Coaching in the River

Familiar with the quote or not, the version we are most likely to hear attributed to Greek philosopher Heraclitus is, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man”. With no surviving writing from Heraclitus himself, we are attributing this to him via records of his students and counterparts-in-thought. With much less appetite for an open-ended and subjectively vague philosophical diet, the gaps are filled in thusly. Of the accepted primary references to this concept, Heraclitus’s words left much more to the imagination: 

We both step and do not step into the same, we both are and are not

In a profession of planning and counter-planning, in a profession of scouting, predicting, gameplanning and then throwing it all out the window when the competition starts, in a profession of ego-meets-ego-meets-(hopefully)-egolessness, in a profession where individuality ideally gives way to solidarity, we must embrace that Heraclitus may have identified coaches as fish out of water…while in the water…drowning. Choose your sport. Take the number of athletes on your team and multiply that by the number of coaches on your staff and multiply that by the number of potential moment-to-moment perceptions of actions, words, and outcomes and multiply that by the number of outside influences on each individual at any given time and multiply that by the infinite combinations of thoughts, feelings, goals, dreams…you get the idea. The variables and dynamics involved make a daunting task seem impossible, and that’s just upon dipping a toe into the water. 

Not to add fuel to the fire, but the prefrontal cortex doesn’t reach full development or maturation until the age of 25. “This brain region has been implicated in planning complex cognitive behavior, personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior”. (Shoutout to rental car companies for identifying the minimum age to really trust a human’s decision making…in theory). This is a horrifying reality of the young athletes we choose to lead and to whom some trust their livelihood. What this means is that from neighborhood park district leagues to high-level professionals, we are engaging with humans who are still spending a lot of time and energy on learning how to human. Before they even reach the practice facility, they are spending an entire day trying to navigate creating an image that aligns with their beliefs while figuring out their beliefs. They are experimenting with social interactions with parents, friends, and teachers. They are balancing effort, performance, and expectations that are being defined by themselves and their people. At the same time, we are demanding they learn the ins-and-outs of a sport at increasingly advanced levels, how to be a good teammate, and how to manage a social media identity and brand. (A future post will address the dissonance created by social media for young athletes and how it can be used in a positive way). 

Let’s take a moment to embody the words of Heraclitus. Either visualize this or do this the next time you arrive for practice or training: 

Stand outside your facility and take a deep breath. (Close your eyes if it is safe to do so). 

Imagine you are standing on the bank of a river. 

Imagine the river waters swirling, cresting over rocks, a different pace wherever you watch. 

Imagine the sound of the river, constant yet ever-changing, mesmerizing, peaceful. 

Think of taking that first step. 

The moment your foot hits the waters freeze the entire scene. 

Mentally pull yourself back to the bank and look at this snapshot. 

If you were given the opportunity to coach within that singular moment, with the time and insight to evaluate and identify everything in stillness, you could eventually recall every detail and use it to your advantage. This is not our job. This is not what we prepare for. This is not what coaching is. And we are the ones with a fully developed prefrontal cortex. If we expect this from our athletes, the ability to freeze everything and operate objectively in regards to a snapshot of a river at one moment in time, we will find we are all up a creek without a paddle. 

So what do we do? 

Every moment we have with our players is special, unique. Who they are today is fleeting and fragile. They may return to practice the next day a completely changed person. YOU may return to practice the next day a completely changed person. This part of human nature is what makes coaching so dynamic, and eventually, so rewarding. 

As it relates to performance, it is our responsibility to remember the humanity of each person involved in our operations. Connections and understanding always have and always will support success defined in many ways. Relationships not only allow for coaches and athletes to build trust and garner commitment, but also allow these young people to explore what relationships in general can be. From the highest level of competition down, the fluidity of the river can manifest in performance. Be it an angry outburst on the professional stage or a five year-old sitting in the middle of the soccer field crying about a caterpillar, the river flows with or without our permission. Being a beacon of consistency and doing our part to teaching the tactics for creating consistency are gifts we can provide. 

For success attached to another nautical metaphor, see: PJ Fleck and “Row the Boat”. 

