An Opportunity
Take home message
take time to plan how you will spend this opportunity
For Coaches
A great time to give back to the family we tend to place second during busy training and competition. Perhaps a great time for reflection and some deep work.
For Athletes
How can you use this down time to broaden yourself? What positive impact can you have on your family, friends and community.
I have found these opportunities to write as an chance to clarify my thoughts, a sort of “journaling” or reflection. Hopefully you have found them of interest. As I wrote recently, change can happen rather quickly.
Due to the current COVID-19 situation, our training environment has ceased for an undetermined time frame. Certainly a unique event. Once the dust has settled on this unprecedented change, and emotions have calmed, the professional focus will shift to what to do with this gift of spare time. Personally, like many people, health and family have been placed front and centre in our minds, as has our responsibility to our community.
On one hand, the spare time is a wonderful professional opportunity. The book “ Deep Work” by Cal Newport details the importance of uninterrupted blocks of time to do, well, … deep work! Tasks that take periods of thinking that benefit from lengthy, uninterrupted blocks of time to get work done. Large blocks of time are seldom in the usual environment with multiple training sessions and meetings. Now those blocks of time I had wished to have are here. Tasks such as documenting protocols and procedures, it might be tasks that I react to with makeshift strategies, or even automating Excel worksheets with formulas and codes, I now have time to spend (I know coding sounds very exciting!).
However, there is also time to strengthen and expand another critical aspect that due to the absence of sessions, is in real danger of decay. Coaching. There are no athletes to train, so no coaching, which means the communication that we associate with coaching skills is at risk. The nuances of personal relationships. We associate professional development with visiting and networking with other coaches - who are also in lockdown, so we cannot visit them. So how can I improve as a coach? Well, I think it might be the same ways as those Excel sheets. Deep work.
I am presented with an opportunity to think deeply about how I structure sessions, which affects my coaching. I get to think deeply about each athlete. Make a conscious effort to write down how I think they respond to my coaching.
What has worked well with them before and what has not. Not only training stimulus, but my stimulus.
How have I managed to get a connection. I think it is human nature that we get on with some people better than others. How do I make sure that I am consistent across my playing group?
How do I relate to the other coaches in my program? I think that I talk differently to each and have different levels of relationships, but do I really? I know I talk some team tactics and relationship tactics differently between them.
Can I spend time thinking about how I work best with them? When am I at my best? How can I be at my best more often? What are my triggers and cues?
Do I spend some time just jotting ideas down on paper and see what emerges. What thought patterns and opportunities will appear on paper?
The list is not endless and more questions will arise from more time to think.
Of course I will also be spending time programming, planning, documenting player strengths, weaknesses and injury needs. When we get the green-light to start I hope to have better protocols, programs and those Excel worksheets running very smoothly. But I also want to be a better coach. This is a great opportunity that will take some deliberate deep work to achieve. I think it would be really nice to spend a day just thinking. Write a question or topic at the top of the whiteboard and then doodle away and see what appears.