Note: Champe is putting together a great series on styles of defense. Check out the first one in his series here:
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I have some miscellaneous thoughts about coaching as it relates to individual player development.
To preface this, I think coaching should be specific to the team being coached and the one doing the coaching. Every team has specific needs, and every coach needs to be able to speak their truth to be most effective.
Topic 1: Pushing versus Settling
In "Training Soccer Champions", Anson Dorrance makes the claim that players generally settle. His thought is basically that players don't really know how good they can be, and therefore they generally won't have a reference for their own ceilings. Furthermore, he claims that it's the coaches responsibility to keep the players from settling.
Dorrance postulates that this is the most difficult thing about coaching. For example, an inexperienced coach might let things slide or be unwilling to demand the best from the team because they want to avoid an uncomfortable situation. He thinks that it's the coaches responsibility to carry the burden of these potentially uncomfortable or awkward encounters for the sake of the team. An obvious example of this might be a lack of focus in a practice setting.
I think that pushing people past their perceived limits can have a ton of value, which is how I interpret what Dorrance is saying. I also think it's easy to interpret his perspective as an "assuming the worst" mindset, in which players are inherently lazy and unmotivated. I feel this is generally untrue, it seems to me like players generally want to be the best they can be.
There is a natural tension with this for college ultimate, as no one is playing as a career or even for a scholarship. Absent these external motivations, what drives ultimate players tends to be more internal I think, things like teammates, unity of purpose, shared struggle, community, personal growth, etc. Notably I think these motivations can be incredibly strong. But the fact remains that ultimate usually can't always be the top of the priority list. So the challenge is to understand the level of pushing that is appropriate for the circumstances, both on a team and an individual level.
Topic 2: Influencing Culture
Words + Body Language + Actions = Culture
All of these things matter, and they matter a lot. The interactions of every person on the team plays into the above equation. For each of these components (Words, Body Language, Actions), I think there's a public portion and a private portion. Public would be things done in practices or at tournaments. Private would be conversations, interactions, etc related to the team that are done individually or outside of a team setting. Coaches and captains have a strong influence over all of the public side, maybe 75% of that is up to them. The other 25% of the public component is made up of non-captain leaders and other players. The private stuff is much harder to influence. I think maybe 5% of the private components of the above can be directly addressed through leadership. And the private culture can make or break your team.
Hypothesis: If the private culture is mostly gripes about other teammates or about leadership, this can create rifts in the team and can lead to frustration and premature individual burnout.
Culture matters for individual development because a healthy culture motivates and nurtures players. Effort is rewarded, teammates are able to put in work towards shared goals, visibility is clear, and the team ceiling is raised. Premature burnout leads to disconnection and lack of interest, resulting in a lower team ceiling.
Topic 3: On Motivation
How do you maximize internal motivation?
We can provide external incentives to put in work (i.e. throwing challenges with prizes), but at the end of the day I think the motivation from sources like this is much less powerful than internal motivation. But internal motivation just isn't consistent for a team, ever. I have never encountered a team in which this was the case. (this doesn't mean it doesn't exist, however) Right now my best guess is that providing useful outlets for inter-team competition is the best way to drive constructive motivation on the team level.
I also think showing what is possible may help. This would be like taking the team to spectate club nationals. I think it was awesome we were able to do that last year, but this is likely going to be logistically impossible for the foreseeable future. Not sure how to fix that, as I don't think video has the same effect.
In "Legacy", James Kerr writes "Human beings are motivated by purpose, autonomy, and a drive towards mastery."
I don't have a lot of good ideas about how to implement this better.
Topic 4: Food for Thought
- "Everyone deserves to have a fulfilling ultimate season." - M.N.
- Would you want to win a championship if the entire season leading up to it was terrible?
- What is fulfillment and how do you define it, at a team level?
- I have a feeling that "unconscious goals" exist for individuals. These would be like a phantom goal that is on everyone's mind but no one ever addresses. Are these bad/good? How do we address and influence these? My intuition is that season "success" has a lot more to do with these than with a stated goal that no one buys.
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