A few weeks ago I wrote a post on what it means to be an athlete vs. being athletic. I had decided to ask other people to weigh in, and I’m glad I did because their feedback gave me a lot of food for thought. They also helped me to feel more like an athletic athlete, rather than an unathletic athlete, even though I’m 12 years older, had hip replacement surgery, and am having to learn how to play tennis all over again.
For me, the next obvious question is, what is it that good coaches do to make these less athletic people so useful? I’ve always been fascinated with the question of what makes a good coach, and in particular, whether a good coach needs to yell in order to be effective. So I asked people again for their feedback, and I thought I would share you what hard core sports fans, coaches, and loyal readers had to say.
Luckily, one coach answered the yelling question directly for me. She said she rarely yelled because she never responded well to yelling when she was a player. I don’t respond well to yelling, either, because of my family history. But maybe some people prefer to be yelled at? Please feel free to to weigh in if you do and help me to understand.
One characteristic that several people agreed upon is that a coach needs to be a good teacher and leader. This includes being inspirational, being knowledgeable about the subject matter, whether or not they were at the top of their sport as an athlete.
Richard Williams, the father of Serena and Venus, knew nothing about tennis or coaching and somehow blazed a trail for two of the greatest female tennis players in the most unconventional way possible. Check out the movie if you don’t know the story. Will Smith got an Oscar for portraying him. But then he punched Chris Rock at the Oscars and that became the focus, unfortunately.
But I digress.
A good coach’s lessons go beyond the techniques and strategies of the game and can be translated into lessons that prepare the athletes for life and are based on core values. In the last blog post I mentioned Tony Bennett’s 5 pillars: humility, passion, unity, servanthood, and thankfulness. This year, UVA’s football coach Tony Elliot is now undefeated in the ACC, the Cinderella story of the college football season so far. His core values are character, humility, work ethic, skill set, and passion for education. Fairly similar core values, don’t you think?
Others identified attunement to their players as an important characteristic. Good coaches are good listeners. They have empathy for their players. They know their players well enough to maximize their talents, keep them motivated, and have the foresight to help these individual players perform better as a team so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
A couple of people suggested that coaches focus less on wins and more on developing players into citizens who will have the skills to navigate the ups and downs of life and thrive.
I find this interesting in that coaches and commentators are always saying how coaches are so perfectionistic–coaching to the very end, even if they’re up by 30 points. Paying attention to the things their players still didn’t execute well. But I guess this is an example of being less focused on the win. A sloppy win is not as valuable to a coach as execution, focus, discipline, and following directions.
I agree with all of these attributes about team coaches. As many of you know, I believe Tony Bennett is the best coach I’ve ever seen. Any commentator who mentions him talks about how he is as good of a human being as he is a coach. His character is never separated from his job.
Josh Heupel was also mentioned as a good coach. If you don’t know about the Tennessee Volunteers, I will tell you that they totally buy into the college team mentality and value their college sports over their professional teams. They are not about making college sports into a business and were upset when their star quarterback last year sold out to a lesser school for the money.
Pat Summit, the renowned female basketball coach who led the Lady Vols to eight national championships is still highly regarded here, long before people took an interest in women’s college basketball. Her record is second only to John Wooden, who has 10 national championship titles. So Tennessee fans value coaches who care deeply about their school, their teams, and their players.
I’ve had the unique opportunity to have 2 female coaches: one in voice and one in tennis. All of my previous voice teachers were male, and very few of my tennis pros were female. With my voice coach, she is so attuned to my body and the quality of my voice that she asks me to make these subtle changes in how I vocalize, like she’s diagnosing the problem. She has even gone so far as to research breathing disorders to figure out why I don’t exhale when I’m singing.
Much of our work has been similar to my work in mindfulness and working with clients who have experienced trauma, as I mentioned in a previous blog post. She is also able to use my strengths to help me get better at the technical areas that need improvement. For example, if I focus on opening my mouth or sticking out my tongue to get a better quality sound, when I apply the techniques to a song I sound worse than usual. I can’t access feelings about the song and how it feels in my body and focus on techniques at the same time. So yesterday she suggested that I pretend I’m singing a song and walk around while I sang the scales. And it totally worked!
My tennis coach is very good at giving me one thing to focus on that ends up solving 3 things that I’m doing wrong. I’ve always had a problem with hitting my forehand too early. While many instructors, and my ex-husband, have pointed it out, no one has told me how to stop doing it. Once I tried using the timing of the sound of the ball bouncing and when my ex hit the ball. And guess what? She told me the timing should be bounce-hit. Maybe I just think that’s brilliant because I thought of it myself, but she is the only one who gave me something specific to focus on other than just saying don’t swing too early.
My tennis coach acknowledged that sometimes people just look at what the stroke looks like and not the idiosyncrasies of what the person may be doing. Shortly after saying that, the boy who was receiving a lesson next to us was grunting, and she asked him why he was grunting. His instructor then asked him if he was, in fact, grunting, and the boy admitted that he was. The instructor then asked him why and the boy said he didn’t know. And then he resumed the lesson without addressing the grunting.
Which I thought it was hilarious.
So even in individual coaching, the same principles apply. Coaches are highly attuned, good listeners, pay attention to details, are flexible and willing to try different strategies. I’m not anywhere close to winning anything in tennis at the moment. And I don’t even know what that would mean to win in singing. But I know that I am learning a lot more than just how to sing and play tennis again.
