4 Questions Elite Athletes Must Ask their Coaches Routinely
There is too much unspoken communication between athletes and coaches. Too much goes unsaid, and too often what goes unsaid leads to miscommunication. The reason for this is that coaches tend to keep development plans for the team in their head. The coach executes their practice plan, and they expect for their team to get better week after week through that process.
However, what goes unspoken between the coach and athlete is that it’s not the coach’s responsibility to make sure an individual athlete reaches their potential. The coach’s practice plan is for the team, not an individual. So, if the team is getting better the coach is doing his or her job. Meanwhile, many athletes on the team are not improving to their potential because they are not being intentional about their improvement.
It’s simply a fact that athletes can only get so much help in a group setting with a team development plan designed for the team. Furthermore, it’s not the job of a coach in a team coaching session to focus on one individual. Their job is to get the team better which may or may not address an individual athlete’s personal needs. In the case of elite athletes, more often than not they will be better than most on the team. So, in a team coaching session, the focus of practice is for everyone else not the elite athletes who are already better than everyone else.
In rare cases, the reverse is true. Elite athletes get all the development attention while everyone else slips through the cracks. In these cases, these four questions must become routine for those athletes slipping through the cracks.
The 4 Questions Elite Athletes Must Ask
So, if an elite athlete (or a non-elite athlete on an elite team) is going to maximize their potential, they must constantly reflect on what they need to do to get better, then find ways to make sure they are practicing those specific things. Therefore, it’s important for these athletes to get into a routine of asking their coaches the following four questions:
- What do I need to practice to get better?
- When can a coach make time to help me with deliberate practice so I learn how to do the work to get better?
- What solo-practice can I do to help me continue to get better on my own?
- How will I know I’ve gotten good enough to move on to another area of improvement?