We are coaches. We don’t get into this profession for smooth sailing. Often we can get caught up in thinking we are more Captain Ahab than we are The Old Man and the Sea. Sometimes we end up being George Clooney in “The Perfect Storm”, sometimes Mark Wahlberg. But think back to the mental exercise, the visualization of stepping into the river. We don’t go into the water for its present state, for that one particular moment in time, we go into the water to be invigorated, to be given life. We go into the water knowing it flows, it changes. We go into the water considering depths, temperatures, gifts and dangers. We go into the water understanding it has been there for much longer than we have existed and will continue to be there for much longer than we will exist. But just as we can see ourselves being the ones stepping into the river, with our athletes as part of the water, we need to remember they are taking the same step into their river which includes us as part of the water. As a voice of philosophy himself, Bruce Lee encouraged those moments as well. 

Whether we are the explorer or the water, reflect upon your current state and the state of your current. Coach in the river.

Resources and Research

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/

https://www.thescienceofpsychotherapy.com/prefrontal-cortex/#:~:text=The%20prefrontal%20cortex%20(PFC)%20is,making%2C%20and%20moderating%20social%20behaviour.

PJ Fleck - “Row the Boat” 

Bruce Lee

As Ego, We Go

As an Upper Elementary Guide, working with students from 9 to 12 years old, I am often confronted with, and confront my students with, the oncoming doom of puberty and adolescence. My job is to present the final gauntlet of human experience before they either forget it all or don’t want to hear anything resembling advice from anyone ever! UGH! (Capturing such angst in writing is the sign of true genius, or madness, both of which I am lacking). What I have seen trending in my years as a teacher is that students…children…are often hitting puberty before they have had a chance to fully secure confidence in themselves that should alleviate some of the confusion and chaos that follows. Adding to the physiological mess of it all are the increased social demands, real or perceived, that make a scuffle a brawl.

How then does this affect our young athletes and their ability to manage school, social life, and a competitive field? How do we recognize the signs of psychological burnout and misdirection and its impact on the fragile emotional component in regards to sport? How do we resist our urge to (metaphorically) strangle the living daylights out of them and attempt to contact that scared, confused, and eager young adult that got lost in the big scary world?

It is going to take an investigation into Ego (of which I will provide a brief glimpse) and an attempt to highlight the urgency of supporting these creatures at an early age, especially ones who plan to participate in any competitive field.

The Freudian Slip-pery Slope

Sigmund Freud often gets a bad rap. (Or does he? Do people still talk about him? Has the public’s opinion changed?) We aren’t here to discuss anything more than his theory of the Three Stooges of personality: the id, the ego, and the super-ego. In short, the id represents basic instincts and impulses and is impulsive and irrational. (Study trick: use all words that start with “i” to remember what the id is). The super-ego strives for perfection and achievement of morals; one’s conscience. The ego attempts to operate between these two forces, balancing impulses (id) and inhibitions (super-ego) while maintaining rationality and testing reality.

At this point, you may be confused, asleep, both, or worse…left wanting more. (For those of you who feel this final way I will include some resource links at the end). To narrow the focus of our purpose, the Ego is driven by the id, but attempts to find was to express these desires in a socially acceptable way. Now, let’s superimpose that on the generic definition of “ego”: a person’s sense of self-esteem or self-importance.

Obviously, mixing a splash of Freud with anything will take it up a notch, so I want to caution against a full marriage of these two ideas. However, if we identify the ego of a young athlete as a mix of both of these thought-camps, we are left with an explosive combination that explains the dramatic swings they are capable of experiencing and expressing.

The New Student-Athlete

Especially true for middle and high school student-athletes, life can be demanding, confusing, exhausting, confusing, and demanding. (Exactly). Not only do they face adolescence, but now navigation of a new, expanded social network, an array of external pressures and expectations, and increased exposure to their peers’ performances. The headline match-up becomes:

Ego Development vs Ego Protection

For a teenage athlete, this is the epitome of a zero sum game. Already in a constant, delicate state, there are still many external factors to consider. Has previous performance garnered high-praise such as local or national ranking? Has a depth-chart reflected an appropriate and realistic fish-to-pond ratio? Has a social group constructed a pedestal? Have parents and family members provided a support system that reflects an actual potential? Some of these external factors are also internally sparked. Has the athlete created a social media presence that accurately depicts their skill level? Does the athlete remain humble and driven or do they seek acknowledgement and notoriety? Where does the balance tip between looks and performance?

Does anyone envy this new breed? Would anyone choose to enter into this melting pot of passion, personality, and profile?

What Does It Mean For Coaches?

How many interactions can you remember with your athletes that made you cringe? Those “non-traditional” young athlete responses that look and feel more like a multi-million dollar athlete disagreeing with him multi-million dollar coach about how the game should be played? Those tantrums and emotionally (I’m really running out of synonyms for “fragile” at this point) disparate instances demonstrating Pride and Shame within a moment’s time?

