Nearly all youth athletes get their self-motivation from two areas: 1) Developing new skills. 2) Demonstrating those new skills. Contrary to popular belief, winning in youth sports is not how you motivate a young athlete. If a youth athlete cannot make the connection between practice and competing with these two things, they will not embrace […]
If you follow my coaching philosophy, you know I have a rather strong opinion about dealing with strengths and weaknesses. There are two rules of thumb I live by when it comes to deciding whether to build strengths or fix weaknesses. The first rule is to spend as little time, energy, and emotion in areas of […]
Coaches must avoid carrot and stick motivation with very few exceptions. Contrary to popular belief, carrot and stick motivation will drive more behaviors coaches don’t want than behaviors coaches do want. The reason for this is that carrot and stick motivation promotes short-term tactical thinking over long term strategic thinking. However, that’s not the worst […]