Brains or Bodies - Which Are You Coaching?

WARNING: The last 5 seconds are NSFW and some may find that bit offensive.

If you don't want to hear the whole bit, here's what it says:

We're Consolidated International and we might be looking for you. Are you one of those people who show up, punch in, pitch in, put out, clean up, punch out, head home, throw up, turn in, sack out and shut up? That's what we need: people we can keep in line.

Carlin was one of the best at making a serious point through the use of humor and this small “announcement” is an excellent example. He was pointing out that large businesses are often designed to work best when filled with subservient employees. I fear that many coaches work in a way that requires athletes to be compliant as well. But is that what you really want from your athletes?

The idea of subservience versus autonomy is one of the central ideas of Deci and Ryan's Self-Determination Theory. The two psychologists laid out three innate needs: autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Autonomy is the desire to feel, at least to some extent, in control of our decisions and competence is the desire to experience mastery. These two needs are strongly intertwined in the athletes we coach.

I summarize my interest in these two needs with one question, “am I coaching brains or am I coaching bodies?” Do I interact with athletes in ways that help them feel autonomous and competent? If I interact with them in ways that engage their minds then they likely feel like they have control over themselves and their environments. By satisfying those needs, the athletes are likely to get much more out of the training and competitive environments I create for and with them.

There are many ways to coach only bodies. Most commonly, the feedback given tells them what to do. When the game presents a problem, body coaches immediately swoop in with the solution for them. When this is the most common type of feedback given then the athletes are able to become compliant, to “punch in, pitch in” and little else. They don't have to engage very deeply in what is happening around them or to them because the coach will tell them everything they need to do. Sport becomes something that just happens to them. All they have to do is show up and listen. They may do their best to execute as they are told but the only way they know if they did or not is if they are told.

As training sessions and competitions go by in a world that doesn’t engage athletes’ brains, they slowly become automatons, only doing their best to carry out the wishes of their coaches. When they are asked why they made certain choices or executed in certain ways, they are at a loss for how to answer. They don't know why they have done almost anything. They have been trained to do as they were told, so answering questions is very uncomfortable because they haven't had to do much thinking. They’re used to just waiting for instructions.

How can you change that dynamic? How can you start coaching brains to help athletes be active participants in learning and execution? Ask questions. Ask far more questions than you give directions. Listen to their answers and then ask more questions. Give them more reps or put them in the same situations and then ask more questions. “What did your body do? Where did the ball go as a result? Where do you want the ball to go? So do you need to do anything different with your body? Let's do it some more and see what happens.” Now you're working together with them to solve problems and work through challenges. Now the athletes feel like they are vital actors in their lives. Now they get to exert some control over their execution and their outcomes.

Notice that the questions I present here are open-ended rather than closed. (To be nerdy about it, they are divergent rather than convergent questions.) Supporting athlete autonomy and competence means asking questions that ask them about what they are thinking, feeling, and doing. If the questions asked have expected (or right) answers, then there’s no autonomy support, there’s just a player’s effort to guess what the coach wants to hear. The difference between open and closed questions can be very subtle. For example, asking an attacker “what shot should you hit in that situation?” is closed, it has a correct answer that the coach is looking for and the player is expected to know. But, if one word is changed: “what shot could you hit in that situation?”, the question becomes open-ended. The player is now invited to explore different options and the coach learns what the player is seeing and thinking, which allows them to better help the player in their decision making.

This process is part of creating mindfulness in our athletes. As athletes become more aware of what they are doing and how they are doing it, they become more autonomous and competent. I have written elsewhere that I want to free my athletes to perform at their best and I firmly believe that the best path to that is to help them be autonomous and competent. I believe that I am doing my best coaching when I am coaching brains, not bodies.