What Coaches Can Do When Athletes Aren’t Learning from Video Review
Some athletes will only review video when they do something well. These athletes will only review the video of their mistakes if a coach deliberately sits them down and plays the video directly for them. Moreover, these same athletes struggle learning to learn from their mistakes.
If you know an athlete like this then what you are likely dealing with is an athlete struggling with emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has four components: 1) self-awareness, 2) self–management, 3) social awareness and 4) relationship management. Each one of these components reflect one’s ability to recognize, understand, and manage emotions.
One of the easiest ways to recognize an athlete’s level of emotional intelligence is in how they handle criticism. Athletes with high emotional intelligence view criticism as an opportunity for growth. On the other hand, athletes with low emotional intelligence view criticism as a personal attack.
Developing an Athlete’s Emotional Intelligence
Once a coach identifies an athlete struggling with emotional intelligence, one of the best things that coach can do is to assign them self-reflection homework. It’s important to realize emotional intelligence is not something athletes are just born with. Most, if not all athletes must make behavior changes over time to improve their emotional intelligence. Furthermore, self-reflection is one of the most important aspects of behavior change.
Assigning athletes self-reflection homework is perfect for this. For example, homework could be an athlete writing about their behavior with respect to the behavior of someone else. This someone else could be a role model or character in a movie who models the appropriate behavior.
If writing is not an option, the coach could host group discussions using this method or something similar dealing specifically with video review. This could be something like an assignment that gets a group of teammates together to review the mistakes of a famous athlete they admire and relate those mistakes to their personal performance and opportunities to improve.
Either way, practice schedules are tight, and coaches must get a lot done with little time and resources. As a result, assigning homework is the best way to develop emotional intelligence without disrupting the normal practice routine.