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089- Coachability Wins Championships: Self-Awareness, Humility, & Art of Improvement
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Championship teams aren’t built on ego or metrics—they’re built on coachability. In this episode of the Captains & Coaches Podcast, Tex breaks down why self-awareness and humility are the real competitive advantages in sport and life.
You’ll learn how level-setting on skill set, accepting feedback, and choosing humility under pressure unlock faster improvement, stronger team chemistry, and long-term leadership growth—for team leaders.
Key Takeaways:
- Coachability wins championships—self-awareness and humility matter more than talent or metrics.
- Level set on skill set to accept feedback, adjust faster, and improve under pressure.
- Humility is accuracy, not shame—see yourself clearly without tearing yourself down.
- Pride separates teams; humility unites them and builds trust, chemistry, and leadership.
- The right attitude turns reps into results—do the work, accept correction, and keep getting 1% better.
*NEW* Education - Captains & Coaches course, "Why They're Not Listening - Coaching Today's Athlete": http://listen.captainsandcoaches.com
Training - Old Bull Program - 7 Day Free Trial - https://bit.ly/old-bull-train
#Coachability #AthleteLeadership #SportsLeadership #MentalPerformance #CoachingDevelopment #SelfAwareness #TeamCulture #AthleteMindset #LeadershipThroughSport #CaptainsAndCoaches
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Transcript
Introduction to Leadership in Athletics
00:00:00
Speaker
Action. Be humble in victory and gracious in defeat. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond.
Exploring Self-awareness and Humility
00:00:10
Speaker
I'm your host Texel Kulkin and today we are stripping away the physical metrics like the 40-yard dash, the big bench press numbers, and everything you see on a weight room wall in a high school to talk about two mental muscles that actually determine if you reach your potential in sport.
00:00:27
Speaker
and life And that's self-awareness and humility. We're going to start with self-awareness. I'm pulling a lot of information from my new course, Why They're Not Listening.
00:00:38
Speaker
Head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com for
Building Self-awareness in Athletes
00:00:41
Speaker
more. You get the first lesson for free to check that out. But self-awareness, I'm starting lacrosse season today. We're going to our first practice today.
00:00:49
Speaker
later this afternoon when I finish up this podcast, but it's going to be establishing a baseline of self-awareness of where we are so that way the kids can accept coaching and we can really accelerate and get momentum because we've got a game in less than two weeks.
00:01:06
Speaker
very important, self-awareness is going to be key. I'm going to be pulling a lot of the opportunities in connection to social emotional learning that I talk about in that Why They're Not Listening course. Self-awareness isn't just about discovering yourself.
00:01:23
Speaker
It's about level setting on your skill set so you can accept feedback as a coach.
Fostering Growth through Honest Self-assessment
00:01:30
Speaker
Now, level setting, sometimes that's going to be Kids are, their ego's just a little bit higher than their skills, or they may have been playing the summer ball, or their weight room numbers have been inflated because they're shorting their squats, or getting some assistance on bench press, and then their mind is above their current level, their current abilities.
00:01:52
Speaker
Now, as we start practice, I got to humble them. I need to level set and create some self-awareness for exactly where they are. There's also going to be a lot of the student athletes on teams that their belief in themselves is well below their skill set, their level set. They start to compare themselves to others around them, maybe the best player on the team, or they're watching college ball and seeing these amazing athletes, and they think, oh, I'm not that, or I'll never be that.
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, it's not about being that other person. It's about maximizing your own potential. So we need to help them see where they are so we can continue to build upon that.
00:02:32
Speaker
And they get out of that mental loop, mental gutter of, I can't do this. I'll never be able to do that. And they can just get that 1% better every single day.
Balancing Physical and Emotional Skills
00:02:40
Speaker
every single day So it it it is developing a straightforward, honest understanding of what makes you tick, your current abilities, whatever skill we're talking about. That's why I love the weight room. The iron never lies. Henry Rollins, right?
00:02:55
Speaker
It is the ability to recognize also not only your skills, but your emotions. your understanding, your physical and your mental strengths, and crucially acknowledge the gap between where we are and where we need to be as a team or where I need to be as an individual to take on and accept my role within the team.
00:03:17
Speaker
ah right So I refer to this as level set on skill
Feedback and Emotional Literacy
00:03:21
Speaker
set. You're going to hear me say that a lot. Think about game film. And I'm and about to take a lot of you older coaches back to maybe some traumatic experiences in high school where the old bowl coach coachch puts it, the eye in the sky doesn't lie.
