Transcript
Speaker: When you're teaching someone to sprint, it's ahs it's actually pretty complex if you think about it to explain the physics of how the body needs to gradually rise over time. The beauty is i don't need to explain the physics of that outside of the odd curious athlete that might want to know more. What I can very easily say is have you ever seen a jet take off?
Speaker: Yeah, have you noticed how it's just nice and gradual as it builds up speed? Absolutely. Okay, on this next sprint, I want you to explode out and just notice, don't force it, but notice how if you drive really, really hard, your body will gradually rise.
Speaker: Welcome to the Captains and Coaches podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond. I'm your host, Texan Kouk, and today i get the opportunity to sit down with Nick Winkleman at the and NSCA National Conference. He's the author of the book, A Language of Coaching.
Speaker: And if you coach anything, this book will change how you talk to your athletes. In this podcast, we break down informing versus cueing, why coaches talk too much, the weight of the moment before movement,
Speaker: Then the internal versus external cues debate. Nick explains why external cues win and why that matters whether you coach lacrosse, baseball, weight room, doesn't matter.
Speaker: Then we hit coaching in 3D. The three ingredients that turn vague instruction into a cue an athlete can actually use. Nick also breaks down analogy and this is not just a coaching trick, it's actual a mechanism the brain uses to learn anything new.
Speaker: And this one applies to all of us that are coaching anything or parents or leaders. That's what we're talking about, it's the lens that we're learning through and the language of coaching Love this episode grateful for Nick the opportunity to sit down with me on the last day the morning before both of us took off For the day, so thank you to the NSEA for opening up the doors Thank you to Nick for joining me, and I hope that you love this episode if you do do me a favor like subscribe rate review I got more coming your way with that. Let's hand it off to Nick who helps us raise the game ready ready and great Well you ready
Speaker: Action. Welcome to the Captains Coaches podcast sitting at the NSBA National Conference with Coach Nick Winkleman. Welcome back to America. Thank you so much. I have to say, when I do come stateside, even though they're like, oh, do you live in Ireland? Yeah, they're like, well, welcome home, sir. There is something about it. Yeah. There is something about it. Yeah, man. Yeah.
Speaker: yeah man so Wonderful book, The Language of Coaching. And I thank you recommend it. I should have brought it so you could sign it. But it's it's too filled with sticky notes and highlights and too many notes. I wouldn't able be able to distinguish your signature.
Speaker: So i I want to pull from your presentation and just some general questions that bring me frustration sometimes as a coach. And I want to begin with informing versus queuing.
Speaker: So pulling from your experience to your lecture presentation, What does that simple light bulb truly mean? So I think when i if if I go back to where things started for me, and I talk about this in the in the book, I kind of had a light bulb moment where I was just coaching a group of skilled players getting ready for the NFL combine. This was 2009, I think it was January 2009, and it was a moment where it it was a moment Boringly similar to many, many other moments that coaches go through. i had about 15 players on a track. We were going through marching and skipping patterns. And I'm sitting there just on the loudspeaker, you know, just just saying things as they're moving.
Speaker: Crowd control, good vibes. interns are writing down all these cues and whatnot. But in that moment, I just kind of realized that I'm sitting here and I'm saying all these things and I know all these things make sense to me, but I don't know who's hearing what which of the things I'm saying they're focusing on, which of the things they're dismissing. I'm not actually closing the loop to even figure out, you know, what's working, what's not.
Speaker: And granted, is there a time when you're coaching groups of individuals, of course, where you're just putting good vibes out there, you're putting energy, your your background noise. That's all fine. But the moment drew me to a more important observation is that how do we identify what information our athletes are focusing on, what information they are using, and whether or not it's making a positive impact. And so as I started to go down this path where I i talk about kind of description versus cueing or informing versus cueing,
Speaker: the The description or just the informing is you're giving them the general background, the gist of what they're about to do, but it tends to be more long form information. Whereas the cue is that that simple singular phrase in the moment before the movement that you intentionally want them to think about to help them move better, that you want to check in with them on after the movement to say, hey,
Speaker: Did this feel good to you? Did you notice a change? Because I did or I did not. And so ultimately, if we have those two pieces, for me, both both are relevant.
Speaker: It's simply a matter of pulling out that really important idea, pausing in that moment before the movement, offering it, making sure the lens with which they're looking at the activity is spot on.
Speaker: And then we go from there. Otherwise, you're you're destined to work in the dark. Mm-hmm. Going from there. So a couple notes on that. I've been fortunate to to travel the world and teach coaches. And we were a subset of CrossFit. And so CrossFit would take that former approach where they're, here's your five cues for this movement. Exactly.
Speaker: So we were battling active shoulders and knees out. The coach is just yelling, the words similar to that loudspeaker, but not watching the actions or understanding the the why.
