Listen to discussions between coaches of "my generation" , let's say coaches early 40s and older, who work with athletes ranging from kids to early adulthood and you will probably hear some variation of the question “How do I get this generation of athletes to listen and work hard”
This is not something unique or an anomaly but a question that can be heard across various sports and probably not limited to Montreal, Quebec or Canada but something that coaches worldwide experience to one degree or another. From experience, I would say that these conversations usually start something like this. “I think kids today are looking for the easy way. They don’t listen. They have short attention spans. They want it all and they want it now. They don’t want to work hard. They are not capable of achieving anything”. All the above statements are, to some degree, true………except the last one: this generation is capable of greater things just as easily and as any previous generation. The Reason: Times have Changed…..and for the better. The problem doesn't rest strictly on the attitudes of today's younger athletes but rather in the way that coaches and athletes interact. I am sure that if coaches of my generation and age bracket could zip back in time to the 50s or 60s and listen into coaches of those times talking about their coaching experiences, we might overhear some animated exchange about coaches being perplexed in dealing with "today's young athlete". Now, let's stay in the present. Is coaching this generation an issue ? Is it that different ? Do today's young athlete's want to be coached ? So the answers, in order; not as much as you'd think, yes it is, and of course they do ! I have previously shared about the first coaching certification that I attended and pretty much the first comment that the instructor made. "Without the athlete's there is no need for coaches. It is up to you to adapt to them". I always took that to heart and it included understanding that as I got older and the age gap between myself and the athletes increased, I needed to find ways to say relevant to how these athletes would respond to coaching. I recently posted about that and you can access that post via this link staying-relevant-as-a-coach-can-take-you-from-being-good-to-being-great.html However I wanted to expand on how we can reach today's generation of athlete. The responsibility to adapt does not sit with the athletes of today but with the coaches. In the old days, coaches were the custodians of the knowledge of their sport: training, planning, preparation, competition, what to eat, when to stretch, what to do in the off season, so basically everything. Now, anyone can access anything anytime anywhere and for free. Kids (and their parents) can now access the same information that coaches can. The traditional coach-driven, coach-centered learning method, i.e. coach tells – athletes do, is doomed to failure. Successful coaches must create learning environments where athletes learn through problem solving, decision making, being engaged and excited by learning experiences and by collaborating with coaches and their team mates on making training stimulating, effective and efficient. Ok, so if that is the issue, how can it be fixed ? The Solution: Internet Coaching! No I don’t mean do your coaching over the Internet, I mean coach the way the Internet works or more importantly, coach the way that kids interact with and learn on the Internet. Next time you get the opportunity, take a moment to watch some kids using the Internet. They Google for the information they need. They read some text for 30-40 seconds, then they follow a link or two to some video, then come back to some text, then send the links to their friends and get their views, then go back to some video, back to text and so on. They don’t learn from the Internet: they learn with it. They engage with it (and with their friends) to accelerate learning and their capacity to learn more and learn faster. They learn differently and the way they learn is the greatest single challenge to traditional coaching philosophies that sport has faced in the past 20 years. So think back to the traditional way coaches planned training sessions or taught sport specific skills. Coaches present their drills and skills practices in their tried and true way, i.e. coach driven multi- repetition format and after a few repetitions the kids seem to lose interest. Obviously they are “lazy”. This is where this whole “kids are lazy” stuff comes in. Think about that for a moment. Kids who spend their lives learning to learn fast and collecting information at an incredible rate are bored and lose interest when given 20 minutes of the same drill presented the same way over and over and over. And you think they are “lazy”!!! So you have two choices: Pull down the internet, ban the world wide web and change the way kids learn back to the way they did in the 1950s or change the way you coach. So the answer is actually quite simple to identify although maybe a little tougher to implement. The secret to success with "this generation" is….You and Your Coaching. Everyone is resistant to change to one degree or other. Ok maybe not everybody and those who aren't are usually the greatest innovators who are constantly challenging conventional thinking but for a majority of us, we are hesitant when things change, especially if they change quickly as seems the case these days. I know I can be like that, although I would say it was more present in my coaching that it has been on work. I had moments where my first reaction to my coaching not seeming to reach the athletes "like it used" was that somehow they didn't care or were not motivated. It is why I tried to bring on assistants closer in age to that athletes so that they could give me insight into how I could best reach them. Now, with hindsight, when not in the midst of it, it is so much easier to pinpoint how I could have done certain things differently and how coaches still involved today can proceed. This generation is not lazy: they are learners – capable of learning more and learning faster than any previous generation. This generation is not afraid of hard work: they are afraid of boredom. This generation has a short attention span – very true – but it is an advantage in learning faster. You have, standing in front of you a group of athletes who are capable of learning more and in a shorter time than any group of athletes you have ever coached. There’s nothing wrong with them. There’s nothing wrong with you. This has nothing to do with finding an easy path, compromising on standards or “soft” coaching. If anything, an environment which genuinely engages the hearts and minds of athletes is capable of working harder and at higher intensities than one which places more importance on “exhaustion” than engagement. You just need to change the way you think about and deliver information, and if you can do that, nothing is impossible for this generation or any other. So next time you might overhear coaches complaining about today's young athlete's and their laziness, lack of commitment and motivation, stop and think, is it really them ?
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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