Transcript
Speaker: Action, men build too many walls and not enough bridges. Joe Fort Newton. Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast where we explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond. Today we're talking about how to coach and connect with the defiant ones.
Speaker: I'm going be introducing coaching loops and how the brain works for both the kids that do listen and the ones that decide to rebel. I'm going speaking on why they rebel and then five tools for you to listen and tackle to take on and help those kids. Because we've all had those kids that do not listen.
Speaker: And you feel that resistance and you can sense and see a wall get built up throughout the course of a season. The kids get checked out, arms are crossed, one word answers, they push back on everything you say, or worse, they don't even bother pushing back anymore.
Speaker: They just go quiet and go through the motions. And you've had that athlete, every coach has had it, and you feel this pull to just Let them be. And you want to spend your energy where it's easy and build bridges with the kids that that already want one or already have one established.
Speaker: That's not what this episode about. Today we're talking about the other ones, the hard ones, the defiant ones, the ones with the walls up, because that wall isn't the end of a relationship.
Speaker: It's usually where one actually starts if we're able to break it through, especially if we're at the high school or college level when these kids are not going pro. They need us to help break down those walls and help give them the tools to then develop relationships in the future and find out who they actually are i'm going to be introducing a simple coaching loop that you definitely noticed and once i call it out you're going to see the cycle and repeat and understand why kids connect to it and why kids start to re rebel and get to find before i do that i need to differentiate quickly programming versus coaching
Speaker: Your program, this is your picture perfect plan you have for your athlete. Could be practice, could be strength and conditioning, could be a week, could be a cycle, could be a whole season of a plan that we have.
Speaker: This changes what an athlete does and who they become physically. Now coaching, this changes who an athlete becomes mentally, emotionally, socially, and the beliefs that they have in themselves.
Speaker: what ah The loop that we have is specific to coaching and connecting with athlete. And here's the thing about walls. Nobody builds wall in one day. It's laid brick by brick.
Speaker: Also, nobody tears one down in a day either. We have to understand that. So if we try once to break the wall down, don't give up. It's going to take a lot of swings. So both of these happen the same way. A pattern, repeated.
Speaker: over time. And that pattern has a shape. And it's the same five stages running on repeat every single day you are around the team. Whether your athlete chooses to listen and they have this bridge built or they're fully walled off.
Speaker: So here's the coaching loop that you've been running. Five stages. Stage one, trust extended. The athlete gives you something before you've earned it. They show up.
Speaker: They try the drill. They let you correct them. Usually before either of you has much of anything real to say. You watch that. They allow you to watch them to move and then they're ah either acknowledging feedback, looking for feedback, or are drawn attention towards you following their rep.
Speaker: Stage two, coaching is delivered. This is when you respond. You give them a correction, a direction, a word of encouragement, a bad joke. This is where your skill as a coach usually gets tested.
Speaker: Stage two. All right. Then we have stage three. This is the athlete's response to your words, correction, direction, encouragement. They do something with what you give them.
Speaker: They apply it. They ignore it. They resist it. They half absorb it. absorb it They rebel. They do the opposite of what you told them to do. This leads us to stage four, an outcome.
Speaker: Something happens. On the field, in the weight room, in the relationship itself, they learn something from that outcome. Now stage five, and this is the one coaches miss, the outcome becomes evidence the athlete uses the next time you ask them to trust you.
Speaker: Then the loop runs again. Same five stages, different starting conditions. And here's the part that actually matters in this five stage cycle. A cycle returns to the same place every single time.
Speaker: Like a clock, think time is a flat circle. A loop, coaching loop, it doesn't. Every pass through, the five stages changes the strength of a relationship, up or down.
Speaker: And it never resets to neutral. If the cue direction correction we gave them worked, they applied it and the signal went off in their brain, now this loop is going to go faster.
Speaker: If they did their best to try to apply your correction direction and it didn't work for them, Okay, now we've got to work harder and then that trust, the initial trust, it has to be re-earned.
Speaker: They've got to re-encourage and get them to listen to our directions. So small wins early create disproportionate trust later. Small breaks early create dispropressssion disproportionate resistance later.
Speaker: Not because week one is bigger than week 10 within our program or week Rep one is bigger than rep 10 during this specific drill. It's because set one rep one week one sets their trajectory for everything else to compound on top of think compounding interest. with this loop.
Speaker: It's not a paycheck. A paycheck is additive. Same amount every single time adds up steady. But a loop, this is where things start to compound and grow and think of snowball rolling downhill. Early deposits don't just sit there. They multiply the value of every deposit, every queue, every direction that comes after.
Speaker: In early withdrawals, they don't subtract. They make every future deposit harder to make. So how are you approaching the initial extended trust from an athlete?
