The Triple Toe Woe
Skatergirl is warming up her jumps before her lesson. Her triple toes are beautifully executed. She nails 3 of them before her lesson with Coach.
Now it’s time for her lesson. Coach asks her to do the triple toe.
This should be no problem right? She just did 3 of them perfectly mere moments ago.
She tries but can’t do it. She falls on the first one, pops the second one and circles on the third.
Her triple toe has become a triple no.
Skatergirl thinks, “Why can’t I do this? I just did 3 before my lesson.”
She is confused and frustrated, embarrassed by her mistakes.
She insists to her coach that they were really good before her lesson.
Coach tells her, “It doesn’t matter if you can do it before the lesson, you need to be consistent. You have to be able to perform on demand, because in a competition it doesn’t matter how many you nail in the warm-up.”
Her frustration with herself and the feeling that she has let her coach down causes increased anxiety and stress. She keeps circling and popping until the lesson can’t be salvaged.
She feels her lesson is wasted, lost along with her confidence.
Pressure to Please
When no one is looking, Skatergirl does great practicing outside the lesson. But in her lesson with her coach, she freezes up, (and not because she is on the ice).
These are the thoughts that go through her mind when she is with her coach:
I don’t want to make mistakes in front of Coach.
I don’t want to get yelled at.
I want to show Coach how hard I have been working in practice.
I want to show Coach my perfect jump.
I want Coach to feel proud of me.
When you develop a relationship with your coach, they become your go-to, your guide, your Guru. It is natural to want to please them and make them proud. After all, your success means that they did a good job.
It could also mean more attention and praise for you. Many high achievers have developed a habit of “people pleasing”. It is a strategy that works well when you are very young and need to depend on other people, at first for survival, later to learn important skills.
The problem with people pleasing is that your motivation is not only to learn and improve for yourself, but to gain approval and validation from others. You not only take on the anxiety and stress of your own expectations but you take on the perceived expectations of your coach and those important to you, like your parents.
The need to People please can be detrimental to your skill development.
When you worry about doing well in front of your coach, you cause tension in your body. You can’t jump when you are your tense, your muscles don’t have time to fire correctly. Your automatic motor patterns in your brain do not function properly.
As a result you lose your confidence and you become more and more frustrated.
More frustration means more mistakes. More mistakes mean more tension. More tension means more frustration. You are caught in a vicious cycle.
A Freeing Shift
Wait a minute, take a deep breath. All is not lost. What you need is a shift in your perspective.
A skater needs to feel free and comfortable to make mistakes in front of their coach.
Skating techniques are complex. They involve a continuous process of making adjustments and fine-tuning while you are learning. Even when you have mastered an element, mistakes and inconsistencies can creep in.
These mistakes and their solutions are important for the learning process. They help you become more resilient, more creative and more knowledgeable. They help you understand yourself better and they teach you how to become more independent when you need to troubleshoot problems on your own.
Remember that your coach’s feedback is not an attack, but a useful critique that can help you understand how to get better. This is the primary job of a coach.
In order to do their job well, a coach needs to have a realistic idea of where you are at each moment so that they can guide your appropriately.
You need your coach’s feedback and guidance to maintain and improve your skills.
Your coach sees your potential. They know what you are capable of. They are there to give you that extra push to reach your peak. Coaches are in the business of teaching, not judging.
Change those People Pleasing ways:
- Remember that your coach’s job is to help you improve your skating skills. They are not there to see a show. They need to know accurately where you are (mistakes too) so that they can help you.
- When your coach is around, start to recognize when your attention is on pleasing them instead of doing your jumps.
- Take your attention away from landing a perfect jump and not wanting to disappoint your coach.
- Put your attention on doing your jump. Focus on the action of your body and all that you need to do as you go into the jump.
If you recognise that you are putting unnecessary pressure on yourself with people pleasing behavior, your job is to convince yourself to stop.
Remember that it is better to focus on doing the jump or skills, and not worrying about what you think your coach is thinking.
In fact, if you stop to think about it carefully, you will probably realize that you were silly to think that your coach expects you to always be perfect in practice.
If you were perfect, why would you need a coach?
You are not perfect but you can work to be your best.
Your coach is not your judge; your coach is your partner.
As John Whitmore said, “Coaching focuses on future possibilities, not past mistakes…Coaching is unlocking people’s potential to maximize their own performance.”
When you make this mindshift, you will see that instead of the imagined “reproach”, your coach’s feedback will become your preferred approach.
Are there times you do well on your own but mess up during the lesson? What are your usual thoughts when this is happening? Do you think you are worried about pleasing your coach? Share in the comments!
Mental skills training can make a difference because it can help you access what is already there during competition and practice.
Start here; download “Confidence Myth Busters,” a complimentary eBook and make a change.