guiding young people into adulthood with sport.

Yet the heights can be overwhelming and almost spiritual. Seeing a player you helped guide, like a sherpa on K2, accomplish their goals and dreams is nothing short of euphoria, giving you confidence for the next athlete that comes your way.

While we as coaches can make careers and businesses on these accomplishments, it's always important to put our egos aside and recognize that however large we feel our contributions were, the athlete is the nucleus of that growth atom.

A 12 year old boy leaves a note for his Mom. "Could u please wake me up at 7:00. And could u leave me a couple of dollars. James Harden. P.S. Keep this paper. Imma be a ⭐.

His love of the game drove this 12 year old to get to the courts early, to play, work on his game and an inner confidence that shone through this note has made Harden a future Hall of Fame guard in the NBA.

Maybe a Mother knows or maybe she just wanted what made her son happy at the time. Harden  probably couldn't have known the path his career would take but that inner confidence was a catalyst for his work ethic and skill acquisition. Along the way, Harden probably had coaches he would credit for his success but it was 12 year old James who made the decision to get up early and work. It was James who put the time in and learned. And it is James who will retire as one of the greatest shooting guards in NBA history.

When she was in fifth grade, a skinny but athletic youngster from Burleson, Texas told her teacher she would be in the Olympics some day. Her teacher scoffed and rebuffed her, telling her she was dreaming and she should set her sights on realities and leave the pipe dreams aside.

That night, the young girls painted this.

Crying a river of tears as she dreamed of being an Olympian, this young 12 year old, who was playing softball, volleyball, basketball, track and every other sport she could muster, put her confidence in overdrive and the work she put in followed.

Stacy Sykora joined the USA National team in 1999 and wound up a three time USA Olympian, a multi year winner of Libero of the Year and finished her career in 2011 after a life altering bus accident in Brazil. Her high school, club and college coaches had a hand in her success and perhaps it was a fifth grade teacher who could take most of the credit. But it is Stacy who is a model of grit and determination, of beating the odds with her work ethic and confidence. 

On a Christmas morning in 1987, a three year old boy is gifted a play hoop and ball. His other toys surround him in the picture, but the smile on his face holding the tiny basketball is infectious. 

Thirty seven years later, this young boy has toppled nearly every NBA record printed. He is playing in his 21st season still revered as one of the best in the game. His work ethic to get to this place is the lore of legends. 

LeBron James' first hoop at 3 didn't make him the conversation starter of greatest players of all time. He has a confidence, a standard he continues to hold himself AND his teammates to. He has won four NBA Championships in ten appearances. That is not luck. That is drive, intelligence and the goal to stay physically superior to all he plays against. While a three year old might have the dream, it is the next 37 years that dictate the epic saga that is LeBron's career.

"We all have dreams. But in order to make dreams come into reality, it takes an awful lot of determination, dedication, self-discipline, and effort." - Jesse Owens.

If you are a Coach, (or a teacher), we can all  be Sherpas. We can help guide our athletes up and down the mountains and valleys. We can urge them to take the steps, forge their own way in the paths we have laid out for them, but make no mistake, it is their lungs burning at the top of the mountain. 

Be humble, accept that we can only be part of greatness, not the only reason. Great athletes recognize who their guide was along the toughest parts of their journey. Sometimes they will remember and tell you, other times they may not. Either way, relish the moments you have as the Sherpa in the life of your athletes. NBA stars, Olympians, Super Bowl Champions, Premiere League winners or simply kids who needed someone to believe in them, build their confidence and teach them the meaning of hard work in the sport they love. Both are equally paramount.

Coach, what you do is important. You are important. Whether they say it or not, your athletes thank you and appreciate you when we do it right.

Happy Holidays.

Six Smart Stocking Stuffers...

Happy Holidays. It's another installment of quotes from people way smarter than us, this one a six-set-sampler for around the tree.

First up is Oxford Brookes University Senior Lecturer and Subject Coordinator for Sport, Coaching & PE, Danny Newcombe. Here, Danny talks about the idea of giving our athletes problems to solve instead of the solution first.

"So, once we set that problem, then how do we help them? How do we support the players to solve it? So, it's not just, ‘I’m going to throw the child in the deep end of the swimming pool’ and set the problem. but I have to coach. What I’ve seen, I guess, is we coach the solutions before we've set the problem. So, it's not the game as the teacher because I still think there's a vital role in what the coach says in that process.” 

Chris Chamides is in his 3rd season as the head women's soccer coach at Loyola Marymount University. In that three years, he has taken a program not known at all for soccer and turned them into a WCC feared opponent. He was named the WCC Coach of the Year for 2024, and in this chat, he speaks of under coaching to get to know his players and what they are capable of.

“The reads that a player has to make cannot be something where they're glancing over the sideline to me. They have to be in real time like any athlete does. And with that, I have to foster that. I have to foster that sense of ownership for their game. And so, for them to get to their highest levels, I have to give them a million reps of freedom in order for me to understand how they're wired and how they typically do things without ignoring me, just how they do things. And once I understand how they do things: how they pass the ball, what choices they make, what are their inclinations in this moment versus that moment, once I understand them really well, then I can begin to coach them. So, I under coach to learn them. I don't want to give them too much information. And then once I get them going where I have a sense as we as a staff, can kind of wrap our head around who they are as a player, then we begin to give some information, not too much, just some in order for them, in my opinion, that maximizes their abilities in the long run and it makes them enjoy their game more.” 