Speaker: So I ah remember seeing that in real time throughout the different countries in the world, no matter the the movement, just that same problem. So that's where the the book really spoke to me and unlocked it and then helped un unlock some language.
Speaker: Another key takeaway from the book that i've found awesome was coaching in 3D. And I had another fortunate opportunity to develop curriculum and structure and certification for a kids coaching ah franchise.
Speaker: And then immediately went back to the book to help me teach brand new coaches much enthusiasm how to communicate to kiddos. And then 3D unlocked it.
Speaker: The description, direction, and duration. Distance, direction, description, exactly. So then, yeah, just helping them also use their body. yeah So I always go coaching in 3D and like try to get in their face, make it fun. But so then I'd love to know the the thought process to break down and boil down to that simple one, two, three steps for coaches where you have the idea, you pause and you watch.
Speaker: and this helps speed up that idea for a new idea. The other one didn't work. Exactly. i kind of call it a kind of a curiosity or a creativity pump, if you if you will, in that when if we take a step back, Tex, if we take a step back, what we're trying to do here is there's different kinds of information we can offer an athlete. And we'll probably get into this, but just to to tee up the question,
Speaker: and We tend to say information lives on this continuum of either I draw your attention to your body and how you should move your body, so saying things like extend your hip. and We conventionally call these internal cues for the very simple reason that you're focusing on something inside of your body, hence internal.
Speaker: but Equally, if I'm trying to teach someone to run fast, sprint, to give a simple example, rather than saying extend your hip, A consequence of extending your hip is pushing the ground away.
Speaker: So I can simply say, push the ground away. And when tell someone to push the ground away, by the very nature, if I achieve that, well, I've gotten hip, knee, and ankle extension. So the idea is, you know when you go to a symphony,
Speaker: right There's not five conductors up there. There's one conductor, but there's a lot of instruments. But that conductor brings all those instruments together. Very much so, an external cue is kind of like conductor. And it it gives a singular intentional focus by which all of the muscles and the joints, whatever the skill is, can conduct and organize themselves. Whereas giving an internal cue is like you're having a quick chat with the flute section or you're talking to the violinist over here. and In principle, both are are important. I might need to talk to my flute section. I might need to talk to you about, hey, we need to get a bit more hip extension. But that's really just explaining what to do. It's it's it's giving more of an intellectual understanding.
Speaker: Every coach though has dealt with the perennial problem. I said yesterday lecture where an athlete says, coach, I know what to do, I just don't know how to do it. And umm I've been fortunate most of my life has been with elite athletes and and they understand at a very nuanced level exactly what needs to happen. And clearly what that tells you is knowledge of what to do cannot immediately be cashed in in knowledge of how to do it.
Speaker: And so the whole idea around the 3D cueing is There is good intuitive evidence and good objective evidence, decades of it, that says, well, in that moment before the movement,
Speaker: If you tend to give an external cue where you draw the attention to how the body interacts with the environment, you just tend to get a little bit better performance in the moment usually if you get the right combination.
Speaker: But more importantly, you you get better return on the investment. You get better retention. And I can still use internal language, but that's more background.
Speaker: So background information with internal language, but I want a foreground with an external cue. I want that to be center of mind. And so the idea to your question around the 3D cueing model was to give coaches the anatomy of what goes into an external cue. So let's take the very simple one, the one I used in the lecture yesterday.
Speaker: Sprinting, you know focus on pushing the ground away or focus on driving the ground away. When we look at that, there are three core elements that make that a solid external cue to promote hip extension in the spirit of force production to go forward fast.
Speaker: okay But see, I don't have to say all that mumbo jumbo. I can just say focus on driving off the ground. That's the beauty of it. um So the first thing I do there is I orient the athlete to something in the environment.
Speaker: So I use a noun, a person, place, or thing. In that cue, the word is ground. So I'm grounded. i'm I'm focusing on all of my energy going into the ground. Alternatively, I could say focus on exploding towards the finish line. Let's say in the example of a broad jump.
Speaker: So in that case, the finish line becomes what I'm anchoring that cue to. But then... There's a natural thing where there's a directionality. I'm either going towards something or away from something. So focus on driving the ground away. ah okay, so you have a noun. That's the ground. That's the environment. That's what makes it external.
Speaker: The away piece is, my English teacher would be proud of me for remembering this, it's the preposition. It's the it's the compass of human vocabulary. And so now, okay, I'm driving away,
Speaker: The final thing is I need to give some energy. So just for people even listening to us, if I said push the ground away, drive the ground away, explode off the ground, do those cues all feel the same, right? They're similar, but if I asked you just to reflect for a moment, no, most people would say that they're slightly different. If I said which one is the most violent, which is gonna give the most energy, most people would say drive or probably explode.
