Want me to remember, tell me one thing . . . — BASC

Take home message

FIX ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME

For Coaches

In our desire to help and offer multiple solutions, sometimes we fail to offer any.

For Athletes

It is ok to not understand. Ask for another way.

Want me to forget, tell me two (although my wife believes I can even forget one!).

It’s sound advice. I’m a big fan of primacy and recency when coaching where people are likely to remember the first thing you tell them and the last thing, forgetting everything in the middle. I’m trying to take that even further at the moment and make them both the same but saying just one thing. What’s the most important thing and nail that.

It’s so common as a coach to want help and share everything we know. To blurt out all the solutions to an athletes’s problems all at once, as though that will help. The urge to blurt out all potential information was even more obvious at our recent competition where pressure and consequence seem to create a “more is better” approach for information, at a time where focus and clarity are needed most. As a coach, we can offer multiple solutions to a single question because we are clever enough to know all the ways it can be done.

And it does help. It helps us. We feel like we’ve done our job. All our knowledge has been passed on. And perhaps it has been passed on. Doesn’t mean it will be acted on. It doesn’t mean it has helped our athlete. They may in fact be worse off. Now they are thinking too much, or have combined solutions which negate each other. So much of our technique be it in the gym or on the field is automatic, that if the athletes are having to give it conscious thought, the more thoughts they are giving, the worse the outcome is likely to be.

Instead, what is the one most important point that needs to be acted on. Give that feedback. Despite every urge to fix every problem, it is likely our performer cannot fix multiple aspects at once. The next time you are asked for feedback, take your time. Do your mental checklist to work out, from all the options you have, which is best and then engage that solution. Having a pause to think does not mean you don’t know. It actually means you know a lot, that you are analysing a variety of options to match the best option to the situation. Remember, every athlete is different, so it is likely the solution is too.

Once that solution is engrained, you can move on to the next one with momentum.

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Thanks again. BA.