Your words and actions are transforming their minds. Everyone who steps into the box is there for a reason, but the determining factor in whether these people will meet their goals is their attitude. Once in a great while, superhuman athletes come along who have the perfect attitudes for success. But more often, athletes will need a coach to guide them; signposting them towards the mental approaches and attitudes that will essentially determine their success.
If you feel more comfortable with teaching the physical stuff than the psychological, there’s some simple things to concentrate on that will help. You don’t need to be a really emotional person or an arm-chair psychologist to work on your athletes’ mental skills, but to be a good coach it is imperative to know how to work a little “between the ears” and not just on the rest of the body.
Here are 4 key areas you as a coach will have a regular influence over and some tips and tools to elevate you and your athletes:
1. Building determination
At last year’s Battle of the Beasts, 3 of top 5 men’s places were taken by athletes from CrossFit Cheltenham. I had the opportunity to speak to them after the final, asking the question, was there anything special about Cheltenham that would create such a pool of talent? There’s nothing special, I was told, just plain old determination.
The motto at their box is 2Don’t stop when you’re tired. Stop when you’re done.” Controlling arousal levels, keeping focused, overcoming perceived physical limits are all part of this skill, and for each athlete the tasks involved in arriving at this mindset may be slightly different. For you as a coach, you only need to work on two things – offering opportunities to push those limits and drawing the athlete’s attention to the differences between what they expected and what they actually did.
To be effective, you have to move them along a progression of challenges. Getting good at knowing when they are at the right level of exertion, being challenged enough is your task. You won’t want to crush their spirit before they have a chance to bloom by setting unrealistic challenges. Likewise, letting them coast won’t bring out their best.
2. Learning movement patterns
Learning is a psychological task. Memory, translating an internal procedure into external movements and perfecting timing, coordination and speed are all psychological tasks. One of your key roles as coach is to be a teacher. You assess where they are and what needs work first. Having a clear perspective on which aspects of the movement are the priorities will help you to keep your feedback simple. Too detailed, complicated feedback or instruction puts too many demands on the memory and reasoning centres of the brain, and your athlete will be unable to improve. Deciding on a single cue or aspect of the movement to focus on in a WOD will produce better results over time, than dazzling them with everything that can be known about a movement.
Advising your athletes on movements or parts of movements that can be drilled outside WODs, helping them to visualize by comparing their movements to perfect movements by using video feedback are both useful tools. Your other resource here is to keep looking for perfection and don’t give up on athletes, resigning them to the pile of no-hopers just because they still don’t get it. If they bothered to turn up, you can be bothered to coach them.
3. Solidifying confidence
People in your box don’t need big egos. But they do need calm confidence in the things they do well. Presenting athletes with appropriate challenges will provide learning experiences to draw confidence from, but you as a coach will also need to point out aspects of their behaviour that is useful for success. If someone stays after to work on drills, finds ways to balance work and training, consistently shows determination or intensity it is worthwhile to point it out to them.
Of the amazing high caliber athletes I work with, it is always astonishing how many are uncertain of the psychological and mental strengths they possess (as a side note, I would propose that this is more common for female athletes than male, but the reasons for this are perhaps a topic for another article). Be free with you compliments and your encouragements. Your athletes need it.
4. Encouraging high quality practice
Contrary to what we expect, it’s not necessarily the amount of practice that creates world class performances, but the quality of the practice. Getting people in your WOD focused is your job here. Emphasize what makes the workout movements useful for them in developing the skills, or even mental approaches, that will help them excel. Get specific with your athletes, reminding individuals what they need to work on in particular. If there are those that lack determination, point out the places in the WOD where they will need to find it. Encouraging quality practice is about making sure that when the WOD is on, everyone is working. If your box operates an open gym, encouraging quality practice might be about asking athletes what they’re working on today and keeping them accountable.
True to the Crossfit ethos, I would propose that these 4 simple tools for athletic mindsets apply to beginners, elite and every athlete in between. Building more successful athletes in your box means building attitudes consistent with success. Be that influential, supportive and important person on the journey between where your athlete is and where they want to be.
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