Apply the same standards and expectations to yourself as you expect from your athletes.

Apply the same standards and expectations to yourself as you expect from your athletes.

One more time, just in case you didn’t get it.

Apply the same standards and expectations to yourself as you expect from your athletes.

Think about it. How can you coach at your best and provide quality coaching services to talented athletes when your own standards and what you expect of yourself is LESS than what you expect of your athletes?

What are the top five expectations you have of your athletes?

1. To love what they do – to be passionate about their sport: training and competition.
2. To accelerate their rate of learning so they can learn as much as possible in the shortest possible time – they learn faster, they improve faster.
3. To look after themselves – physically, mentally and emotionally – to stay healthy.
4. To aim to do their best in everything they do – to strive for excellence – to always seek to improve.
5. To take time off to rest, recover and regenerate.

So, do you ask the same of yourself?

No? So what you are saying is:

“I don’t need to be passionate, I don’t need to keep learning, I don’t need to stay healthy, I don’t need to seek continuous improvement, I don’t need time off BUT……..I can still coach better than anyone!”

Rubbish.

A fundamental rule of coaching – one that it is at the core of every great coach / athlete relationship is that it is a PARTNERSHIP. The athlete and the coach work together as a team to achieve common goals: to turn dreams into reality.

They strive together to find new and better ways to improve performance and accelerate progress.

And, like any partnership, if one partner is not contributing to the success of the team, or moving forward in the same direction and at the same rate, the partnership starts to break down.

The FORMULA ONE car analogy is done to death but in this instance it is highly relevant.

You can’t put a state of the art, latest technology engine in an F1 and expect a great performance from the car UNLESS you match the quality of the engine with the state of the art / latest technology gear box, suspension, brakes, tyres, fuel etc etc.

So it is with a talented athlete. The athlete is the “state of the art” and can take their sport to new levels of excellence. But if you are surrounding the state of the art athlete with old thinking, last year’s training programs, poor equipment and lazy coaching, neither the athlete (nor you) will achieve optimal performance potential.

So how do you turn this around?

COACHING LESSONS:

• When an athlete comes to you for coaching and has set their goals high, e.g. AFL professional player, Olympic gold medal, world record holder, represent Australia etc – SET YOUR OWN GOALS HIGHER!
• Aim to accelerate your own rate of progress and learning faster than the rate of change in the sport – i.e. stay ahead of the sport.
• Be a FUTURIST – think about where the sport is going. Visualise it clearly and see it accurately in your mind. Then work hard to get there first!

Wayne Goldsmith