The One Skill a Young Athlete’s First Coach Should Have Above All Others
Yesterday I wrote about how Anders Ericsson’s approach to deliberate practice was the key to becoming an expert performer. Today, I want to make an important clarification with respect to youth sports and very young athletes in particular.
Ericsson’s research shows the critical ingredient for becoming the best of the best is private coaching. Moreover, the private coach must be an expert in teaching deliberate practice techniques. However, if a young athlete does not have the motivation to practice for thousands of hours on their own, outside of their time with their coach, the private coaching will go to waste.
This is why a private coach who is an expert only in teaching deliberate practice techniques should not be a child’s first coach. A private coach who is only an expert in teaching deliberate practice techniques is not the right type of coach for a young athlete.
A young child is not yet ready for the rigor of this type of expert technical coach. In fact, a child’s first coach doesn’t need to be an expert with technique at all. At the early stages of learning anything new, especially sports, the most important factor is motivation.
A Child’s First Coach Must be a Motivator
The path most children take to a sport is through play. First there is play, then there is practice. It’s never the other way around. Play is motivating in itself. Practice is boring when a child compares it to play. So, the first thing a young athlete notices at their first real practice is that it’s not play.
Consequently, if a child’s motivation doesn’t come from the innate fun they get from play, where does a child’s motivation come from when they first start practicing a sport seriously? That motivation must come from the coach.
Therefore, the one skill a child’s first coach needs above all others is the skill of motivating children. Anders Ericsson says the following:
In general, the instructors who introduce the student to this sort of practice are not experts themselves, but they are good at working with children. They know how to motivate their students and keep them moving forward as they adapt to the work of improving through deliberate practice. These teachers are enthusiastic and encouraging and reward their students — with praise or sometimes more concretely with candy or other small treats — when the students have accomplished something.
Ultimately, there are stages a child must advance through before they develop the self-motivation they need to perform thousands of hours of deliberate practice. At the first stage a child’s coach must know how to start with external, positive motivation tailored to kids, and then know how to slowly convert that motivation into self-motivation.
If a parent skips this step and introduces their child to a sport with a coach who uses a drill sergeant approach, it will be far more difficult for the child to develop self-motivation in the future.