00:03:37
Speaker
And I have hilarious stories. They weren't hilarious at the time, but I was trapped in a feeling of embarrassment when I was getting called out for making mistakes. And a couple of my favorite, McQuilkin, you didn't even know where the ball was! And just getting yelled at and threatened for a size 9 boot to go up my ass if I didn't get this play the next time.
00:04:00
Speaker
So some negative reinforcement there, some hilarity maybe, but Threats? I don't know. But it's watching the film and you're focusing on yourself, trying to see the reality. But this feeling, this pressure, this shame starts to get in the way, depending on how that information is delivered.
00:04:23
Speaker
So I want all my athletes to get focused on fixing, not on feeling. So the problem many athletes struggle, this is that emotional literacy. You're gonna see this all the time with the high school boys and girls.
00:04:37
Speaker
They can't label what they're feeling, so then they just get locked into it and not focus on the correction that we wanna do. So one, it's how I deliver the information and two, increasing their emotional literacy, which is then going to increase their emotional capacity and be willing to accept feedback and not let any negative feedback from me as a coach, other coaches, their teammates, and then really preparing them for when the negative feedback comes from opponents.
Exercises and Tests to Enhance Humility
00:05:09
Speaker
So it's level setting on skill sets so they know exactly where they are and not letting negative things approach them. Just focus on one set better or how can I readjust my aim on the next opportunity, on the next rep, on the next play.
00:05:25
Speaker
Key insight here, if you can't identify what you're feeling, whether it's anxious or even even guilt about making a mistake, then we can't make a technical adjustment to fix it.
00:05:38
Speaker
So allow them the opportunity to feel whatever they're feeling, but then get them level. Again, that's going to be on me as a coach. I can't get mad at them for making a mistake on the field. I can get frustrated with them for not remembering certain things that they needed to remember from previous sessions, but then I got remind them and then hold them accountable for that. So there's a difference there between getting angry about them making a mistake on the field and then not recalling, not remembering what we needed to so we can progress faster because we got a game coming up.
00:06:11
Speaker
and I need that component of this to be present on a game when stress is higher. there I love humility using the warmup and teaching this.
00:06:21
Speaker
Dead bugs are my favorite exercise. We're laying down on the ground. We got our arms up like Frankenstein, legs straight up in the air, my legs driving my heels towards the sky, actively pulling my shoelaces towards my knee,
00:06:34
Speaker
I'm laying long on the ground, long spine. I can tell right there who did their strength conditioning just by this exercise. Can they hold this longer than a minute?
00:06:45
Speaker
Whose hamstrings are tight based off this? Whose calves are tight on this? Is there an imbalance between a right or left leg? So I draw attention to this.
00:06:55
Speaker
I can see it, but then I want them to get build a mind-muscle connection with their body. So then ask them if they how that that movement is feeling. Making a connection between the position and what I'm seeing so they can feel the tight calves. They can feel the tight hamstrings. They can feel the weakness leaving their body for doing more dead bugs.
00:07:18
Speaker
So aiming to utilize movement as self-awareness tool to help them see what I see, and guess what the solution is for a lot of the warmups and trunk work that I give them.
00:07:30
Speaker
To get better at it is more of that trunk work, something they can do simple on their own time, And they'll do plenty of it within their their physical warm-ups that we go on.
00:07:41
Speaker
So that's that's why I love the dead bug. Also, to begin each season often is going to be a conditioning test or a skill-based test.
00:07:52
Speaker
This is the version of film. there's no There's no shame there. It's we got a number on the conditioning test. We got a number on the skill test. Well, the only way is up and the only way also is to put more effort in or put more work in to get there.
00:08:08
Speaker
we We're going to do a lot of conditioning within practice. We're going to practice also certain drills with the intensity of 10 cities. But at the same time, if you really got to cut your time, you got to put extra work in, hit the extra runs, hit the extra sprints or the extra skill work necessary to do that.
00:08:26
Speaker
And there is no shame following these tests. It's a bottom line. You pass or you failed. Get to this marker. We also provide opportunities before practice for them to highlight whatever it is, whether it's a skill issue or a conditioning issue.
00:08:44
Speaker
Opportunities are presented there, and the effort they're showing up early to do this work is rewarded versus shame for missing that test. So this is where self-awareness starts to bleed into humility. Our next topic, they start to put forth the effort of showing up 15, 20 minutes early to get extra work in because the test told them something about themselves that maybe they were overconfident or maybe they surprised themselves, but there's still more more work to do for me to compete and get on the field come game day.
