If this is where the monarchy is heading count me out!

It’s been a while now since I’ve thought of something worth blogging about. But this past few weeks have reignited the blogging flame, so here goes!

Over the last few weeks I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time in London at the Hockey World Cup. While there I was able to meet with, and reestablish connections with a number of people from the hockey community worldwide. This trip was planned as an opportunity for some professional development, and from that point of view it was very worthwhile. Interestingly, being in London with a professional development ‘hat’ on, it made me evaluate everything I did from that point of view.

One of the highlights of the trip was getting the opportunity to watch “The Lion King”live. As a late 80s baby the Disney movie was a key part of my childhood. Getting to watch it live, was a not-to-be-missed experience. Since the show ended it’s not been far from my brain. I found, that unintentionally I was evaluating it from a coaching standpoint. Here are some of the biggest lessons that I took away.

Experiment and innovate:

For those of you who aren’t in the know, “The Lion King” was an animated Disney movie about Lions. Making this come alive on stage would obviously mean some changes were needed. The show begins with an animal parade, as all the characters make their way on stage. There’s a giraffe played by a person walking on all fours on stilts, a meerkat played by a man in a green suit with a full size meerkat mockup in front of him. Every single animal was created in an imaginative way. By viewing the problem to be solved through a different lens, the show’s creators manage to create a whole world that ‘makes sense’ to everyone interacting with it. What could have been a ridiculous challenge “how do we make animals 

come alive on stage” became a way to create a whole new world. (Aladdin pun intended)

Give the right jobs to the right people:

Throughout the story of “The Lion King” we meet a number of characters who have special roles within the animal kingdom. Zazu plays the part of the King’s advisor. Zazu is a small bird, and as such can provide the king with a different opinion and view point when it comes to matters of state (I’m reaching here, but stick with me!). However, early in the story Zazu is told to accompany young Simba and Nala on a trip to the watering hole. Simba and Nala escape Zazu’s watchful eye and end up in a dark, elephant’s graveyard. Here they are surrounded by hyenas, and put in grave danger. Protecting Simba, and keeping him from harms way, is not a skill in Zazu’s skillset. As such he struggles, and fails. Acknowledging this, he rushes to get help.

This is an integral part of the story, as it establishes a number of key points that drive the story. I wonder though was this simply a case of Zazu not being used in an appropriate role. As coaches we are lucky enough to work in a business of people. We all have different strengths and areas of expertise. Let Zazu advise, and don’t make him protect. Similarly allow your players to fulfil roles that match their strengths. This is worth bearing in mind when working with a staff too. Give the right job, to the right person.

Be careful when dealing with youth, help to manage expectation:

Simba is the rightful heir to the throne. This means that once his father passes away Simba will become the leader of the pride, and king of Pride Rock. In order to help him prepare for this role Zazu is assigned to teach and guide him. As we see in the song below this isn’t always appreciated by Simba. To me, “The Lion King” is really a story of how Simba deals with the pressure associated with his predetermined role. Initially loving it, and singing about how he “just can’t wait to be king”, the reality sets in soon after. Once his father dies he runs away, admittedly he is tricked at this moment by his uncle Scar, but nevertheless he disappears. Once Nala arrives the pressure of being expected to live up to his father’s name weighs him down, and he balks at the idea of returning home.

Too often with young players we build a plan for them in our mind. Acknowledging an athlete as ‘a special talent’ and putting pressure on them to succeed. As an athlete grows and develops we need to be conscious of the voice that we’re providing. Are we the Scar to their world, or are we Zazu. Do we teach, or inspire fear. Are we acting in their best interest or our own?

Know who you can trust:

I think that it’s clear here that Scar isn’t someone that should be trusted. But, as he’s a member of the family he plays a role in court. As coaches we need to be aware of the kind of people we are keeping around, and make sure that they’re acting in your best interests. That doesn’t mean they always need to agree, but knowing that disagreement is coming from the right place is very important.

