The Three Coaching Philosophies of Hard Work and Talent
A coach’s coaching style is largely dependent on their philosophy around hard work and talent. A coach typically falls into one of three different philosophical categories.
Coaching Philosophy 1: Being a Hard Worker is an Innate Characteristic
The first philosophical category of hard work and talent is that you can’t teach a young athlete how to work hard. These coaches believe the will to work hard is something you either have or you don’t. Therefore, the ability to work hard is an innate characteristic embedded in an athlete’s DNA.
Ultimately, this means that there isn’t much a coach can do to change an athlete who appears to be lazy. As a result, these coaches like to run athletes who appear to be lazy off the team as fast as possible so they can just focus on coaching the hard workers.
Coaching Philosophy 2: Lacking Talent Drives One’s Innate Ability to Embrace Hard Work
The second philosophical category of hard work and talent is that athletes who lack talent work harder than athletes with talent. I like to sum this philosophy up in the famous quote “hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” So, these coaches believe that the lack of talent drives an athlete’s ability to work harder than those who have talent.
These coaches like to downplay talent by teaching their athletes to be humble. In addition, coaches who use this philosophy focus more on turning weaknesses into strengths over strengthening strengths.
Coaching Philosophy 3: Purpose Drives the Will to Hard Work
Finally, the third philosophical category of hard work and talent is that there must be an intense desire to achieve a difficult goal to drive an athlete to want to work hard. Given that, working hard is a byproduct of two things.
- The difficulty of your goals.
- How bad you want those goals.
If you can motivate an athlete to want a specific goal, then you can teach that athlete to work hard to achieve that specific goal. Moreover, athletes who wake up each day with a purpose, go to school with a purpose, and practice with a purpose have the advantage over those who don’t.
Coaches who have this last philosophy don’t believe there is such thing as a lazy athlete. Only athletes who have yet to find purpose.
If you read my blog often you probably already know I’m a believer in the third philosophy. How about you? What coaching philosophy do you buy-in to?