Putting Yourself Up Front: Coaching Strategies
Attracting the right athletes for your strengths and style: You are here to make people better. Identify how you can help and identify their goal of hiring a coach.
What’s your style? (I like to teach and also give enough freedom to allow athletes to think for themselves, make mistakes and also have fun.) Identify your strengths as a coach, know them, and decide how to teach your message to each type of athlete. Questions you should ask yourself are: what are your program fundamentals, what is your style, and what culture do you want to cultivate?
Preventing before solving: Weeding out the problems from the front, versus after they’ve already been committed. Everybody wants to know what to do when things go wrong. This tool helps you establish a strategy to minimize curve balls and problems in advance.
To establish what my expectations are of the athlete, I learn about the athlete and then make my expectations clear. If I do this before we start, it prevents problems and mismatched athlete/coach relationships. Explore mismatched more! I like that phrase. You are an elite coach, and part of the mismatch is teaching people that their actions must match their goals or their goals may need to change.
Establishing expectations: You have a very specific expectation for how your coaching system is going to work. Too many coaches are afraid to delineate their expectations, only considering the athlete’s expectations. You don't want to have a come-to-Jesus conversation with a potential athlete where you sit them down and say, "Okay, let me tell you how this is gonna work!" Instead, you have the athlete intake questionnaire and code of conduct to establish your expectations and communicate how you operate as a coach. People who aren't going to fit in with your system will not sign up, because my tools helped them realize that we may have different values. And the people who are going to be good fits with your system will feel confident and enthusiastic because they know you're in charge and they know you'll help them achieve their goals.
Here is a clear example of how you can create this for your coaching and set yourself up with the right athletes for long term success as a coach
Welcome to Marilyn Chychota Coaching LLC. I’m looking forward to helping you achieve your goals. Together as a team, we will set you up for success. I’ve outlined some questions to help me know you better before we begin, and I’ve outlined my expectations of you as an athlete. You’ll find this in the MCC Athlete Questionnaire and the MCC Athlete Code of Conduct.
I have expectations as a coach, and I outline these for you to get us started with clear expectations of each other. I’ll be giving you my best every day, and in return, I expect you to put the best version of yourself forward towards your goals. Follow the plan and put forth your best effort every day.
Do the work I’m asking. I respect your progress, and my complete focus is to make you better. If you start missing sessions or not doing what’s asked, then your actions and outcomes become your responsibility
Discipline: You are adults. There’s not going to be a punishment for not following the plan, getting the work done, or missing sessions. If you make it a repeated pattern, it is telling me that you don’t value your goals or our partnership. It’s up to you to make the changes necessary to succeed at your goals.
Here is the MCC Athlete Questionnaire to help me start to get to know more about you before we begin:
Here is the MCC Athlete Code of Conduct to review:
It’s my promise to you as your coach to provide quality coaching through science and the proven art of success. My athletes’ goals always come first. The athlete-coach relationship is a fundamental part of our success.
I believe in consistency over time towards reaching your goals. I want to support you to go further than you ever thought possible. My goal is not to sell you short cuts, but to provide quality that will get you results. I want to empower you through sport to be the best you can be in your life and your sport. I provide long term planning, dedicated coaching, and a commitment to making you better. I believe in coaching each athlete to their needs, their personal development, and to their specific goals.
My philosophy as a coach is to create an environment that enables athletes to develop confidence in their abilities, learn all the skills necessary, and to have opportunities to understand their tendencies while developing them to be their best.
~Marilyn