Situational Coaching

What's your coaching style?  Do you adjust for different athletes?  If you're not adjusting your coaching to the athletes you may be leaving some behind.

Now that's a choice many performance coaches have made.  Consciously or not, they have a coaching style, and if it doesnt work for some athletes they can go somewhere else.  If you are in a position where you can pick which athletes you want to work with, then this works.  More power to you. 

If you work in a team setting, or want to reach a larger audience, then you better be able to adjust your coaching style to your athletes.  Personally I enjoy the challenge.  It's one of the skills of coaching. 

Adjusting your coaching style doesn't need to mean that you do things that arent you, don't fake it.  Just understand that the methods of instruvting and motivating need to adjust based on the individual charactersitics of the athletes you are working with.

The concept of Situational Leadership as propsed by Blanchard and Hershey gives a coach one perspective in how they can do this.  Their leadership concepts were developed for business but have been applied in many coaching and military settings.  The following matrix of an athlete's skill and motivation relative to a task is adapted from  Pathways to Coaching, TLO 2001 by Bristol.

Athletes in each of these zones will need a different coaching approach to acheive their optimum results.  A fundamental concept here is that there is no one best approach to coaching,  It's situational.  It depends on the athlete's motivation and skill in that task.

• Guiding (low skills/low motivation): If you give this athlete a task and leave them on their own to do it, they probably won't succeed.  This athlete needs guidance, by a coach that stays close at hand giving positive feedback, pointing out success to fuel motivation, and showing them the task solutions. They are probably more introverted and less confident in this situation, so don't try to be a cheerleader or drill instructor with your motivaion. 

The guiding coach has to help the athlete envision a future they can create and take ownership of.  The short-term goals are key to achieving this. Progress is structured through a series of cumulative efforts and short-term tasks with deadlines. The coach needs to stay in close contact alongside this athlete to monitor the progress being made and give constant praise and encouragement for the achievements.  Critical feedback needs be deliver in the classic praise-critical-praise sandwhich and not in a public setting.

• Directing (low skills/high motivation): This athlete is motivated and often may be working really hard, just at the wrong things or using poor technique.  The coaches job here is to harness that motivation and direct it to the right tasks and proper efforts.
The directing coach needs to effect a real commitment from the athlete on the direction of training and striving for an agreed vision of the future.  This helps ensure that activity is consistent with this goal and not have that high motivation fuel useless or detrimental efforts.  If you don't get them to buy in to your vision or your expertise, they will be off doing something else with all that motivation.

If the coach tries to fire this athlete up, but doesn't fix the skill or what the athlete is doing, burn-out or injury may be around the corner.  They don't need motivation, they need direction.   The coach stands alongside them and points them in the right direction.  This coaching may be reflective feedback and support or very authoritative directions depending on the athlete. The astute coach will be looking for the opportunities when they can reduce directions, as the athlete demonstrates increasing confidence.

• Inspiring (high skills/low motivation):  This athlete has the skills, but has lost confidence or passion in what they are doing. 

You will need to work tactfully to explore the reasons that may be underlyingand creating the low motivation levels. Although often related, its important to discover whether the passion is gone or they have lost confidence. 

A range of short-term actions should be planned that will bring repeated small successes to build confidence and generate new enthusiasm. Working alongside in this context requires the leading teacher to be in regular contact throughout the programme of activities, maintaining a focus on the positives.

When the passion is gone, don't go for the over-blown hype.  Instead find the ways to re-engage them in the process and not just the outcome.  To be engaging tasks need to be at a high enough level or else they will be boring.  Helping an athlete find their passion takes a skilled coach, but will bring great rewards.

• Delegating (high skills/high motivation): This athlete is very skilled at the tasks and is very motivated to improve.  If only every athlete was like this you may think, but this athlete has very specific coaching needs as well.  With this athlete you give them increased ownership of decisions and provide them the role of "self coaching" as a partner.

The freedom to experiment needs to be well supported to allow mistakes to happen and to learning from them. Coaching this athlete will be an interactive partnership that involves them in the decision making, program planning, and feedback.  You supervise, but don't micormanage.  You don't have to be next to them or even there for every task.  Get their feedback first to gauge how much feedback they need from you. You counsel, instead of direct them.