As you prepare for your own coaching keep these things in mind:

-      Experiment and innovate – solve problems creatively! It could be more fun.

-      Give the right jobs to the right people – set your athletes up for success, that way they’ll experience it more. 

-      Protect youth athletes from inappropriate pressure – pressure can be a good thing, but just like medicine there’s an appropriate dosage.

-      Know who you can trust

The life of a coach

As we approach the end of the collegiate season I wanted to share some of what I have seen of the life of a coach these days.

We all want to be coaches right? Everyone who played sport as a kid sees the appeal. The chance to be around a sport we love, and be paid to do it, who wouldn't want that. And besides it's not that hard really, I mean all you do is just put a few cones down at training.

If you're reading this, you probably are a coach. As such you've probably been exposed to the thought process above a few times. And it probably infuriates you. In very few other professions would you see this assumption that anyone can do what you do. This led me to think about what coaches actually do.

When I was a kid I took up hockey at aged four, struggled with soccer between ages 8 and 12/13, sailed between ages 13 and 17 and stuck a toe into some other sports along the way. In each setting I was exposed to some very different coaches, but in each setting I received (at the core of it) most of the following:

Technical instruction - How you do what is needed in the sport
Tactical instruction - When and why you would do these things
Situational/cultural instruction - What is appropriate behavior when practicing this sport
Vocabulary enrichment - Sometimes sport related, often times rude words!

But, is that all that a coach does?

If my coaching journey is anything to go off I hope the answer is no. This past weekend I hosted my team at my house for pumpkin carving. Picture the scene, 22 athletes and staff crammed into my living room for some lunch before taking to the front lawn to have a pumpkin carving competition. Bear in mind these are college athletes, aged 18-22, not children. I have to say it made for some interesting viewing!

What struck me most about the whole experience was firstly how competitive my coworkers got when the carving started. But, more than that, it had nothing to do with sport. We were just enjoying each other's company, and relaxing as a team. The whole event was enjoyable and natural, with everyone getting plenty of food!

The lesson in this? For me this year, and every year in coaching, has seen my role within our staff and team change. That's normal in coaching. Every group is different and every group needs something different from their staff. I tell people now that my job title is "Assistant Coach" not "Assistant to the Head Coach". My role is to help. Each athlete, each staff member, everyone we work with. Not just today, but everyday. In doing that I'm finding that I'm getting to enjoy myself a lot more. This season we've had highs and lows like every team. The highest highs for me have come from celebrating our athletes success, not just on the field.

So... what is the role of a coach?

BUILD an environment where everyone can flourish in pursuit of your team's goals.
NOURISH the group you're working with athletically and socially.
ENJOY yourself. It's got to be natural, and fun. If you're not enjoying yourself why would they?!?
CELEBRATE everything that's worth celebrating. Wins come in many forms, find them and celebrate them!

Hooked on Phonics

What phonics and how we learn to speak and spell can teach us about coaching.

In my previous life I worked as a Primary School Teacher. One of the most interesting parts of the development of young students is how they learn to spell and read. Children are encouraged to sound out words, and to use a phonetic approach to language. This approach allows the children to find the keys to language and to recognize words by breaking down the letters that make them up.

I can only assume that everyone who is reading this has been a small child. The English language is not an easy beast to bend and mold to your will. But somehow we have all reached a point where we can. These days people do that through the use of phonics and a phonetic alphabet.

Watch the first minute of this video. You'll see that while the student may not be finding the right spelling, the spelling they do find works for them.

So here's the question that phonics poses for me. The idea of phonics is that children learn the variety of sounds associated with a letter. They choose the letter that best matches their word, and see if it works. But at some stage they need to know the correct spelling. How do we know when to give that specific answer?

As coaches we are encouraged to teach athletes through experiences. Put them in situations where they are exposed to a range of experiences, and then allow them to find the solution that works best for them.

From a phonics point of view this could be as simple as:
Teacher: "How do you spell cat?"
Pupil: "K - A -T - KAT"

This spelling is perfectly serviceable and we can see how they would arrive at it. However at a point in their development they will need to choose the letter C.

