You’d think something like this didn’t need to be written anymore, but that’s not the case. Matter of fact, I'm sure this is at least the 2nd time I've scribbled something down on the subject.

I am 100% of the belief while success breeds success, you can’t grow without failure. There are a couple of examples in each of my coaching roles that come to mind.

Training

The first rep; As Todd Bumgardner has said, "Let the first rep suck." Hell, as long as there’s not some catastrophic issue with someone’s form, I’m willing to let a whole set go with less than perfect technique before making an adjustment. After we’ve made the adjustments between sets, I will cue and coach the next set focusing on the adjustments. About 9 times out of 10, it hits the right note.

Missing; Others that are more power lifters than I can tell you better, but when you miss on a big lift, a PR or whatever the case may be, assuming nothing super bad happened (injury) it benefits you. You can look at the flaws that were the reason the lift was missed, however major or minor we are talking about, and hone in on the technique. Also, does missing a weight not motivate you to train a little harder so you nail it the next time?

Rugby

Losing; Like with missing a lift, when you get beaten, especially either on the last play or hammered into the ground (either end of the spectrum as it were), you learn plenty. When you get beat by a wide gap, there’s tons of issues to be pointed out on the tape both for individuals and for the team. Likewise, when teams lose on the last play, there’s a glaring issue that caused the loss to occur on said last play (the official doesn’t count, as much as I want to blame them sometimes). In either of these cases, it forces you to look internally hard and can get you to bounce back even better,

Trying stuff; When I coach my teams, I’ve come to the point that I want the players to try stuff in our open play portions of practice. If it sounds like something crazy to do on the field, try it in practice and mess it up there. There’s minimal consequence for trying something in practice for us; a bonkers pass, an amazing step (juke move), absurd kick and so on. While all these things will probably take bravery to perform in a game, I’m happy to give players the chance to try this wild stuff in practice so we can talk about how it might be executed better, even if it looks like a bad idea on the field.

So the lesson, once again, is to screw up, mess up, make errors and then learn from them. Understand where things went sideways, address them, try again, maybe mess up some more and then find success. Thanks for reading fam, feel free to comment or message me with questions or just for discussion.

Another season at Brookline Warriors RFC goes into the books. This season made 9 with the club and number 7 as the person at the top. It was a season of unexpecteds, then again, a bit of the writing was on the wall before it started if we really looked at it, so to speak. In the end, I was satisfied with how things ended up and the direction the club is going. There were many things I could put in this edition, here are the things I picked out I think I learned or maybe relearned, this season.

Coaches are people too- Coaches of sport teams are thought of as these unshakable, impenetrable figures that never screw up or let outside stuff impact them. Facts are, they are people too and sometimes it effects things on the field, positively or negatively, whether we like it or not. And, like it or not, that can cause us to miss some really big problems going on within the team, no matter how unbreakable we think things are. We try our damnedest to be that sturdy beam of support for all, but it can be hard if stuff on the personal side is not going well, it happens.
 
Learning to be successful can be painful- This one is in particular reference to our boys’ team. The boys lost 2 very close games this year, on the last play by having the opponent score. You could see the hurt on their faces after both, one of them in particular because it was probably our best performance of the season. You have two choices after those types of games, let it eat at your and rot you from the inside, or take it on the chin and learn from it. Happily, we did not let those games bug us and went with the latter. We did eventually find ourselves in one more tight game after those two. This time, we got it over the line by taking lessons from those two losses and hanging on to win, in a playoff game no less. Color me happy for that.
 
You can’t cheat the work- Sadly, especially with young people, some just think things will happen for them if they just exist. That is not how sports work for the most part. If you have not done the right work or the proper amount of work before hand, things will blow right up in your face. This was apparent at some points in the season early on and then later in a few games where our week of prep leading up to them was, quite frankly, dog shit. Thus, the performance we put out on the field was exactly that. Things in the sports world don’t just happen because you are there, at least not for very long if they do by chance. When the work ahead of time is done and done well, good things happen, both individually and for the team.

There you have it, like I said, there were many other things I could say here, but these are the points that spoke to me the most. Thanks for reading everyone and since I have slightly more time to myself (I do still have to attend my tiny human after all) you can expect some more consistency out of me. Have a good weekend fam!

Recently, while working with my high school rugby club, I’ve had the chance to watch some other coaches in action, of both sports and S&C variety. There are a few things that are common across both variations when it comes to coaches that are either just not very good or inexperienced at the least. Side note: if you ever hear me refer to a coach as a cowboy, this is the type of person I’m referencing.
 
Only using hype up phrases (or whatever you wish to call them)- There’s nothing wrong with use of these on their own, I use them, so does every other coach when they are truly excited. However, if I all I hear out of a coach’s mouth are things like; yeahaww (see cowboy), yeah baby, hell yeah, that’s how we do it and so on… there’s a problem.
 
An improvement on just these alone would be, the ability to articulate what about that excites them and being able to explain such to the clients or athletes. Otherwise, just refrain from using them too often because if nothing else, it just becomes noise, not anything worth the oxygen used on it.
 
Sticking to general cues only- If the whole week, a coach is screaming 1 of 3 general cues (emphasis on scream, dead giveaway). They might be lacking some knowledge at the least. For instance, we know anyone can sound like a strength coach just saying things like “chest up” or “stay tight”. There's a difference between harping on something like a mantra, and just screaming general nonsense. At the very least the coach needs to be able to articulate what they are looking for exactly when they use these general cues, otherwise improvements should be sought out, either from the coach or by changing the coach.
 
An improvement on this, similar to above would be cuing something more specific. Granted, this may be something that’s specific to more than one person, still it’s a more positive sign than not. Something like, put pressure through the outside of your foot or finish your pass with your ring finger pointed at their shoulder, are examples of things that will probably apply to more than one person, yet more specific and helpful.
 
 
Trying to smash the square peg through the round hole- The same shit does not work with every single person. The general building blocks will, but we often see very specific things tailored to the wrong person. Simple version, some folks will be much better off doing a back squat than a front squat or vise versa. Likewise, on the rugby pitch some players need more of a timing cue on certain elements and some are more looking for a visual or landmark cue to help them. When a coach continuously tries the same thing over, and over, and over, and over again with no improvements whatsoever, it’s not a positive sign.
 
An improvement, even a slight one, would be to see the coach eventually just leave the movement or technique be and come back to it at a later date. Even better is hearing something like, “I don’t know if this is right, let me do some reading and see if we can come up with a better solution.” Admitting they got it wrong or need more information is a super positive sign you’re dealing with a good coach.
 
I'm sure you've picked up, general theme across these, it's all about can the coach give more details or be more detailed, then it's a good sign. Now then, we all have our Spidey senses improved just a bit when it comes to coaches. Next time you pick up on one of these flags, see if the coach continues to go with these same things or improves, you’ll know what kind of quality you are dealing with. Happy Wednesday fam, thanks for reading and hope you have good rest of the week.