"You can't really influence somebody until you meet them where they are and then lead them from that point. You can't just get frustrated that they're not where you want them to be. You got to figure out where they are. why they are there, connect with them at that point, and then build up some equity to influence."

This sage advice comes from Jenny Boucek, a former player, WNBA coach and now an assistant coach with the NBA's Indiana Pacers. She speaks from several opportunities to coach and interactions with players. 

Staying with the NBA, New Jersey Nets Head Coach Jordi Fernandez, who has coached with some of the NBA's greatest, saw his team coming together a few weeks ago after a win over the Phoenix Suns. It was also a win the same day he found out his top player and leading scorer would be lost for a month due to injury.

"I think that we're coming together. We're valuing the same things. At the beginning, you hear it, but you know, you start buying into it when you see it, and that's the most important thing. In every five-game series, we were two and three, and finally, in this one, where we're three and one right now, we have the opportunity for one more before we play the fifth. And it's important, because that shows you growth. A lot of times you look at the season, like, 82 games, and you can get lost with, you know, goals. It's a lot of games coming at you. So, I learned that from teams that I've been with and always has helped your focus. Whether you're in a good place or you're struggling, you got to look at things with perspective and find the positives and clean up the negatives. And I think that that was a big step. It was our second chance that we had to win three in a row, the first time we couldn't do it, we couldn't accomplish it. And now we did."

Harvard Professor, author, podcaster and self described happiness expert Arthur Brooks spoke of the disconnect when trying to solve complicated and complex problems.

"In mathematics, there's two kinds of problems. There's complicated problems and complex problems. It sounds like I’m splitting hairs, but I’m not. Complicated problems are solvable with enough genius, but they don't change, and you've got a solution forever. Complex problems are human and dynamic. They're behavioral. They're like falling in love or winning the Super Bowl. Those are complex problems. You can simulate the Super Bowl, the Patriots versus the Seahawks, over and over and over and over again, and you're not going to get it right, because it's a highly complex and epic human situation. So, if your work is all that complex, 1,000% it's about love. It's about success. It's about human interaction. It's about sports interpretation of the experience. We've got all these complicated solutions to complex problems, and that's why we feel empty."

Finally, Pittsburgh Pirates skills coordinator, mental performance coach Andy Bass tries to drill down on what constraints actually are in coaching, how they can be used and how coaches should use this as a tool, not a coaching replacement.

“I wish he'd made a different name than constraint. It does not mean inhibiting movement. That can happen, but it's not a constraint. It isn't a strait jacket where you're limiting movement and signaling movement. It's a constraint, like an evolutionary constraint. It’s basically allowing the drill to do the talking. And I know that from a purely theoretical standpoint. I think coaches hear this and they say, well, I should never talk. Not true at all. Outcome goals give them external cues, but it's thinking about making the drill get more information in the coaching itself. It's not tones when you're drilling through in soccer. It's allowing the environment to dictate the outcome of the movement, and it's allowing the athlete to explore through failure and variability, versus one guided repetition."

 Books, interviews, podcasts; however we can get you more information, we will continue to do so. If you have any for us to share, please forward to erichbke@msn.com.

FeedForward

With every training session, you as the coach get a certain amount of opportunities for feedback. Sometimes, if your athletes or students are playing, you want to curb what you have to say. And when we are teaching them skills or ideas, we want to give them the cues and information they need.

A few ideas have come up recently about feedback that are important to share. They are not ground breaking but at a recent clinic in which the coaches were also in learning modes, feedback became an issue.

First, as the saying goes, if you try to catch five rabbits you won't catch any. This couldn't be more true. Often we give too much feedback on different things. For middle blockers in our sport, they are inundated with 20 things to think about every play: block, don't block, get out of the setters way, read that hitter, push your hands over the net, faster feet, cover your hitter, make yourself available, etc.... It's a wonder more middles don't need therapy sessions when they retire. 

Keep your feedback  to ONE thing. Of course there are 20 different things that you, as the coach, see the players are doing wrong, but just focus on that ONE thing for the time of the game or drill. You have time to go to the other 19 at other games and drills.

Another thought was from the book "The Coaches Guide to Teaching" by the brilliant Doug Lemov. It's a wonderful book with so much great information, but one thing that might catch your attention is Doug's question about how important your athletes will feel your feedback is.

His point is if you are hammering home a cue or a point over and over again, the players can feel from you how important that is. However, as soon as play begins, the coach begins talking about 20 other things and soon the athlete realizes that the cue or point they were hammering home before isn't as important as they thought because the coach is talking about all these other things.

That is our mistake as coaches. If we want that specific point or cue to hit home, we have to treat it like it is of major importance and not interfere with the message by talking about other things. Keep your point relevant and important to your athletes.

The last point to make is how much feedback. Twenty five or 30 years ago, it was thought that every rep needed some coaching feedback. But science has shown us that the brain is easily overloaded and too much feedback is actually detrimental to the learning process.

Pick your spots. Watching an athlete take one rep and giving feedback isn't a very representative sampling. Give the athlete several reps, see if an overlying problem exists that you can give feedback on...ONE problem at a time.

Too much feedback is worse than none at all. Remember your student athletes have a very low threshold for attention: don't waste it. Find that piece of information that the player can use directly to make them better. There is no reason to talk about other things.

For the sake of practicing what we preach, we'll end on these cues about feedback to your athletes.

Specific, succinct, selective.