00:09:19
Speaker
All right, so we have level set. Now we want to see the gap in our game, and this is where we need humility to keep showing up before practice, to keep putting forth the effort.
00:09:31
Speaker
And we have to clear some major misconceptions here for humility, and a lot of athletes think being humble means walking around saying, I'm terrible, I'm a loser, I have nothing to offer.
00:09:45
Speaker
I'm going to explore more of that within podcasts. I'm seeing this trend within within high school ball football players especially where they want to be shamed as a spark and a motivation and that's not healthy long term.
Misconceptions and Importance of Humility
00:09:59
Speaker
I don't buy into that and teach them the value of where they are versus trying to drag them down for maybe a spark of energy, a spark of fight, flight, freeze. I'm going really deep dive into that. I'll tell you right now, it's not healthy in the long run.
00:10:14
Speaker
It may work for this instant, this moment in practice. However, I'm thinking 10 years down the line. That's the leaders that I want to invest in. Okay. All right. All that aside, according to recovery and trauma expert, Tim Fletcher, i encourage you guys to YouTube that name. He's got a wealth of knowledge that I've been working with and pouring into and applying to to my coaching techniques, skills, opportunities, humility, all this good stuff. And he says that effect where the kids start to drag them down, that that's not humility.
00:10:46
Speaker
That is shame. Shame says, I am not good enough. I am a doormat. We don't want them to feel that way because that's going to pull them away from practice and have them disappear.
00:10:58
Speaker
We need them present. So true humility is seeing yourself accuracy. We've level set on our skill set. You see yourself as that, and you see yourself as equal to others. I'm not comparing myself to my teammates.
00:11:13
Speaker
We're all on the same team here. I'm not negatively viewing myself or negatively viewing my teammates. We're all in this together. Pride Opposite of that would be pride and that creates a hierarchy and it downsizes everyone else to be inferior and you upsize yourself to be superior.
00:11:34
Speaker
If we're trying to win as a team, as a unit, and you start to separate yourself, without pulling them up, without asking your teammates to show up early and work with you so they can improve to get closer to your skill set, that's called being a leader, then that gap is going to continue to grow, not only physically or within your skills, but also mentally.
00:11:57
Speaker
and you don't trust your teammates because you see yourself as superior with them and i've seen this tear teams apart and then kids that had great potential as freshmen whether it's at the high school or the college level by the time they're seniors and i've either worked with them or played with them for four years They are not the same potential, that the the light that they had as a freshman, because up here they lost it. There was too much pride within that.
00:12:29
Speaker
So now they always think to themselves, I i have to prove I'm better. Now, that is a good motivator if i'm I'm staring at the schedule and I see the number one team in the state or the number one team in the country, and that is motivation for me, that I need to be better so I can i can compete against them.
00:12:48
Speaker
Now, when I start to only try to be better than my teammates, now I'm limiting them.
Team Dynamics and the Role of Humility
00:12:55
Speaker
I continue to push them down versus pull them up to where I am or where we need to be because it's not just a one-man show.
00:13:03
Speaker
So something to consider. We can have our teacher leader's humility that says, I am who I am. i don't have to prove anything to anyone, but that's that level set.
00:13:15
Speaker
There's still so much more work that I can put in I am giving everything I can. It also teaches you to give everything you have and realize that there is more to give. I can work on my strengths and make my strengths stronger and then look at my weaknesses, not as a weakness and try to cover them up, which is something prideful people do.
00:13:37
Speaker
It's looking at my weaknesses and seeing what teammate complements that. and now we can work together in tandem and be a great unit play a two-man game or three within that a line on hockey or a line within the ah lacrosse field So it helps us understand where we are and see the strengths in others versus just covering up our weaknesses and where we can start to to build as a team.
00:14:04
Speaker
So that's something to consider. And we we accept the whole package of ourselves and our teammates, and we can continue to progress and get 1% better versus making the gap bigger between myself and my weaknesses or myself and the team.
00:14:21
Speaker
Okay, I've explained critical for team dynamics, and over the course of a whole season, that gap starts to become toxic and tear people apart. I've seen parents start to fill that gap as well with negative. On the ride home, they'll sit they'll be riding home with their kid at the high school level at least, and they'll communicate, why is coach playing Timmy all the time? You are so much better than Timmy.
