The Truth About Coaching that Coaches Don’t Want You to Know
The vast majority of coaches are the salt of the earth. Like teachers, the value they provide far exceeds the value they receive in return. Also, like teachers, coaches don’t coach for the money. They coach because they love the process of developing talent.
With that said, there is a truth about coaching that most coaches would never admit. Not because they want to hurt those they coach, but because either 1) they don’t know what they don’t know or 2) they have too much pride.
The truth is that there are many coaches who can help you become good at something. But there are very few coaches who can help you be the best. Therefore, it’s likely any coach you have worked with has helped you become better but did not teach you the skills to help you be at your best. To become the best, you need a coach who can do one thing for you above all other things.
This one thing is something average coaches typically ignore completely. However, this part of coaching is critical for helping someone become the best.
Unquestionably, if a coach wants to help a student become the best, then that coach must show that student how to improve without coaching. Yes, this means your coach must be able to teach you how to improve on your own.
A Coach Must Teach Athletes Solo Practice + Deliberate Practice
As the research of Anders Ericsson suggest, it takes thousands of hours of practice to become the best. It’s just not feasible to work directly with a coach for that many hours. Therefore, the ability to practice on your own for thousands of hours is a requirement for becoming the best. These hours of practice must be used wisely, or they will go to waste. In other words, it requires deliberate practice.
If a coach doesn’t teach you the art of solo practice and how to apply the process of deliberate practice, then it will be extremely difficult to become the best simply because of the limitations of time. What’s more, the best of the best of these types of coaches also know how to inspire their students to want to practice on their own.
In addition, Ericsson notes in his book Peak that the best performers are normally better than their coaches. As a result, the coaches who coach the best performers don’t focus on teaching technique. Instead, they focus their training on teaching methods to identify areas that need improving and coming up with ways to “realize that improvement”. This involves mostly the mental skills that deal with self-awareness and visualization.
That is the secret of great coaching. That is also the secret for how great coaches coach those who are better than they ever were.