As coaches we do a similar thing. We pose a question, and allow the athlete to solve it. We put them in a game with infinitely more choices that the 26 letters of the alphabet. They problem solve to find the right solution for their choosing, and they get a response of "correct/incorrect" based on their success in the situation.

The real question as coaches we need to ask ourselves is, when do we correct the spelling? When it comes to technical skill instruction, do we jump to showing them the "right" way to do something or do we let them sound it out?

What should we do? Is that sport specific? Is it technique specific?

Personally I am finding that I'm starting to really enjoy setting challenges and letting the athletes solve their own way. It's facilitating discussion on the challenge and allowing the athletes to demonstrate significantly more understanding.

I'm starting with the man in the mirror...

Self reflection in the modern coaching world. Who, how and why?

Over the last number of months I've been very lucky to have an opportunity to get involved in some Coach Education. As part of this journey I've started to self reflect a lot more. It got me thinking that as coaches we regularly hear and say a lot of similar things to our athletes. Most, if not all, of us are guilty of getting frustrated and blaming our athletes "Why don't you get it?!" "If only they were smarter/more game aware..."

At times the frustration seen by this coach

may have been shared by some of us!

But ultimately who is responsible for what these athletes are learning, and as such developing the knowledge base to deal with. Our job as coaches is to work with our athletes where they are. We need to be chameleons who can change and adapt to the needs of our athletes. Our questioning and session design should be targeted towards our athletes level, not what works best for us.

Once a session ends as coaches we should take the time to reflect on our session. How did we speak to our athletes. How did they respond. What aspects of the conversation went well. What would you have done differently.

Your session design, and how it's received may end up in very different places. As coaches we should be conscious of people's understanding of tone, content and delivery style.

So, other than self reflection what can we do?

Here are a few ideas:
1. Try having someone video a session and recording yourself. Listen to what it is you're saying and how you're saying it. What you thought was a good comment at the time, would you make it again?
2. If you work with a staff, ask one of them to watch a chunk of practice and take notes. Become reflective as a group, and provide each other with feedback on your sessions.
3. Talk to your athletes. See what activities and behaviors they enjoy and don't enjoy at practice. If these activities are crucial see if you can reframe them so that your athletes understand them better. If they're not - get rid of them! Ultimately you and the athletes are a team, you expect them to listen to you, why not do the same for them.

Over the past few months I've really applied myself to this, and it's reaping rewards. The athletes I work with are enjoying and understanding our sessions better. If a part of practice doesn't work well I find out relatively quickly and as a result our practices are becoming more efficient. The athletes are engaged and challenged and our questioning sessions are becoming more worthwhile.



At the weekend I was really lucky to have one of my athletes participate in a coaching course I was helping with. As we worked through the day I kept wondering was she seeing what we were talking about as best practices in the sessions we have together. That experience is going to give us a framework to talk about future sessions, and hopefully a part of my reflection process is going to be a really informed young coach who is an active participant in the session.

"I’m starting with the man in the mirror

I’m asking him to change his ways

And no message could have been any clearer

If you wanna make the world a better place

Take a look at yourself and then make that...

Change!"

Holidays with the family

As we all take some time away from the pitch I thought I'd share some holiday thoughts about what I'm learning about myself as a coach this holiday season.

Most sports teams take a break from competition over the festive period, to allow everyone that most sacred of gifts. Time with the family. As myself and my cousin both made the decision to stay stateside this year we agreed we'd do some traveling together to make sure we got that family time. As with all things in life I started to see some small lessons that I thought I could apply to my reflective practice as a coach.

We decided to head to New Orleans as complete tourists. Sharing a hotel room for the week we definitely got plenty of this "quality time" that is so important over the holidays. But we are very different people, and this created some moments that really stuck with me. On one of our first days in New Orleans we spent three hours walking around exploring in almost complete silence. Those of you who know me will know that I am usually a very chatty person. I need stimulus, I love to converse and share ideas. Three hours of new experiences with limited interaction. For me this is difficult.

