Building athlete’s from the inside out

Pillars of preparing an athlete from the Inside out.

AUTHOR JENNIFER SWAGAR

“Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.” John F. Kennedy

As a quality coach I have seen over the years that many coaches place high importance on one area of development. In most cases, physiological preparation or technical and tactical development take center stage. Many coaches fail to educate their athletes on the power of mental preparation and mental fitness. I view coaching as an educational art form. It is something that requires high-level knowledge, experience and skill in order to perform effectively.  In my opinion the three basic pillars for quality coaching are physiological preparedness, pedagogical proficiency and mental fitness. In order to define your skills as a quality coach you must be educated and experienced in these pillars. There is definitely more to coaching than these three elements; these are simply the ones that I would prioritize as my fundamental pillars to quality coaching.

Coaches have long recognized the value of physical preparation. Physical preparation is comprised of a variety of different components. Optimal training programs are composed in accordance to general physiological principles. These principles if applied conscientiously, allow a coach to customize training techniques for each individual athlete (Hammermeister, J. 2010).

Implementing proper long-term athlete development and incorporating basic principles of training will aid coaches with a long-term plan and give them the ability to adjust the plan when needed. The basic principles to training are what a successful program is built upon. As a quality coach we understand this structure and value training principles for sport, and lifestyle. We must understand and respect overload, progression, consistency, adaptation, use and disuse, specificity, and individuality.  Along with the basics of physiological preparation, we must also understand the basics of developing tactics and enhancing technical skills. These skills have physiological requirements and stresses but a coach must also prioritize the learning environment and strategies to create high performing individuals.

Once we have a strong understanding of the physiological requirements of athlete development, we must appreciate the pedagogical requirements of athletes. Great coaches are great teachers. The fundamentals to great teaching involve both content and pedagogical knowledge (Hammermeister, J. 2010).

While coaches must have strong knowledge in sport specific skills, techniques and tactics and know how to effectively communicate those topics, improvement in sport occurs most often when coaches are also able to create a practice environment that is athlete-centered, non-judgmental and promotes learning. Creating your team/coaching environment is an essential first step for future athlete development.  Creating a positive emotional environment for your athletes is robust and unique to each age group, gender, and sport and maturity level. Some of the key concepts to the pedagogical pillar include: embracing an athlete- centered approach, managing athlete behaviours, developing appropriate coach-athlete relationships, using clear and concise communication, proper time management, developing good practice and competition plans, understanding and using the stages of learning, embracing and coaching to individual learning styles and using proper vocabulary. The bottom line is using these tools to make the sporting experience enjoyable for each athlete. When coaches have a solid educational level and are able combine extensive experience with positive pedagogical concepts they may want to evaluate how to incorporate mental fitness into their coaching practice.

“Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing” Rollo May.

The term mental fitness is a dynamic concept, not a fixed outcome: it is in constant flux and development throughout an athlete’s life (MacNeill, K. Et al 2016). Sport places physical and mental stress and demands on athletes. In training and competition the body is consistently pushed to physical limits of endurance, power, speed and strength. Athletes are also pushed to move past mental barriers, to focus, develop composure, be resilient and determined. However, these basic fundamental mental skills are often untrained or expected to somehow form organically. Being a top performer in any sport requires a mixture of physical preparation, technical and tactical proficiency, and mental fitness (MacNeill, K. et al., 2016).

Some coaches believe that athletes spend too much time on the physical and technical development and that when the pressure mounts they fail because they have not spent enough time developing their mental skills. Williams (2006) suggests that most athletes and coaches acknowledge that 40 to 90 per cent of success in high-performance sport comes from mental factors.  As a quality coach you must develop and strengthen mental skills using sound principles, just as you would train the basic physiological and pedieological principles.