Of course, we are encountering these student-athletes at their most vulnerable, in an arena that they may have created as a haven! If they struggle to keep pace with the image they have promoted of themselves within their sport, then they will undoubtedly react to protect that image. As a result, our best athletes are frequently the least coach-able, and dangerously, the least reachable.

It doesn’t help that their professional counterparts, also more exposed and publicized than ever before, are experiencing and demonstrating the shift to a “gotta look out for me” mindset even within team sports. (I don’t envy the history and mismanagement that has led to the business side of sports creating such animosity). But we need to improve our ability to not just coach, but teach and mentor as well, even when, especially when, we are closest to losing our tempers with our athletes.

How Do We Help Foster Personal Success?

Empathy is the first step in not kicking these athletes off the team. Minor joke, major point. We may not have all gone through that time of life with the same variables in play, but we have all gone through it. We have the hindsight to look back and understand its value, and recognize the coaches and teachers that meant the most to us during that struggle. We now have the opportunity to be those mentors.

Demonstrating the abandonment of Ego Protection in favor of Ego Development can benefit all parties involved. To show our palms to our athletes can help them see us as champions of their growth, not obstacles to it.

Open communication is valuable, but we need to remember that we may just be more static to all the noise they are attempting to manage. Listening may be something that few of those other influences are offering. Remember, all of their peers are probably going through the same issues at the same time. It is rare for those young adults to have the maturity to sit down and give each other the opportunity to speak with someone genuinely listening to what they have going on.

Finally, remember that regardless of your psychoanalytical leanings, they are going through some internal battles. They may reveal a lot of their challenges and struggles through the opportunity of sport. As always, we must observe, adjust, and coach, in all of our unique deliveries and approaches. On any given day, the biggest competition they are facing may not be the game on the schedule, and our jobs are about much more than wins on the court.

Own Your I

Additional Resources:

Google search: Id, ego, super-ego; Freud; Psychoanalysis; Ego

Turning "My Bad" into Good

The Problem

Coaches and Parents, I beg of you to stick with me at the beginning of this article. Believe me, I have been in the situation we are all envisioning:

A student, an athlete, a child fails to some degree at a task and responds to criticism, or redirection, or questioning with, “My bad.”

We all know the range of this failure has at least two scales. One is the actuality of the failure in terms of expected tangible outcomes and the other is how intangibly irritating their failure is to those of us in charge of the situation.

The normal, natural, and totally acceptable response, (ideally controlled enough to remain in our heads), is, “You’re [expletive] [combo expletive option] right it’s ‘YOUR BAD’! Whose else would it be?!”

Often, “My bad” is just as progressive as "I’m sorry” can be for children and young adults. They have no real desire to address, acknowledge, or investigate the ins-and-outs of their mistakes, so they offer a transition phrase with the intention of moving things along. Sometimes it may be meant to convey “I understand”, sometimes it may be meant to convey “get off my back”. Either way, it can be infuriating to those of use attempting to teach them an appropriate way of doing things or give them advice on how to improve their own standing and performance.

But what if? What if we were able to turn the tables on their attempt to sidestep a situation? What if we were able to use their moment of weakness to empower them? What if we could take “My bad” and help turn it into their good?

The Task

When do young, growing humans need more empowerment than in their most embarrassing, vulnerable moments? More, how do we help empower the ones who are passing on those failures as insignificant and meaningless? Entering into the task should be perceived as a contract, and a contract which comes with a failure clause: you may not succeed and that is just part of the deal. Understanding this before attempting anything is paramount to the “growth success” of the task.

With that understanding, (or those teachings after we have worked with individuals to embrace that reality), why not take “my bad” and agree with them? Not in the sense we all love to mentioned above, but in a way that acknowledges their part in the result as powerful and purposeful.

In the midst of a culture with a “victim mindset”, at least these individuals are expressing their own role in the story-line of their lives. Let’s take “My bad” and encourage our young subjects to take that same control and apply it to making amends or turning the tides. It is a simple concept, but one that will trap them in their own influence upon their life and their circumstance. Even if just for that one “ah-ha” moment while they are trying to process or deflect a moment of missing the mark, we can not only support them but help to train the instinct of immediately seeing the first step to recovery.

Simple but effective.

Own your “My bad”.

Own Your I

Extended Research

There are some sources that say former NBA Player Manute Bol may have actually lead the popular use of the phrase.

https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/the-manute-bol-theory-of-my-bad/