Speaker: You're not just coaching during practice. You're setting the interest rate for every practice that comes after it. that's That's the picture I want to paint to paint for you. So it is this five-stage loop.
Speaker: It's not like a clock and entering the same time. The relationship can either spin this speed this up or start to slow it down and cause more rebellion.
Speaker: For the athlete with no walls up, this is a nice tailwind. And you've seen this. Now they're starting to look for feedback. I've talked about this in the stages of athlete development.
Speaker: within our competency model that we presented. Now for the athlete who is already guarded, this is our whole game. The defiant ones, we need to understand that that small wins, small cues, small corrections, directions are going to help this ah gain some momentum within our loop.
Speaker: Because every rep is either a brick or a plank. you're either helping them build higher or you're handing them the first board for the bridge that we're going to walk across their a little mopey moat they're starting to build.
Speaker: So this loop is always running. It's always there. And we're going to talk about the moment most coaches missed handle the worst. the wall going up, the first brick getting laid.
Speaker: And we call this resistance. And it could be something going on in the athlete's mind where they have a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have a set negative self-esteem.
Speaker: And then we reinforce that and start accelerating. We help them build the brick wall that they're putting up. So when an athlete pushes back, shuts down, half listens, flat out ignores you, and your instinct as a coach is to read this as defiance or disrespect or a discipline problem, I'm going to push back against you and challenge you to find a different way to address this athlete.
Speaker: And I want you to reframe that inc so instinct starting right now on the spot. And a wall is rarely defiance. It's them pushing back for a boundary, looking to find out that you care.
Speaker: It's a sign of them developing an identity that hasn't decided to trust you yet. and It could be based on past experiences which we're going to get into the five reasons that these walls go up for the defiant ones and then it's a completely different thing for you to coach against it's not correcting their movement now we're starting to Coach against an identity that they're starting to build in which they are the the Joker they are the rebellion Okay
Speaker: So here are the five reasons that walls go up and almost none of them are about you, even if it feels sometimes personal on certain days.
Speaker: So reason number one, they've been coached poorly before. coached poorly within skill, treated poorly, disrespectfully within a different sport, different weight room, different culture, different school, different team, and they're protecting themselves from a repeat because they saw the title coach and they assume that you are the same way as that past experience. That resistance is armor from a past coaching relationship and it's not a verdict on this one.
Speaker: I need you to understand that. okay Reason number two, they don't yet see you as someone who can get them where they want to go. They don't understand your depth of knowledge, your skill, your experience as a coach, your experience as an athlete.
Speaker: And until you've earned credibility towards their specific destination, your imp input put is just noise, however correct you feel that it is.
Speaker: Okay, number three, the ask threatens an identity they've built around themselves either already being good or as as not good, as bad.
Speaker: They can't do this, as terrible. So your words and directions are battling this mental image or version of themselves that they have inside their head.
Speaker: And we need to push on that. And this resistance isn't about the drill, about the movement, about the the lifting exercise. It's not about that. It's about the threat to who they think that they are.
Speaker: So this is where i I paint a lot of pictures on the level setting on self on self-esteem, level set on your skill set. If they're low self-esteem, we really got to work hard to get them to a point where they believe in themselves and that's where they come become coachable.
Speaker: Now, if they're way ah up here, they already believe that they're good, and we need to to show that there's value in the words that we have, that's extremely challenging too. And I'm going to be talking about humility later on, but we've got to humble them in a way that they're more willing to listen to us. And humiliation at this stage, if they believe they're greater than they their skill set actually is, is not going to lead to humility.
Speaker: We need to show them weaknesses, show them movements, show them that we have skills, tools, connections, exercises, drills, whatever it may be that's going to help help them realize that we are worth listening to within this. And this this is one of the battles I always say against private coaches or club coaches where parents are signing big checks over because they're telling them these fantastic lies that they are better than their high school coaches, their high school coaches suck, and they believe that and then go back to you as a high school coach and it makes your job more difficult.
Speaker: So need to... get aware and understand, okay, where is their current identity? Better, worse, we got a level set on skill set, and that loop is going to really come into play of getting small wins that, hell, I know what I'm doing, and I need them to understand that and trust.
Speaker: All right. Then stage four, fear of failure in front of their pals, fear of failure in front of their their teammates or their their girlfriend in the stance, fear of failure during performance.
Speaker: So they're not going to try. They fear trying because they don't want to be embarrassed or fail or lose. So this resistance, they're protecting themselves from coaching and getting better.
Speaker: because they don't want to go out and perform and risk taking the shot, risk making the play, risk having the the ball in their hands because they don't want to fail. And that's self-protection against looking bad in front of people whose opinion that matters to them.