Ensure that opportunities are created to share this learning with other athletes.  Often creating new coaching opportunities and responsibilities for the athlete through coaching others, helps them themselves to further develop their own capacity in the team or group setting.

This video on situational leadership overviews the concept well although the computer generated voice may make you throw your computer. 


All in all, the final question is about how you are going to coach.  If you want to reach as many athletes as you can, and help them to their best possible outcome, then you need to condsider their situation.  Some basics of coach always cut across all these quadrants, but for continued and wide success you will have to adapt your style.

Multi-Directional Movements: Transit

In the last post I outlined Base Positions as a category of multi-directional movement going through my Hierarchy of Coaching Success related to speed and agility.  The next catergory is transit movements.  These are movements with the goal of propelling the athlete through-out their playing space (field, court, lane, etc...).

Many people training athletes like to break down movements into linear and lateral.  It seems natural and has a nice separation.  I used do this entirely, but now only do it in early phases.  The reality of sports is usually that these are always intertwined out on the field.  Training should work that way as well.

Big 4

For all of the transit movements, I still emphasize the Big 4 as I was introduced to from Loren Seagrave.  It is a breakdown that covers the different aspects of the movement as well as ties the rest of training to improving movement. This should be an entire post of it's own, but here is a quick rundown.

• 
  
  Big Force
• Small Time
• Proper Direction
• Optimal Range of Motion

Big Force

To propel the athlete significant forces have to be applied to the ground.  Drive harder may be the key for some athletes.  This means that we need to consider the strength qualities of; starting strength, rate of force development, max strength, relative strength and reactive strength.  The importance of each will differ with the transit modde, sport and conditions to some degree.  We will need to consider how we improve these qualities through drills, resistance training, and plyometrics.

Small Time

In sports, speed counts so applying that force in a small time, while in contact with the ground, is critical.  This requires the right strength qualities as mentioned above. Some athletes need to train to apply the forces faster.  Again this comes back to specific strength qualities and how we cue and emphasize certain movements.

Proper Direction

Force is a vector which means it has a direction as well as quantity.  Efficient and effective movement requires not just the right magnitude of force, but the right direction.  As we examine movement mechanics, especially multi-directional, the proper direction of application becaomes important.

Optimal Range of Motion

To move well an athlete requires the proper range of motion through their joints and soft tissue structures.  In many movements it's important to note that it's not the largest rom but the optimal.  In many sporting situations, having their feet close to the ground to react quickly and apply force is better than having them far away.

Linear

Sprinting is a pretty straight forward mode of transit, and breaking it down into acceleration mechanics and maximum velocity mechanics is understandable.  The mechanics of each phase is different and the need for each depends the sport and position. 

Acceleration

Overall the frequency of acceleration mechanics is much greater across many sports and positions.  If you have to move farther than one step you need to use some degree of acceleration mechanics. 

We will train this with basic mechanics drills that build specific strength, kinesthetic awareness and range of motion.  Wall drills, skips and harness work make up the bulk of this.

Then we have drills to elicit a specific training effect.  Sleds, hills, bounds, and plyometrics all can accomplish this by adding resistance or disrupting the current motor attractor landscape.  We also need to create applied situation where the athlete can apply these parameters and develop the best movement solution for themselves.

Max Velocity
There are clearly cases where an athlete need to maintain higher sprinting speeds.  These max velocity mechanics apply when the athlete has linear momentum and they differ from acceleration.

Much like acceleration we will utilise diferent max v mechanics drills.  Not so much to create an exacting stereotype of movement, but to develop specific strength, local energy systems, kinesthetic awareness and range of motion.  We may use fast leg drills, step over runs, in/outs, and butt kick  to help the athlete develop new motor parameters.

For a neuromuscular training effect we will look to bounding, sleds, weight vests, slight inclines, and slight declines to acheive the desired effect.  many of these are used in contrast with unloaded efforts to not just have a training effect, but to enhance motor control as well.

