The Best Coaches Know How to Motivate These Type of Athletes
One of the primary roles of a coach is to motivate their athletes. However, just like all athletes are not created equal, all motivation is not created equal.
Generally, coaches can categorize athletes in two stages of learning:
1) Developmental
2) Mastery
For athletes in the developmental stage, motivation is simple. Their motivation comes from learning new skills and demonstrating those skills. All coaches must do to motivate athletes in this stage is emphasize skill development. In the typical sport, this is a basic coaching skill a new coach can learn on the job within one or two seasons.
Moreover, most developing athletes have self-motivation in this stage as learning each new skill provides the immediate reward of rapid improvement. This is why motivation is so simple for coaches when working with these athletes.
Motivating Mastery
On the other hand, motivating athletes in the mastery stage is far more of an art than a science. Athletes working towards mastery don’t necessarily need to learn any new skills to get better. Instead, their path to improvement requires incremental adjustments to how they perform the skills they already know. Moreover, it’s far less motivating to make small adjustments that don’t provide an immediate payoff than learning a new skill.
This is where the best coaches excel. The best coaches know how to motivate experienced athletes by helping them limit their ego and use process- and performance-based goal setting. Furthermore, the best coaches don’t just teach skills, they teach systems.
A coach’s system will not only explain why a skill works, but also explain when the skill works and when it won’t. In addition, their system will also explain how opponents react to a specific skill and what skills to use to respond to that reaction.
Finally, the best coaches go beyond just sport specific systems. They know that motivation goes beyond just what is done on the field, court, or mat. Therefore, they approach their role as coach as being a mentor as well. This means educating their athletes on preventing injuries, nutrition, character, mindset, and prioritizing rest and recovery. What’s more, the best coaches are also willing and able to provide counsel, resources, and connections to support non-sport specific situations.