Speaker: And we want to help them understand that they need to be a better version of themselves. It's about taking the risks and learning about themselves as a character and a person.
Speaker: It's not comparing yourself to your teammates around you or your opponents. It's about becoming who you are in this stage. So they're fearing failure. They're fearing even trying because trying is not cool.
Speaker: Well, it's all a wall. It's all self-defense mechanisms. And with the loop, we can break it down. Okay. Number number five, mits a mismatch between your coaching style and how they receive instruction.
Speaker: And I've, put yeah, this has been a challenge for me. But then the more athletes you work with and through more experience, then you start to change and adapt your style for what the kid needs by meeting them where they're at,
Speaker: giving them who they need and then taking them where they can't take themselves. And then your style grows because your connection with the kid grows and you can be more yourself with them because you have rapport and they're listening and bought in.
Speaker: Some athletes need direct, blunt, to the point. Some athletes need quiet and specific. it's Everyone's different. So adapting your style and then get building a connection to then where they eventually come to understand your style and then you can be yourself with that whole squad.
Speaker: So this is like year two, three, four with the guys. That's that's where the magic happens. so right message, sometimes the wrong format, and you'll get resistance that has nothing to do with the message itself.
Speaker: I see this coaching my particular way and getting a whole bunch of football dudes that are used to being MF'd and they call that leadership. No, that's a conflict mismatch between our styles and need to help them educate and empower them to understand that there's different forms of leadership.
Speaker: different forms of motivation and help them tap into what they truly believe works for them versus what they were told or the only experience in motivation that they have.
Speaker: So yeah, it all starts with small wins in the loop. So this, this is the shift. Stop treating the this wall from the defiance one as a problem to punish.
Speaker: Start treating it as data to interpret. Every time an athlete puts a wall up, lays a brick down, they're handing you information about which of these five stages, five things, is actually going on. Your job is to read it correctly before you respond to it because you can't build a bridge to a wall that you've misread.
Speaker: that's going to accelerate the the wall building process again. Then you start handing them bricks to put down. all right Failure.
Speaker: This is going to be extremely important because we're going to have to mold their minds, reintroduce different failure to lives as feedback, as a good thing.
Speaker: Because it's it's it's the one moment that cracks the wall open, whether the athlete wants it to or not, and most coaches waste it. Failure. There is no failure. There's only feedback.
Speaker: So when something doesn't work, that's an opportunity to break their wall down and show them a better way. I went into a very detailed breakdown of how I introduce failure to teenagers in episode 91 of the podcast.
Speaker: Check that out. Failure cracks open the gap between an athlete's self-image and reality. Right before, most athletes believe some version of of themselves. I got this. I know better than coach.
Speaker: They don't know what they're talking about. They don't know what they're doing And right after, that belief has a visible crack in it. They missed the they did it their way, they missed the shot. They led their way, and the team gravitated away from them. Whatever it may be.
Speaker: There's a visible crack in their belief, their way of doing things. And that crack is where coaching can actually enter. And we gotta use many different tools, not just a hammer.
Speaker: Because for a brief window, the athlete isn't defending a story about themselves and protecting their ego. They're standing in front of the truth without their usual armor up, without the wall.
Speaker: So this is our opportunity to step in and not the, I told you so, the opportunity to step in as a mentor. And that the window's brief. The crack is small.
Speaker: Athletes are most coachable in the minutes right after their failure. We need to determine what kind of failure and then step in. And before you've built before they've built a defense and explained it away either to their their peers or themselves or their parents,
Speaker: and assigned blame to to someone else, we got an opportunity. Miss that window, and you're not coaching the failure anymore. You're coaching the defense they built up afterwards, another wall, or the the seal in the crack that they've applied.
Speaker: It's a harder conversation, less honest one. So we got to jump on that opportunity, jump on that crack, and break that wall as soon as we see it. And what keeps this window open is a calm presence, mentor mode.
Speaker: It doesn't add pressure that already pressurized the moment. A specific observation about what actually happened, not a general judgment of who they are or attack of their identity.
Speaker: And zero humiliation, public or private. I mentioned earlier, humiliation does not produce humility. it It produces armor. What slams this window shut and thickens the wall is piling on while they're already down.
Speaker: Comparing them to a teammate who didn't fail. Making the moment about your frustration, your embarrassment, your need to vent instead of their growth.
Speaker: And thinking long term. Thinking about the relationship.
Speaker: So here's the reframe I want you to to be walking away with. Your job in that window is not to fix the failure. It's to keep the crack open long enough for the athlete to look at it honestly about themselves.
Speaker: You're not the one who has to solve it. You're the one who has to make it safe enough for them to walk through that crack and break in the wall.
