Validation of Success

Coaching athletes in competition is a great experience that I think a lot of performance coaches have missed out on.  Coaching track athletes a little and weightlifters internationally, has made me a better coach overall by providing both perspective and experiences.

Right now we have our players at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.  They have 4 days of various tasks; medical, interviews, meetings, psych profiles, weigh-ins, bench, and field drills.  All in all a very busy process.  Also very different than their experiences playting football.  The Combine with it's structure is more like a track meet immediately after a 3 day long job interview. 

If you've coached track or another Olympic sport, you know that the mentality going into this type of competition is much different.  As I mentioned yesterday, managing stress and building confidence is critical.  One important element of that confidence, is their confidence that I have prepared them right as a coach.  Confidence that what I told them was a realistic goal was true.  Confidence that when I say they are ready to run a certain time, or bench a number of reps, I know what I am talking about.

While their confidence has hopefully been growing since Day 1 in our system and staff's abilities, there are doubts.  They don't have years of training with us.  They haven't walked in to competition before with me as there coach.  This is new and when going through this 3 day interview process, it's stressful.

Reflecting today with some other performance coaches here, one of the things I want to pass on to my younger staff and other coaches is structuring things to continually validate their coming success.  Validate it before it happens so that it can.

By this, I mean you need to set up continued success so that when you say that they are ready to be successful in competition you have already validated your knwoledge and then they can buy in.  This is primarily accomplished through the coaching you do, day in and day out on the field or turf, and in the weight room.  If you haven't done this part of coaching then you are already in trouble. However, there are many other subtle ways you can validate success.

It also starts long before we arrive in Indianapolis.  Its all of the things we are doing to prepare them and the various details and challenegs we share with them. Sometimes it doesn't seem to sink in or some of it may seem trivial.  Other times it can be frustrtaing when they don't want to stay on plan, or aren't listening to the message.  Hold the course though and work your system.  It may take them hearing that message 10 times until they get it.  I've answered the same questions here on things we have already gone over, BUT NOW IT'S REAL. 

Suddenly they see you were right when telling them that someone will get stuck in the MRI for hours on end and thats why they need their MuscleMilk drink with them.  Or maybe it's when they realize that sitting around all day in medical and media can leave you tired, but that 15 minute warm-up and rehearsal really DOES make them feel better.

As a developing coach, find the opportunity to do some competition coaching and observe some good competition coaches doing it.  It gives you another perspective as well as develop some skills.

When they start seeing even the little things come true it validates all of what you have been telling him.  We search out the opportunities to do this.  We structure training weeks out to point this out.  Do things to validate your credibility, but not so things about you, but instead so you can validate your athletes success before it happens.