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 […]
When an athlete is struggling with motivation, a coach’s first instinct is to step in and offer an external motivator to kick-start the athlete’s motivation. A coach will either default to a carrot or stick depending on their coaching style. More often than not this is the wrong answer. Although this may feel like the […]
Just because Nick Saban is arguably the greatest college football coach of all time doesn’t make his definition of talent better than Merriam-Webster or anybody else’s definition of talent. Nick Saban’s definition is better not because of who he is, it’s better because of the mindset it instills. If you Google the definition of talent […]