Now don't for a second think I didn't enjoy the trip. We hit most of the great sights, ate at some fantastic restaurants, and I am sure I will look back on this trip fondly.

Interestingly, last night this image appeared on my twitter timeline. Sometimes images really spark and attach themselves to how I'm feeling, this stuck with me. At times there is a need to keep your mouth shut and plough on, but there is also a time to make your opinion heard, that way everyone is dealing with the same information.

Interestingly, while out for drinks, my cousin received a text message from a friend. His friend wrote "My gosh these people just don't shut up!" to which he replied "It's great here, myself and Mark are just on our phones."

Contrast that with how I was feeling at that moment. It was a bleak comparison. My need for stimulus and conversation, contrasted with his love of silence and interaction with his phone. How did we end up on such drastically different ideas of what a good time was?

The answer is simple. We didn't communicate. Now that conversation is not an easy one. But sometimes as coaches we need to be able to have those difficult conversations. And similarly for any players reading we need to be okay with being honest with our coaches. Rather than the colorful language of the image above try this one.

So to all (probably both!) of my readers here is my hope for us all:

- we can clarify what it is that we are setting out to achieve this season
- we all know what that will look like
- we create a safe environment whereby people can come and talk about moments where our expectations don't line up.

That way your trip to New Orleans can be more of the experience you set out for.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and thank you for taking the time to read this!

DJ Danger Mouse and Native American Culture

What is a new idea?

In 2004 DJ Danger Mouse released The Grey Album. In my opinion, one of the greatest rap albums ever released. He took Jay-Z’s Black Album and remixed it with The Beatles White Album. This was the first rap album I ever owned. A bootlegged CD I stumbled over when I was listening to a sibling’s music. Little did I know the ideas that shaped this album would later be an integral part of how I, and you too if you’re honest, coach.

Encore was probably one of my favorite songs on the whole album. Interestingly at one stage Jay – Z says “When I come back like Jordan, wearing the 4-5; It ain’t to play games with you […]” which takes me strangely, and tenuously, to my next point.

Having moved to the United States four years ago to pursue a career in coaching I quickly realized that I was not up to date with American sporting culture. Like every good sports nerd I took to the local book stores and started reading. Biography after biography of different coaches and athletes until I arrived at something special. Eleven Rings – The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson. Phil Jackson is a highly decorated basketball coach who does things a little differently. Over his life he immersed himself in meditation, humanistic psychology and Native American Philosophy.

Phil Jackson and the Michael Jordan led Chicago Bulls used to start every practice, and finish it, with everyone standing in a circle. The circle is a hugely important shape in Native American culture. Shortly after reading Eleven Rings I was at dinner with a friend. They told me a little more about the importance of the circle to Native American culture. This is a lesson that I will remember forever. In Native American culture, it is assumed that all things are circles, and every person has a place on the circle. From this place, we are also granted one point of view. We can choose to spend our life in one of two ways, looking at things from our point of view and getting a really deep understanding of this. Or, we can work our way around the circle, experiencing and understanding everyone else’s point of view. Within their culture it is believed that working your way around the circle is the way to fully understand the world.

I pose a question, when DJ Danger Mouse started with Jay-Z’s Black album and added the music from The Beatles, wasn’t he doing just that? Working his way around the circle, trying to understand different viewpoints, or mix different approaches into his music.

Much like the rest of the world I spend far too much time online. Recently I watched a wonderful TED talk, “Creativity is a remix” by Kirby Ferguson. In it he proposes a simple idea, nothing is original. In fact a lot of what I’ve talked about so far is inspired by this Ted Talk! Probably more closely than I set out to achieve. 

