Above: Nick Saban, former Head Coach Alabama Football
““If you’re an average player, you want to be left alone because you want to be able to slide by. If you’re a good player, you want to be coached. If you’re a great player, you want the coach to tell you the truth every day,” Saban said in the awesome video circulating Twitter.”
So one of my athletes said to me that I was too serious during my coaching sessions.
This reminds me of something that happened during my USA team coaching days. The players often said the same things to me. “Lighten up Coach! And Come on stop being so serious.”
So one trip I decided to show the team why I am always so serious. I took one player who was in a tie-breaker and during a timeout here is what I said:
“Come on lighten up. Stop being so serious.”
Of course the player looked at me as if I was from Mars. But I think I drove the point home. On those trips, while players were having fun, my mind was in competition mode.
So were the players during the matches!
Pre-tournament preparation with me can be an adventure also. When I am focused with on-court coaching it I am sometimes confrontational as in I confront the problem and give the athlete the solution. In other words I might put the athlete under pressure on purpose. If they cannot handle that, how will they handle a tie-breaker?
Nick Saban, the former college football coach at Alabama, had an instagram post that went something like, “Do you want to be left alone or do you want to be coached?’
I try to explain to the players I coach that if they were doing their best, I’d leave them alone. I look for ways for them to improve for those who can do better.
For the athlete it does come down to basic psychology 101; fight or flight!
Go get’em Tigers!