The Fallacy of Uncoachable Kids
/Coaching advice on social media is cyclical, and at this point of the year there is a deluge of “attitude” posts. Here’s a tasting:
Parents: It’s tough out there, I understand that, but we can’t solely blame our athletes' lack of development on their coaches. Question, how much they work on their own, do they read books and watch videos on the game and do they ask questions? Careful of blaming and look within. - @baseballdues48
A coach will coach your technique. A coach will coach your game intellect. A coach will coach your practice habits. A coach will coach your fundamentals. A coach should NOT have to coach your energy. Ever. Your energy reveals your attitude and how badly you want it. - attributed to Darren Fenster
Uncoachable kids become unemployable adults. Let your kids get used to someone being touch on them. It’s life, get over it. - attributed to Patrick Murphy
Perhaps it’s due to the end of the school year with kids about to run wild without regular supervision that these posts make a return to the internet’s gestalt. Fearful coaches and parents want to make sure that their child’s mental eye remains ever-fixed upon the ball of improvement in their sport of choice. As if a day off or a poor attitude during one practice will utterly sabotage a young player’s potential prospects.
Once again, these are examples of Mental Toughness in place of Mental Agility. The core of my hypothesis is that Mental Toughness is great if a player already knows how to perform, but is unhelpful at best and harmful at worst when developing youth, middle school, and high school players. All of whom haven’t yet honed the essential physical skills of their sport, and still have developing brains that are considerably weaker in emotional regulation, long-term thinking, and delayed gratification. Even worse, few athletes are taught anything more than the physical skills they need plus some vague notion of a “4th quarter” or “9th inning” mentality. These “attitude” posts are shared like hotcakes because they sound pensive, but communicate no useful information to the intended audience. They’re feel good posts for the poster; a parent or coach can then rest easy knowing they shared a generational dog-whistle, but the athlete is still left in the dark to deal with their emotions, frustrations, and anxiety.
Enter Mental Agility. My answer to the Fallacy of Uncoachable Kids.
I’ve coached thousands of athletes. Others have coached tens of thousands of athletes. There is no uncoachable kid, there are only coaches who haven’t yet discovered how to reach a player. The player is under no obligation to communicate their challenges to their coach because they don’t yet have the mental equipment needed to converse like a fully-grown adult about obstacles they have only just experienced one time. Adults have the benefit of looking back on their lives, full of ups and downs, and knowing that ups will follow downs eventually. Kids don’t have that. Everything feels permanent. A coach’s job, part of it anyway, is to widen an athlete’s understanding of themselves and improve their performance in stressful situations — that is Mental Agility coaching, not Mental Toughness coaching, which demands an athlete constrict their focus to the task at hand in spite of their stress.
Mental Agility widens the mental gaze, while Mental Toughness narrows it.
A basic grounding in philosophy will help a young athlete frame their experiences on and off the competition floor while making it easier to choose the right mental tool for the situation.
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” — Marcus Aurelius
"If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present." — Lao Tzu
Now, take these maxims and apply some useful physiological tools to reduce stress in the body, and watch a kid calm down before pitching in the 9th inning or stave off a panic attack because practice is over and they’re anxious about showing off a bad report card to their parents.
Please, share all the coaching posts you’d like, but don’t stop there. Don’t tell kids that their future is entirely up to them without illuminating the first few steps. Don’t give out platitudes with one hand unless you’re also giving them navigational tools with the other. Endeavor, as coaches and parents, to remember that kids are freaking kids, not miniature adults. They’ll be tougher if they move into the collegiate or even professional ranks of their sport if we teach them more about how to handle their distressing thoughts and days when they woke up on the wrong side of the bed than if we simply demand they get their act together.