In Mick McKinnon's last piece he talks about how we should be trying to find the edge, and about how we all start out as a cover band. I couldn’t agree more with this! But I caution coaches to look far beyond the limits of our sport to become something special. Only by running far away from our initial influences can we truly figure out what works for us. Look at other sports, other cultures, other fields entirely. Read books, watch movies, but take notes. Find the lesson in everything you like or enjoy, and then find a way to relate that back to coaching. The teams I work with know why we watch film on ourselves, not because of anything I’ve told them. Because Rafiki told them.

When doing a little research for this piece I stumbled across this article. and in it is a simple quote that I think we should all remember "What you know, you do not own. And what you do not own, you must share."

So think about it, what are you doing to make your way around the circle. Whose ideas are you changing, and remixing to make your won? If you're struggling who do you call on? I spend as much time as I can talking to coaches from other sports, hoping to steal something I can use with my team. I'd encourage you to do the same.

Pokemon, Harry Potter and other 90s fads

If you're like me you grew up with Pokemon, but have you ever wondered what lessons it may have taught you as a coach?

In 1996 Nintendo released Pokemon Red and Blue for the Gameboy Color. This sparked a worldwide phenomenon that still goes until this day. In the game you travel from gym to gym training your own small team of creatures in your search to become the best Pokemon trainer in the land. As you and your team grow your Pokemon evolve and become more powerful, and the challenges that you face become more and more difficult.

If that process doesn't sound in the slightest bit similar to most people's journeys as a coach then I am definitely in need of the upcoming holiday period! If you listen to the theme song of the cartoon show it becomes even more apparent that we could learn something here.

As a coach I got into the game at the ground floor. My athletes were young, and often training sessions were really a disguised way to provide a babysitting service. My job at that time was to start to foster a love of the game, and to teach some of the basic skills. The kids I coached were more concerned with having fun than winning games, and that's ok! I was 15, and the u12s called me "Harry Potter" because I had glasses. We were all just starting out, and we were growing together.

When I got to be a little bit older, I started to help out with our local High Performance development pathway. I will remember forever the look on some of the girls faces as they realized that "Harry Potter" was back and would be helping to coach them. Some of these girls continued through the pipeline and are now playing First XI hockey. As a player they've gone through an evolution process. Their training environment has had to match that, as has their coaches style.

This leads me, in a roundabout way, back to the video game. Stick with me in this phase, I promise there's a point! Within the game your Pokemon evolve when they reach a certain level. This manifests itself with huge physical changes and ability developments. To get this upgrade in level your Pokemon has to gain experience from a battle with another Pokemon. Every Pokemon is different and has their own abilities. Similarly they evolve at different levels. As such you have to figure out a way to win, while still giving these young pokemon an opportunity to gain the experience needed to evolve. Does that sound familiar?

There were however a few issues with this process. Sometimes your Pokemon would lose their fight and "faint" (No-one died, this is a kids game remember). With that they lost their opportunity for experience. So the win was crucial as a step towards the evolution. There was one way around this though. As with every video game there were shortcuts. In Pokemon there was a "Rare Candy" you could give them to help them grow a level quickly. This "Rare Candy" approach was a bit of a quick fix as you weren't going to end up with as strong of a pokemon at the end of it.

So if to train them is our cause but we wanna be the very best how do we balance this? In Pokemon I used to do this by putting out a weak Pokemon at the start of a battle, allowing them to get the Exp and then switched them for a stronger Pokemon to make sure we got the win. Just recently I read a very interesting article on Sergi Samper a younger player at FC Barcelona who is touted as one of the next big prospects to emerge from La Masia, their youth development center. In the article Alex Jonson points out that when a soccer player is young they regularly get put on as a forward for a brief period near the end to get a feel for the speed of the game. These periods get a little longer game to game as they gain experience. But for Samper, and other young midfielders, this process doesn't work quite as well. They need time to be an important part of how the team operates. So how do we as coaches allow them to become a Gyarados without the fear of our little Magikarp just splashing aimlessly out there?

That is in itself the big challenge as we strive to become the very best. But don't forget "To train them is our cause". By doing that, we can be sure that the wins will come, and we'll have a lot less fainting to contend with.