00:14:49
Speaker
And then the kid starts to believe that and then it creates some separation there. That's pride from the parent. I understand you have pride for your kids and want you to, but the negative sense of pride where you start to separate and not give them guidance.
00:15:05
Speaker
Looks like Timmy, yeah how would I frame that? Hopefully the parent, and I love Coach Cav, he talks about having two car rides home, one as a parent in your mind, and two the actual car ride home.
00:15:19
Speaker
I would just reframe that. I loved watching you play. Here's some things that I'm thinking you can do outside of practice. I can drop you 30 minutes off early to get you more opportunity to compete and play with Timmy.
00:15:33
Speaker
I'll have to catch that for a different podcast. But needless to say, the critical for team dynamics and having proper pride, where pride says my needs are more important than yours, humility says our needs are equally as important.
00:15:48
Speaker
where humility and self-awareness start to meet is teach ability, the teachability factor. The biggest athletic advantage of humility is being teachable, being coach able.
00:16:02
Speaker
Pride refuses to learn from people it doesn't respect. So if one player thinks they are above or better than another player, when that player gives them feedback or correction or direction or some form of of fix, whether it's at practice or a game,
00:16:19
Speaker
they're not going to listen to them. If it's the stress of a game and they don't trust them or they think they're better than them, more than likely they're not going to pass them the ball, even though that may be the right look.
00:16:31
Speaker
That's something to consider if this pride gets in the way of us being coachable, being great teammates, Now we're in trouble. Humility is willing to receive input, constructive criticism from anyone in order to grow.
00:16:47
Speaker
Teammate above us, teammate below us, coach, whatever it may be. So that's something to consider, coach a ability. Now, I'm going to reference now one of my favorite stories. This is from Al Vermeule, and I was told this by Rafael Ruiz. I have not had an opportunity to connect with Coach Vermeule about this. So Al Vermeule, Dick Vermeule's little brother, he was the strength and conditioning coach for the San Francisco 49ers when they won those Super Bowls with Bill Walsh.
00:17:15
Speaker
Then he became the strength and conditioning coach for the Chicago Bulls when they won all those championships. He's got rings on both hands. Tough to tell him.
00:17:27
Speaker
what to do as a strength and conditioning coach. Needless to say, so the story goes, the conditioning test that Coach Vermeule put the bulls through was a simple box jump over test. 24-inch box, 90 seconds on the clock, NBA athletes, 90 bulls.
00:17:47
Speaker
championships okay so the test you're going to jump over a 24 inch box back and forth jump on the box jump down turn around jump on the box jump down so going in for 90 seconds these guys can jump higher than 24 inches They also are basketball, NBA caliber basketball athletes. They can get up and down the court for longer than 90 seconds. The test, jumping for 90 seconds, it wasn't a conditioning test.
00:18:17
Speaker
It was a test of their character. How badly do you want to get better? How do you approach this test? Is this silly? Are you willing to take guidance from this coach to see what he sees from this test or are you too good for it?
00:18:33
Speaker
So this conditioning test that coach Vermeule applied, it was more for character who's willing to work a silly test for 90 seconds.
00:18:44
Speaker
That was the test. Humility, self-awareness, all of it built into it. So I love that story. I look forward to asking Coach Vermeule on the accuracy of that.
00:18:56
Speaker
I also love the test. And it's not about the score. It's not about the number. It's the attitude. So many players will do the right thing, but they don't bring the right attitudes to the table.
00:19:11
Speaker
We want to instill leadership, instill confidence in them, see that they are here, and then with Attitude the correct attitude they can start to get to here many are love with the skill But they hate the weight room well guess what is going to increase your power your accuracy your endurance your speed your speed reserve the likelihood of you to stay on the field because you're increasing your availability because your body is prepared to last a full season the weight room and
00:19:45
Speaker
So they have the right they're doing the right thing. They don't have the right attitude about all the intangibles that are going to take them to the next level. So love the conditioning test for this, not because the numbers, because it truly represents of who's willing to to go for that.
