Live to Love, Love to Live

"A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment."
-John Wooden

To play on last weeks topic of inspiring player's, I wanted to talk about motivation and teaching.

I have coached hundreds of times and with all ages. The one good quality I have seen with good coaches is that they find a way to say something so the player they are saying it to will not resent them for that whole practice or week. As I was saying last week in choosing your words wisely, it is something that I want to talk about this week also. Now, when a person is in practice, the midst of coaching, it is tough to control their words or how they react to situations. Let me give you an example through my own life.

Growing up I used to swear on the field a lot. I swore at my players and other players. Let's just say I was not the most encouraging team mate. I realized that had to change. I slowly trained my mind and mouth to stop swearing. I made myself be conscious of the words that came out of my mouth. So, I would catch myself a lot and slowly but surely I stopped swearing on the field. My demeanor changed to be more kind and encouraging towards my players. I had to find a way to criticize/teach other player's without destroying them.

There are two types of coaches I believe. Those that player's resent after training and those that do not. You can get a winning coach even if he is someone who creates fear in his player's through his word domination. I like to call it word domination, because the coach creates a dominating force over player's in belittling them. The player's then come to focus very hard, but only because they know the coach will lambaste them if they do not get it right. These player's may think the coach is great, but they do not like him and will not really talk to their coach much after they play for them. I encourage coaches everywhere to be the coach that motivates through positive criticism and finds ways their player's will not resent them at the end of the day.

Our minds are powerful in that we can control the way we think and say things. If we create an environment that cultivates creativity and being comfortable at training, then we will be on the right track. I do not know about you, but I want my player's to love talking to me. I want them to remember me and want to stay in touch with me. I not only want to be a successful coach on the field, but a coach that is successful off of it. Create that environment that not only teaches player's about soccer, but about growing as a human being. Use the way you talk to them and interact with them as an example. They will look up to you, but make it because they want to be like you and not fear you.

QOTW (Question of the Week) for tomorrow: post your answers on the comment board and I will put the best one's up for tomorrow...
---If you could be any animal, what would it be and why?---

"The greatest gift you can give someone is the gift of inspiration."
-The advice Professor and scholar Cornel West gives to his students.

With Soccer 101 topics I am going to dissect what I think a good coach is every week from my perspective. I am doing this for myself and anyone else that wants to join me. I want to be a coach one of these days and hopefully a successful one on and off the field.

Inspiration is a tough task for a coach. But, it is the one thing that he can give to his players that will drive them to do the extra things that is needed in a game. I know from a player's perspective that it helps a ton if a coach delivers a pre-game speech that inspires us to play and to win every single moment of the game. When I was at Indiana University they used a guy by the name of Rob Kehoe who gave us "motivational" speeches throughout the season. He gave a couple in pre-season, preparing for the season, and one or two during the season. We definitely took in what he said, but not as much as we should have.

During the season he would send us these letters called "missiles." These missiles would give us a reminder of what to keep focused on and to help us during tough times in the season. I encourage coaches to write missiles to their players during their seasons. Not only does it give the coach time to think through his thoughts and words, but to deal with his emotions on different subjects. Because if you say something that destroys someone's/team's confidence you may lose that player/team mentally for awhile. Do a few of these a season, but not all the time as the players may get tired of it.

I have been with coaches who bring out famous quotes and try to instill them into us so we play like what it says. For example Rudyard Kipling said, "...The strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack." The more ways kids and people are able to understand teamwork said from different people and in different ways, the better.

Give them the reasons by inspiring them and they will not need to find reasons to succeed. Players love playing for coaches that do the inspiring; it is easy to do battle for them.
One love. One Cause.