In some cases moving fast for the field sport athlete is more tactically effective with a higher stride frequency.  A long stride length requires the feet are further from the ground for longer.  When in a sporting situation where an athlete may have to react to stimuli of opponents, objects, or changing environment, having their feet off the ground is bad.  If they can move close to the same speed but at a higher frequency and maybe lower amplitude, it may be advantageous.  This is one of the biggest differences between track speed and field speed.

In this case we will work on developing that from multiple standpoints.  First we will try to use various plyometrics drills that focus on developing reactive strength.  This will be required to be effective with a high turnover.  Then we will use high frequency based drills to emphasize turn-over.  Drills like stepover runs in the ladder, running into a ladder or spacing and maintaining speed, and 2-inch runs are a few examples.  Then we applying it.  Using live drills in which the athlete needs to react while moving fast wil help them find the best movement solution.

Backpedal
Somehow people always forget backwards when talking about linear speed.  We need to consider how athletes move backward.  There are usually two basic approaches; backward running and sliding.  Backpedal is a true "linear" movement relative to the hips and center of gravity.  Most backward sliding movements are actually more of a "lateral" movement because the hips have been turned even if the head and shoulders haven't.





The purpose again is to have a way of looking at the demands on the athlete so we can determine their training needs.  Next article we will cover the lateral categories of transit movements,

Fractions of A Second

Some times it's easy to forget why we worry about some of the things we do.  For many Olympic sports, even though there are world championships and other importat events, an un-believable amount of power is placed on the Olympic Games.  You can be the world champion, but it's still not the same to many as the Olympic Gold medalist.

The recent vancouver Olympic Games remind us of this since many sports are timed and it's tiny fractions of a second difference.  Even in sports like downhill, over all that difference and dynamic conditions, the difference between Gold and Silver can be miniscule.  Even more intense can be the difference between Bronze and no medal (4th) which some see as a loss.

This piece from the New York Times illustrates this in and audible format to put it in perspective.

Keeping the Athlete Focused and Motivated

I am a big believer that those athletes that will have the highest levels and longest successes need to be intrinsically motivated.  However, there are times the coach needs to help the athlete recognize their own motivation or even more likely link a training activity to that motivation.

One of the things that many coaches miss is the art of story telling.  You can tell the athlete why a drill is done based on the biomechanics, rate of force development, transfer effect, blahh, blahhh, blahh...  It has a place and it may get across.

If you want focus, and an athlete that is bought in and training with a purpose, you need to appeal to emotion.  Develop your stories. 

I read this on cathexis.posterous.com and it talks about this very thing.  Although it relates it to marketing, we are marketing our expertise and our training to our athletes everyday.

emotional storytelling

One day, there was a blind man sitting on the steps of a building with a hat by his feet and a sign that read:

"I am blind, please help."

A creative copywriter was walking by and stopped to observe.
He saw that the blind man had only a few coins in his hat.
He dropped in more coins and, without asking for permission, took the sign and rewrote it.


He returned the sign to the blind man and left.  That afternoon the publicist returned to the blind man and noticed that his hat was full of bills and coins.


The blind man recognized his footsteps and asked if it was he who had rewritten his sign
and wanted to know what he had written on it.

The creative responded: "Nothing that was not true. I just wrote the message a little differently." He smiled and went on his way.

 The new sign read: "Spring is coming , but I won't see it."


Jacques Prevert, French Poet.

An emotional story.

The key to communications. To Branding. It can be a commercial with humor, an ad with seriousness, a dramatic heartfelt presentation. The most effective communications evoke an emotional response, via storytelling. The challenge is storytelling provokes anxiety in a lot of people.

The rationalist, have a hard time getting comfortable with this. They want to get right to the ROI. Get right to the facts and deliverables. "Facts are facts" rationalist fact lovers interpret those who are not rational in their eyes as the exception rather than the rule.
Storytelling embraces the fact that people are not rational, and touches on emotions to create a persuasive narrative. You cannot put a structured, quantifying structure around storytelling. There is no formal system, no formula to arrive at a compelling, emotive story. Control freaks hate storytelling. It is subjective, and goes deep into emotional areas like love, friendship, trust, fears and dreams. an orbital instead of linear world.
Touch the heart and it gets a stronghold where it will not let go.
Like the wallet.

Heartstrings pull purse strings