Self-awareness in Training and Leadership
00:20:03
Speaker
So love the Alvormeal story. Think about how that's applied. And I mean, we see this represented in the movie Miracle with the goalie and the test. I'll take your stupid test. her all about accents today all right so how do we do this practice each week every single week every single practice i start with a physical check-in that's our dynamic warm-up and i aim to call guys out on what i'm seeing within their body that's making a self-awareness connection it's also building trust between me and them now they're attuned and used to my feedback based off my expertise and it's not based on skill it's based on how they're they're feeling and then bringing a a solution to tightness or bringing a hey this is because we did this previously and that's why you're feeling that way so aiming to lean into expertise within physical demands to help make a connection build trust so when we step into the skill it's there
00:21:04
Speaker
If you feel you are more skilled in that department, well then lean into the skill to help bring awareness, but then call them out for different positions. We see this all the time with shooting mechanics, whether it's it's basketball, whether it's ah hockey, lacrosse, technique,
00:21:20
Speaker
if they find one way that they've been doing longer is easier but i have to change their technique because i know the limitation of power or breakdown in the arm that they could potentially do for baseball players then i need to find a way to connect and then help them understand that just because they're feeling this or it feels awkward going back to their or earlier self-awareness just because it feels awkward doesn't mean it's wrong we have done that a thousand times the wrong way we need to put you in a position to do it properly one because it increased power and two it's going to keep you available that's what we want so aiming for a physical check-in and building that buy-in and connecting what they feel to then the they're executing within the sports performance next is a relational choice
00:22:12
Speaker
all about social emotional leadership here and I want them to have humility and understand it's not an emotion humility is a choice you might not feel humble when a coach yells at you or gives you a correction or a teammate messes up you might feel annoyed that's okay but you can choose to act humbly and you can choose to say hey I'm willing to own my failure here rather than making excuses bcd hands up behavior whatever you want to call it and sometimes being a leader is taking the ownership of someone else's mistake and willing to take that on and improve the the next go around all right so this is a shift in compassion i encourage if you see this as a coach or you hear this
00:23:02
Speaker
Or if you're an athlete listening, stop beating yourself
Constructive Responses to Mistakes
00:23:05
Speaker
up. If we're seeing or hearing words, body language, we need to step in and direct that before it gets too costly come season time.
00:23:15
Speaker
That's just pride, stepping in and taking over versus humility of what we need. They acknowledge the mistake, that's the win. But what is their action, their behavior following that mistake? Is it detrimental to them?
00:23:28
Speaker
Is it detrimental to their team? something to ask beating yourself up because you can't accept that you're not perfect i call this acting in when a a dude makes a mistake this is referencing to lacrosse he misses a shot and he takes a stick and just beats his beats beats the living hell out of his helmet that is not good so that is where they They can't accept that they're not perfect.
00:23:57
Speaker
Well, everybody misses a shot. How we respond, though, that's what we want to get into. I'm going to readjust my aim based off of where the ball went this time around for the next opportunity that I'm going to earn for myself.
00:24:10
Speaker
So that is a form of self-compassion and that is a skill as much as shooting is that we can train and teach our athletes so that we come game time when the in intensity is higher, they know how to treat themselves and treat their teammates.
00:24:27
Speaker
So we're looking for small wins. We're admitting mistakes. We're apologizing if needed. And then we're moving on. And as a coach, you have to establish, define this, and then model this behavior when you make mistakes.
00:24:41
Speaker
And final thoughts here. Pride promises happiness but delivers pain. Humility looks like it will be painful, admitting you're wrong, serving others, accepting feedback, but it actually delivers the life and performance you're looking for.
The Benefits of Humility over Pride
00:25:01
Speaker
So go level set on your skill set, check your ego, and do the work. Thanks for listening. And encourage you, do the right thing and have the right attitude.
00:25:14
Speaker
That's going to be the heavy lift for you as an athlete. and a coach every single day. I encourage my guys, as soon as we walk onto the grass through the gates, this is our sanctuary. Leave everything behind and let's focus on being where our feet are to use another coach calf term.
00:25:34
Speaker
Awesome. Thank you for tuning in. If you want to learn more about my mission, sign up for the newsletter, Raising the Game. Head to captainsandcoaches.com and reference them my my course again, all about self-awareness, connecting with athletes and getting them to level set on their feedback. Head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com.
00:25:53
Speaker
Shout out to a sponsor, Train Heroic. If you are a coach looking for supplemental income, putting your strength and conditioning programs out there is a great way. utilize your brand logo while you got it for a 30-day free trial. Head to trainheroic.com slash captains.
00:26:10
Speaker
Love that resource. you're looking for training program, I got a bunch on there. All right.
Conclusion and Engagement
00:26:15
Speaker
Thank you for tuning in. See you next time.