Achieving mental excellence appears to be the key to successful performance in sport. As quality coaches we understand and respect the physical skill, technical and tactical readiness that must be in place for an athlete to excel, however, we now know that performance excellence in sport often comes down to how effectively and efficiently an athlete can manage their emotions, control energy levels, eliminate distractions and focus on the task.  As athletes and coaches learn to develop mental skills they are open to mistakes, they often learn from setbacks and from successes (MacNeill, K. Et al 2016). Quality coaches establish a mental fitness plan. They will determine necessary mental skills, create goals that are beyond their athlete’s present abilities, they will embrace failures and setbacks. Occasionally athletes will feel as if they are stumbling as they go. A quality coach will communicate this with their athlete, ensure they understand that performance is not a linear progression, and that mental skills training is difficult but necessary. As Sharon Begley, states in her book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain, “ one can sculpt the brain’s emotional circuitry as profoundly as one can sculpt one’s pectoral muscles.” (p.231).

Understanding the importance of mental fitness and recognizing that these skills must be trained, quality coaches must develop a mental fitness plan, one that supports the mental skills required for the sport and that values individual athletes’ abilities and weaknesses.  Many of these mental skills will align with the coach’s philosophy, the athlete’s goals and are common to all high performers. Coaches and athletes should sit down and make a list of mental fitness attributes that they value, the coach and athlete may then begin to develop a mental fitness program.

Here is an example of some mental fitness skills and attributes:

Self-confidence, commitment, focus, emotional control, growth mindset, work-ethic, adaptability, responsible, sportsmanship, composure, proper perspective, intention, ability to manage stress and anxiety, well-developed competitive plans etc.

These are a few examples and do not guarantee high performance results. Most athletes and coaches know that these skills must be cultivated and used in practice and competition in order to become autonomic skills.

When coaches and athletes develop a mental fitness plan there are some basic ground rules that must be adhered to.

1. An individual plan is developed in private with the coach and player.
2.  Keep it simple- Do not attempt to develop a complicated skill before you have had success developing lower level skills. As with physiological development, it must be progressive and the foundation must be set before proceeding to more complex tasks.
3.  Do not work on too many skills at once- develop only a small number of mental fitness skills at one time. Attempting to develop too many mental skills at once could put the athlete under undo stress. My suggestion is no more than 3 Mental Skills at any given time.
4. Define your desired skills and what you’d like to achieve with them. The coach and athlete must both agree on the desired outcome and the purpose of developing the chosen mental fitness skills.
5. Create physical drills, or place athletes in situations, scenarios or expectations that will elicit the mental skills required.  For example in order to develop effective time management ensure that athletes are required to show up to practice/games/meetings/class on time.
6. Document everything- both athlete and coach should journal the process, feelings, observations, bias, outcome etc. Create a scale or picture system that is easy to use so the athlete and coach can see how things are progressing.
7. Review- Choose a timeline for achievement, just as you would with a physical skill. Choose a timeline and review and adjust the plan with the athlete. Perhaps they are succeeding and adapting more quickly or slowly than anticipated and must progress/regress the mental skill level or the skill itself.  Many coaches and athletes do not take the time to reflect on their goals, performances, failures and successes. With mental fitness planning it is necessary to set time to meet with each athlete regularly to review, reflect and progress or regress skills if need be.

Mental fitness plans may be difficult to administer and create at first, but once you understand the mental skills required for the sport, the strengths and weaknesses of each athlete, then you can begin to fill in the gaps. With practice, developing mental planning strategies will become as routine and effective as developing the physiological, tactical and technical elements that predominate the coaching world.  There is no magic in mental fitness, it is simply a tool to assist in improving an athlete’s performance and make them a more well-rounded athlete.

Reference:

Begley, S. (2008). Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves. New York, NY Radmon House.

Hammermeister, J. Cornerstones of Coaching. The building blocks of success for sport coaches and teams. Cooper Publishing LLC. 2010.

MacNeill, K., PH.D; Benz, L. M.A. Brown, M. PH.D; Kabush, D, PH.D; van den Berg, F.M.SC. Mental Fitness For Long-Term Athlete Development.  Canadian Sport Institute 2014.