Speaker: And that crack is the closest thing to an open door a walled off athlete will ever hand you. Don't waste it. Last piece, if the loop compounds trust, it also compounds damage.
Speaker: And there are three specific ways a coach rebuilds a wall they were just starting to take down. Coach Harrison Bernstein from Soldiers to Sidelines, he calls the damage they leave behind coaching scars.
Speaker: And there's there's three of them I want to highlight here. Break one is overreaction. Your emotional response as a coach gets bigger than the mistake itself.
Speaker: The moment that happens, the athlete quietly shifts and disappears. Think Homer in the bushes. They stop processing their own performance and start managing your emotions instead.
Speaker: Now you're the variable they're tracking, not their own growth, development, or performance. Break number two, consequence-free failure. The opposite problem, nothing ever lands, every miss gets waved off, every standard quietly lowers, we're playing for fun only, we're having our cake and eating it too, we're kicking back during practice, we stop holding them accountable for anything,
Speaker: We're letting them do whatever they want. Eventually the athlete stops stops believing you're actually paying attention, that you are an authority figure, that you are building trust.
Speaker: They either stop losing respect for you or start treating you like a friend and cross a very important boundary that we have as a a coach. and that trust requires you to notice things when they're acting out of line and needs us to step in and establish boundaries because somebody will professor boss and they're going to have this story in their head where they want somebody cool to be around but that's that's not real development that's not growth that's not coaching that's not mentorship that's not leadership
Speaker: So if we start to let everything slide, they're going to face the consequences down the road. And break number three, and Jim Davis and I have talked about this at length during podcasts where he's sat down with me, and this is the the cold shoulder.
Speaker: You're overwhelmed or you're resentment resentful for an athlete's mistakes on the field, or you just don't have the tools in the moment to manage an athlete's reaction, emotions, mistake that they put up, so you go quiet as a coach on them right when they need you the most.
Speaker: They're coming off the field, and you turn your shoulder at them and pretend nothing's wrong. This one cuts the deepest. It doesn't just say you made a mistake, it tells them you are a mistake.
Speaker: So now we're feeding their identity as a failure. All three of these, they they come from the same root. The coaches reacting to their own discomfort instead of responding to an athlete's actual need.
Speaker: Overreaction is discomfort expressed loudly. Consequence-free failure is discomfort avoided entirely. And the cold shoulder teaches athletes their worth is tied only to winning and being perfect.
Speaker: The fix for each is simple to say, but it's hard to live. A pause before you respond. Never lower your standards.
Speaker: Calm, real follow through every single time, not just when you're frustrated enough to enforce it. And being the one who seeks them out after a mistake, not the one who disappears.
Speaker: And here's what I want you to carry out of this episode, wrapping it all up. The loop is running whether you're paying attention to it or not. The only choice you actually have is whether it's compounding trust or compounding bricks and walls.
Speaker: Men build too many walls and not enough bridges. every wall an athlete puts up was built one rep at a time every bridge gets built the exact same way one step one stage in the loop one run with patience over and over again until the wall comes down board by board and the bridge is built across their moat you're not going to tear it down a wall in a week you're going to lay one plank You're going to find difficult you're gonna find that difficult athlete, the defiant one, the one with the wall up. And we're going to take on this challenge personally so we can grow as a coach and break down our own walls.
Speaker: So that that does it for the episode. Thank you for tuning in. If you want to learn more about how to break down walls, connect with athletes, I got an amazing deep dive in my course, Why They're Not Listening, Coaching the Modern Athlete. Head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com for that one. Thank you to our sponsor, Train Heroic. If you're a strength and conditioning professional and want to start a side business, I highly encourage it. I put all my strength and conditioning programs on there.
Speaker: Let them know you found it here, trainheroic.com slash captains. That's plural. I will also be on the road this summer. Here we are wrapping up June, entering into July. July, I'll be at the NSCA National Conference doing podcasts, helping out the and NSCA on the film side of things.
Speaker: Having a great time in New Orleans. Then, where else are we I'll be speaking at the Soldiers to Sideline Conference. Shout out to my crew there. That's going to Nashville in July.
Speaker: I'll be speaking at...where else? I'll be speaking up in Philly at a private workshop. Then I got the NSCA Tactical Conference in Orlando.
Speaker: and some private workshops for teens all up the East Coast. Looking forward to those. So if you're in Boston, DC, Philly, private events, but I'll be there. Let me know if you want to connect.
Speaker: Otherwise, I'll see you at the NSCA events. And yeah, you can't wait for more. so Cheers to you, thank you for tuning in. Like, subscribe, rate, review. That truly does help the show and push it out to people like mine and individuals, leaders like yourself. So thank you for helping us raise the game and sing.
