Success in sports requires an athlete to master complex technical skills, be in optimal physical condition, and cultivate a resilient mental mindset. Most busy coaches don’t have time to specialize in mental resilience in addition to their technical duties, and often feel dissatisfied with their ability to support their students in this area.
What many coaches don’t know is that they can help their students build a resilient mindset and avoid many common performance problems by creating a “safe to learn” training environment for their students.
A “safe to learn” environment allows athletes to be open, eager and excited to learn. In this environment, a coach can focus on developing athlete skills instead of dealing with fearful, worried or stressed out athletes.
Great Coaching is a Win-Win for Both Student and Coach
Win number one is that the coach is motivated and excited about coaching, and feels self-satisfaction and confidence in helping their athletes meet and exceed their potential. In addition, they are motivated to grow and improve their coaching skills.
Win number two is that the student is motivated and excited even as they go through the long and often repetitive process of practice and skill development. They more easily accept the inevitable ups and downs, and train with an overall feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment.
A Safe Environment Can Prevent Sports Performance Blocks
Learning is a process that includes repetitive risk taking, trial and error, failure, and mistake making that leads to improvement and hopefully to eventual success.
In order to learn one must be willing and able to fail. Learning cannot take place in the absence of failure.
A safe environment allows an athlete the freedom to focus entirely on improving their skills, free from unrelated stress or worry such as:
- Perceived or real coach and/or parental expectations.
- Negative consequences for messing up, or making mistakes.
- Withdrawal of coach or parent attention or approval.
- Comparing unfavorably to others.
- Being embarrassed or humiliated.
Many athletes who seek my help for sports performance blocks or problems have trained with coaches who do not create a “safe to learn” environment for their students.
Here is an example of an unsafe environment:
The figure skater stands by the boards waiting for her name to be called in the second competition of the season. Her coach’s parting words to her are, “if you don’t land those two jumps, you better look for another exit, don’t come back through here.” And yes, the coach was serious.
Here is an example of a safe environment:
A swimmer was briefed by his coach before his qualifying heat, “Remember, you’ve trained well. Mistakes might happen, if they do, you’ll learn from them for the next time. Just go out there and swim your own race. Let’s see how it goes. Enjoy the race!”
The Consequences of Fear Based Coaching
Here’s what happens to learning and sports performance when an athlete trains in an unsafe environment.
This particular day, a gymnast is having trouble throwing a skill on the beam during practice. She knows how to do it, but she’s scared, and her body is not cooperating. She worries that if she can’t “get it together,” her coach might cut his time with her and move on to someone else (he has done this before) so she tries extra hard to do her best.
As time goes on, her coach’s frown gets deeper and his voice gets louder and louder. The corrections come at her like bullets, faster and faster. “You must not want it enough,” he says in exasperation.
He sighs, puts up his hands, palms facing her as if in surrender and says, “Let’s not waste any more time today.” Then turns his back on her and walks away as his student tries desperately to hold back her tears.
The Biological Stress Response
When coaches communicate through fear based messages, an athlete’s nervous system senses a threat. The nervous system’s job is to ensure survival. Sensing a threat, the athlete’s body shuts down and kicks into survival mode.
This stress response is better known as fight, flight or freeze. This is a biological reflex, the same automatic reaction you see when an impala plays dead to avoid being killed by an attacking cheetah.
When your athletes shut down, it doesn’t matter what you say to them, how loudly you yell, or how many times you repeat yourself, they will not hear you. All of their energy and focus is reflexively diverted to protecting themselves on a biological level.
If your students don’t hear your message, they can not take effective action on your feedback, (corrections) and they will not learn.
The nervous system of an athlete training in an unsafe environment will constantly be on high alert, ready to jump into action. This constant vigilance and constant mobilization of the stress response takes precious energy away from their ability to focus on their training.
Fear Based Coaching supporters point out that this method has produced many successful athletes over the years. This may be true, but at high cost to the athletes who are left to deal with the consequences for the rest of their lives. It is more accurate to say that these athletes succeeded despite their coaching.
A more useful question to ask would be; how many athletes never came close to their potential because of fear based coaching?
Optimal learning requires our athletes to have all channels of communication open. They need to feel free to take risks and make mistakes without fear of embarrassment or of being shamed.
To optimize our athlete’s learning potential, a “safe to learn” environment is essential.
Demanding not Demeaning
Some coaches might believe that creating a safe environment means that they can’t push their athletes’ limits or that they must give too much control over to their students.
They might even believe that they must undergo a personality change in order to be “nice, sympathetic and positive” when dealing with students.
This is unrealistic and unnecessary, and would be detrimental to both the student and the coach.
Actually, a safe environment that excites learning is stimulating, challenging and demanding in the absence of fear, embarrassment and humiliation. When your students feel safe, you can push them to stretch beyond their comfort zones, and they will respond willingly.
For example: A coach gives his runner a structured training program that includes 3 days of speed drills and repeats, but it’s been a couple of days and the coach hasn’t witnessed the student doing them.
Fear Based Coaching:
The coach confronts the athlete during team practice in front of everyone and says, “It’s been 3 days and I haven’t seen you doing your workouts yet. What’s up with that? You say you want to make the top three this year, but I don’t see you making the effort. Everyone else is following their training program, but you’re here slacking off.”
Demanding, Not Demeaning Coaching:
The coach pulls the athlete to the side and asks “I haven’t seen you doing your workouts the past two days like I asked, did I just miss it or is something up?” Then pauses and waits for the student to answer.
The runner hangs his head and says, “No, Coach, I haven’t. When I think of those repeats you assigned, I get so worried that I’m not going to make my times. I don’t know if I can even make my PR from last year.”
The coach says, “You’re right, you probably won’t make all of your times yet, and that’s okay. Training is a time to improve your technique and skills. In order to do that, you have to do your training.
“Remember what we always say, make mistakes and fail so that you can learn faster. Seems like this is a great chance to learn. What do you think?”
The runner lifts his head, smiles, straightens up and exhales loudly, “That makes sense. I feel like I can do it now, thanks, it really helps to know I don’t need to be perfect!”
A student in a safe environment is willing to take risks, experiment and try new things without the fear of judgment or falling short.
The Training Environment: It’s Your Choice
Students trained in a safe environment will be less likely to encounter situations that lead to future sports performance problems and blocks because they are not afraid of messing up or making mistakes.
Many athletes with sports performance blocks who end up leaving their fear based coaching environment, become very successful with a coach who creates a safe training environment.
As a coach, you can choose to prioritize the type of training environment you want for your athletes.
A “safe environment” does not mean you are soft. In fact, you will find that you are able to demand and receive more out of your athletes because they are able to focus their energy on training rather than on the “head trash” that preoccupies athletes trained in a fear based environment.
Coaches who want to build a safer environment for their athletes can start by reflecting on these questions:
- What type of environment (safe or fear based) do I currently create for my athletes?
- Do I intentionally create this environment or does it exist by default?
- What message do I project with my actions and words?
- How do I feel about mistakes and failure?
- How do my athletes feel about mistakes and failure?
- Do my athletes know how I feel about mistakes and failure?
A coach always creates the environment for their students, either by default or by conscious choice. When a coach takes responsibility to create a safe environment for their student, they can develop successful athletes who are both technically and mentally strong.
If skaters took Mental skills training as seriously as they do their on ice technical skills, they would find that their technical skills would improve exponentially.
Start here. Download “Confidence Myth Busters,” a complimentary eBook and make a change.