Hierarchy of Success

ATTITUDE

I want to continue talking about the Hierarchy of Success.

This is the most important piece of all.  It trumps just about everything else.  Yes, the exercise technique and selection make a huge difference.  Selecting or executing poorly can destroy a program or athlete, but they won't make you successful.  It the solid and broad foundation of your true attitude, your beliefs, that set the base to grow coaching success upon.

It's your attitude as a coach.  As a person that has the greatest effect.  What do you stand for and what do you bring to your athlete's everyday?  If you are a positive person, you want the best for your athletes, you are sincere in your efforts, and you strive to be the best, it shows.  You can't hide this or fake it.  Not over the long haul. 

This is the true foundation of your coaching.  All of the other stuff is built upon this.  If the attitude is wrong, the athletes will see through it.  If the attitude is wrong, their motivation will disappear.  When your coaching is only based on the specifics of exercise technique and rep/weight selection you've got it upside down.

This key point is why I believe their are some coaches who have a methodology that may be faulty in some ways, but if their Attitude and Approach are lined up, they will be successful with many athletes and in many settings.  Attitude and approach can make them successful in spite of their actual training methodology.

So as a coach, the question then becomes two-fold. 

1. What are your core beliefs that construct your attitude?
2. Are you reflecting those in every coaching session and all you are doing?

When you have those, you have the foundation for success.

Hierarchy of Success

Seth Godin's blog today has a lot of carry over into coaching. Here's an excerpt;

The hierarchy of success
I think it looks like this:

1.Attitude
2.Approach
3.Goals
4.Strategy
5.Tactics
6.Execution
We spend all our time on execution. Use this word instead of that one. This web host. That color. This material or that frequency of mailing.

Big news: No one ever succeeded because of execution tactics learned from a Dummies book.

Tactics tell you what to execute. They're important, but dwarfed by strategy. Strategy determines which tactics might work.

But what's the point of a strategy if your goals aren't clear, or contradict?

Which leads the first two, the two we almost never hear about.

He continues the article and discusses how each should drive the other. It's probably important to define two of these that are often used interchangeably; Strategy is WHAT you're going to do, Tactics are HOW you're going to do it.

When you hear a lot of coaches talking about training (or arguing) its often about the last two. The execution of the drill or lift is important to most of us. Countless arguments focus on execution.

The tactics may be doing heavy singles or using lunges over back squats or deadlifts. We can go on and on with the arguments over tactics. There are more presentations and dvds on tactics than we will ever need.

I have to agree with Seth here. In the big picture, no one succeeds because of tactics and execution. You may fail if you don't do those well, but they don't bring success.

I'll say it again. The way you do the plyo drill or lift the weight wont bring success. This sounds like blasphemy coming from a coach who believes in teaching and enforcing proper technique, but I believe it's true.

I can have my athletes execute the best single leg, recovery focused, butt kick bounding out there. They did it because I decided that it was the best tactic to build specific explosiveness for sprinting.

However, if the goal was to play faster on the offensive line, but employed the wrong strategy of building specific explosiveness for sprinting, then I have a problem. I should have been building explosiveness for acceleration or acceleration against resistance.

So you can see how getting the goals and the strategy right are more important than execution and tactics. We do have discussion however about the next one up the hierarchy, approach.

Your approach in coaching terms are the broad strokes. If you see athletes who need to be faster will you use "technique drills" to develop speed or do believe strength is the primary focus. This can influence the goal to be either "we need better sprinting technique" or "we need to be stronger!" Do you believe in developing general athleticism or sport specific skills? The broader questions of approach will dictate how you set goals.

The last one, attitude, I think is more of the overall philosophy you have. Towards performance, towards competition, towards life. It's the driving force behind the rest.

It's also why I think there are some coaches who are relatively successful in spite of their execution, tactics, strategy, goals, and sometimes even approach. Because of an attitude, they can affect their athletes effort and focus. At times, when the window of opportunity is big enough, and the complexity is not too great, the right attitude can trump some mistakes in all the other steps.

I received this email from Rett Larsen of velocity Sports Performance, who got it from Cal Dietz at the Univ. of Minnesota. Had to pas it on since its a great piece. I know Dan Bylsma, Jay's son, who is currently the Head Coach of the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team that won the Stanley Cup last season. Dan had a hockey career in the NHL, and I coached him when he was with the Long Beach ice Dogs and the Los Angeles Kings. He's a great, stand-up guy. This will help you understand why.

