What a Coach Can Do When a Good Athlete Stops Getting Better
When a beginner or average athlete stops getting better, a coach almost always knows why. There is so much room for growth in so many different areas that all the coach must do is pick one and zoom in that athlete’s focus.
On the other hand, when a good athlete is pushing to be elite, but can no longer find ways to get better, coaches face a tough dilemma. The difference between good and great is inches not feet. Moreover, finding those inches can be terribly frustrating.
As a result, this frustration often exacerbates the problem. Both coaches and athletes tend to trust the process that got them where they are, and therefore double down on their current training plan. This then leads the athlete to overtrain, and overtraining then leads to a decrease instead of an increase in performance. Obviously, this is all the more frustrating.
Simply stated, it’s a mistake to trust the process when pushing from good to great. This causes an athlete to only work harder. However, to get to the next level the athlete must both work harder and work smarter. Since good athletes are already wired to work harder when things get difficult, this means the job of a coach is to help the athlete figure out what they need to work smarter at to get better.
How Coaches Must Help Good Athletes Work Smarter to Become Great Athletes
It’s a given that athletes who aspire to compete on an elite level are already driven to give their best effort to work their hardest. So, coaches must recognize that their problem is that their best effort isn’t getting it done. Therefore, doing more of the same with higher intensity and longer hours isn’t the answer.
The answer comes from tapping into two innate motivators that universally drive athletic growth.
- Developing new competencies
- Successfully demonstrating those new competencies
All athletes enjoy the process of developing and successfully demonstrating competence. Ultimately, this is what motivates them to want to be elite. They want to show the world that they are the best. What’s more, when an athlete stops getting better and no longer feels they are on the path to be the best, it’s very likely that the process that got the athlete to where they are, will no longer be enough to get them where they need to go. In other words, the athlete’s process has become stale.
Given that, performance plateaus like this are the perfect time for a coach to work on incorporating new skills into the athlete’s process they have neglected over the years.
For good athletes, neglected technical skills are hard to uncover. Conversely, the softer mental skills are likely the area most ripe for an athlete to develop new competencies within. Coaches must investigate skills such as:
- Strategic thinking,
- Controlling anxiety and focus,
- Self-talk, and
- The four domains of emotional intelligence
In short, developing and demonstrating new competencies in one or more of these areas typically is exactly what an athlete needs to push past a performance plateau to go from good to great.