Should Coaches Break Athletes to Build Them Back Up Stronger?
There is a school of coaching that relies on the concept of breaking athletes so they can build them back up stronger. These coaches are extra hard on their athletes, particularly the ones who seem weaker than the others. Coaches do this using common tactics such as yelling at the athlete for minor mistakes, adding extra conditioning or using conditioning as a punishment, or even taking away playing time or practice time to make a point.
Unquestionably, there are numerous methods to break athletes down. As such, breaking an athlete down is easy. On the other hand, when it comes to building a broken athlete back up, coaches are generally uncertain of what to do. As such, it’s very hard to build an athlete back up stronger. So much so that most coaches fail to build athletes back up stronger and instead run them off the team.
How to Build an Athlete Up
To build an athlete up, first coaches must abandon many of the old school methods that break athletes. While it may be easier to tear down an old house and build a new house when the foundation is faulty, this is not the case with athletes. Furthermore, it’s not the coach’s job to make that call anyway. Tearing down an athlete at their foundation is risky at best. It’s more likely that athlete will quit before the job of building them back up is complete.
Instead, a better alternative is to start by building the athlete up. Breaking an athlete down teaches the athlete to have negative self-talk, building them up teaches them to have positive self-talk.
This may or may not be obvious, but research shows those who constantly speak negativity into their life have more negative outcomes than others. All athletes think and whisper out loud messages to themselves. Correspondingly, athletes who struggle have a bad habit of whispering negative messages to themselves. Therefore, if a coach reinforces those negative messages by scolding them when they struggle as a tool to make them tougher, the opposite happens. It just makes them mentally weaker and causes their performance to decrease.
If an athlete is struggling, unquestionably this is where coaches must start. Negative habits can only be broken by quickly replacing them with new positive habits.
Coaches must make sure they are not reinforcing an athlete’s negative self-talk by telling them things like:
- “stop being so weak“
- “don’t go out there and choke this time“
- “you always quit when things get hard“
- “you have to toughen up“
- “this is why you lose tough matches”
- “why are you always so out of shape”
- “you’re setting a bad example for your teammates”
- “stop quitting on yourself”
If a coach keeps saying things like this, there isn’t much that can be done until this stops. The mind is not wired to turn negative self-talk into anything but negativity. The best thing a coach can do when an athlete is struggling is to speak the reverse:
- “You got this, you’re stronger than you think“
- “You’ve been here before, there is no pressure“
- “This isn’t hard, this is your chance to get better“
- “One step at a time, you’re doing great“
- “Your teammates believe in you, and I believe in you”
- “When you’re done, you are going to appreciate all this hard work”
- “You are in better shape today than you were yesterday, I can see your progress”
The most important thing is that coaches must stay consistent and remain patient with the process of building an athlete up. Change doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a process.
Furthermore, training absolutely does NOT need to get easier. Easier training does not solve the problem. The training process to get an athlete to perform at their best is and will always be difficult. What must change is the mental side of attacking that training. This must be built internally with positive self-talk from within the athlete and externally with positive affirmations from the coach, parents, and teammates.
To sum this up, I highly recommend watching the clip below of the late great sports psychologist Trevor Moawad explaining the power of negativity vs. positivity in sports. If a coach truly wants to help build an athlete up, this video is a must watch.