So You're Going to Coach My Grandchild?
A message to coaches from Jay M. Bylsma:

I'm so grateful that you've volunteered to be the coach of my grandchild's ice hockey team. I'm getting a bit too old to be out on the ice with these young kids and without you volunteering, it's possible my Bryan wouldn't have an opportunity to play this wonderful game that's meant so much to his father and uncles and myself. My Bryan made it through tryouts. You might have thought that the tryouts were to see whether or not Bryan was good enough to make your team. That wasn't it at all. It was to see if you were good enough to be entrusted with my grandchild. You see, I don't really care if you know much about hockey, or whether you have a winning record. I don't know or care if you've ever coached a kid that made it in the NHL, or Division I college hockey, or even high school. But I know that every one of the kids you coach will have a life to lead after hockey. You will coach far more doctors and lawyers than professional hockey players. So I'm more interested in what kind of a role model you are and your ability to teach Bryan life lessons than whether you can teach him the left wing lock or backwards crossovers.

Let me explain why I don't care if you have a winning record. Think back over all the games you played in organized sports as a kid - any and all the sports. Can you remember any of the scores of any of those games or even if you won or lost? If you're like me you can't remember many - if even one. But I can remember every coach I ever had. Mr. Sterkenberg, Mr. Naerebout, Mr. VanderMey, and others. I can even picture them in my mind. Images of good men who taught me (whether they knew it or not) sportsmanship, integrity, to play by the rules, and to have fun. They made a lasting impression on me, just as you will have a lasting impression on my little Bryan. But apparently winning wasn't important enough for me to remember. Bryan hasn't been enrolled in the youth hockey program to win. He's been enrolled to have fun, to increase his athleticism, and to learn life lessons. What kind of a lasting impression will you have? You are his coach, a position just bit lower than the angels. He will hang on your every word. He will skate into the boards for you. He will never forget you as you've never forgotten your coaches. And he will learn from you, perhaps as much by what you do as what you say. You are the potter and Bryan is the clay.


For example, if you pick your team based on talent and ability you will show
Bryan that talent and ability are the criteria that a person needs to be
successful. If you pick your team based on the associations you have - that is,
your GM's kid gets to play, your brother-in-law's kid is on the power play -
each regardless of ability - you will show Bryan that you get ahead in life by
who you know, accomplishment and achievement don't count for as much as
connections. If you tell the kids, "Every one pays equally, everyone plays
equally" and then only some kids get on the power play and play in the third
period, you influence kids about the meaning of honesty and deception. If you
say disparaging remarks about the other team, the other coach, or the officials,
you demean the game and incidentally yourself and you teach Bryan that it's okay, perhaps even manly - to be disrespectful and pejorative. If you need to put ringers on your team to be competitive in an out-of-town tournament, you are
influencing your players about your standard of honesty and the importance of
winning at the cost of your integrity. If you say a disparaging remark about
education, you may depreciate the value of education - this in a sport where if
you aspire to play at a higher level, good grades may be as - or more important
than - your hockey skill.

Your demeanor, your language, your deportment, your values, your aspirations, your character becomes the role model. You are the potter, Bryan is the clay. You see, I don't even think this is about hockey at all. It's about teaching Bryan life lessons. It's about re-enforcing the lessons he learns at home. Hockey is just the blossom we use to attract the bees. And we attract the bees to teach them to respect the game, to respect their opponents as worthy competitors, to respect the officials and their decisions, to teach them fairness, and how to maintain self-control.

If he's a good player, I hope you won't aggrandize him or over-use him but help him be a team player. If he's a poor player, I hope you won't demean him but give him his fair share of ice time and help him become a better player. I hope you will remember he's just a child and your career as a coach isn't riding on his back. I hope you will remember that a word of encouragement after a mistake is worth more than a pile of praise after a success.

My son Dan and I started the IT PAYS initiative because for all its inherent good, changes in youth sports are very disturbing to us. There are the well publicized instances of cheating, abuse, assaults, and even murder. But these are only the tip of the iceberg. The sport is having ever increasing difficulty attracting and keeping officials because of verbal abuse and assaults by coaches and parents. Skilled players are leaving the game because of violent play by bigger less skilled players who are instructed "take them out" instead of improving their own level of play to compete successfully. A win-at-a-cost mentality demeans less skilled players who may rarely see ice time in the third periods of close games - which ironically impacts their ability to improve. Sadly, some coaches have taken the fun out of the game for the children by exerting too much pressure, being too critical, being demeaning, and being too vocal in an inappropriate way. The consequences of losing sight of the purpose of youth sports - that is as a game of childhood, a wonderful pastime - is that the life lessons that are being taught are less than wholesome and sometimes destructive. Dan and I hope that you will wholeheartedly continue to support goals of IT PAYS - for the good of this great game, for its reputation, and for the positive influence we hope you'll have on the child we entrusted to you.

If you work with young athletes, or athletes of any age for that matter, remember this.<

I'm Back

Been a busy month for us. We added another training facility to our portfolio and have been working to make the transition. Lots of other new projects as well. Will be catching up with lots to talk about over the next few weeks.

Stay Tuned!