Speaker: Whereas push is is is the lesser of the three. And so that final ingredient that I refer to as the description, it couldn't think of a better word, is it's it's the verb. It's literally the action word. It's the portion of human speech that is attributed towards promoting physical action in the world. And so you have distance,
Speaker: Am I focused on something close or far? That's the noun. I have direction. am I moving towards it or away from it? And then I have the energy, the verb, the action that brings the whole thing to life. That's the description. And so if we think of those three Ds like a combination lock, even that same cue of focus on driving the ground away, focus on driving towards the finish line, focus on exploding off the ground, focus on pushing into the ground, these are all variants, cousins, siblings of the same meaning which is good hip extension, low drive angle, high force, high acceleration.
Speaker: But I have different ways of conveying that. It's like we could walk into the same home, as home buyers, and you might want to paint a room green, and I want to paint it blue, or maybe I want to paint it just a slightly different shade of green. And it doesn't make your shade preference and my shade preference right or wrong, it's just different. And we're not even the authors of that. We are, so to speak, experiencing that preference ourselves. It's just there.
Speaker: Why do some people like apples and some people like oranges? Who knows, but it is the way it is. And so having the ability to expand your ability to say the same thing in different ways is an incredibly powerful tool that any coach worth their salt has come to figure out on their own, even if they know nothing about this topic.
Speaker: And so the whole idea of the 3D cueing model is to draw your attention to the elements that make up an external cue with the hope that in doing so, it will unlock the your ability to come up with more on the fly or guide your athlete with their own ideas to help you unlock a cue that might work for them. So that's the genesis of the three d There's really nothing special about it outside of a little bit of wordplay and a bit of observation about the natural way that we communicate and then just trying to bring it to life in a model.
Speaker: Yeah. Speaking of bringing it to life, you also have analogies. And that was the most fun part of working with kids. Yes. Is then pulling animals, representations, visuals for them into that 3D and then and then training the coaches up to to embody that that character, that visual, yeah the animal, whatever it may be. so And you touched on analogies yesterday in your presentation, which I thought was awesome for coaches mostly working with collegiate athletes and ah high schoolers, but it still works for that age group because, I mean, we're all kids at heart. We all remember those things. let let's let's go Let's go right back.
Speaker: to fundamentals, and that is when you come into this world, you come into this world with the potential for speech. but you don't come into this world speaking. You can make noises, but it's yet it's it's ah it's a block of marble.
Speaker: the The sculpture has not yet been fully formed. And so what's what's interesting is, let's take for example your cup of coffee here. When a child first hears you know mom or dad or parental figure say cup, let's say,
Speaker: um initially they're they're going to hear that word, but and inevitably they're going to start to create an association between the word cup and thirst or a beverage, right? So I quickly realized that if I want to quench my thirst as a child, the there's a useful mechanism, there's a useful sound I can make.
Speaker: And that useful sound I can make to get a beverage or to ask for something is cup. me Or let's say as a child I really like bananas. A useful behavior to get that thing I like is saying this squiggly word that says banana.
Speaker: Or we might say nana. And so all of human language, the whole of human language is symbolic. I can't eat the word, the sound wave banana.
Speaker: I can only eat the consequence of what that word will give me as a child if mom and dad or a parental figure can bring it to me. And so why do I say that? Well, language at its very core is analogous to what it symbolizes, right? A menu is analogous to the food that I can order with it, but I can't eat the menu.
Speaker: And so when it comes to analogy, An analogy isn't this just fun thing, even though it is really fun. It is fundamental in the DNA of our neurology.
Speaker: We are used to acquiring things through the use of symbolism. Language is a very effective shortcut to get to what I want at the end of the day.
Speaker: And so our brains very much so work in this connected way whereby I can say, it's kind of like that. Or have you ever seen this?
Speaker: And it's as if. And what we try to do is we take the familiar to teach and give access to the unfamiliar. And so when I initially come into contact with the cup,
Speaker: That's the real experience. That becomes the reference point. Me saying the word cup is analogous for the actual thing that I want. And so I'm emphasizing this with you because people can oftentimes see analogy like they do rhyme or alliteration, right? Where I'm just using it as a technique.
Speaker: I would actually encourage people to inverse that. See analogy as the most fundamental mechanism to communicate and give access to meaning. Where I can take a person's familiar and use that to teach them the unfamiliar. So a simple example I use all the time.
Speaker: When you're teaching someone to sprint, it's ah it's actually pretty complex if you think about it to explain the physics of how the body needs to gradually rise over time. The beauty is i don't need to explain the physics of that outside of the odd curious athlete that might want to know more. What I can very easily say is have you ever seen a jet take off?
Speaker: Yeah. Have you noticed how it's just nice and gradual as it builds up speed? Absolutely. Okay, on this next sprint I want you to explode out and just notice, don't force it, but notice how if you drive really, really hard your body will gradually rise.
Speaker: At no point does the plane become a helicopter and just go vertical. and So you can even play with the analogy. And that is a very simple example, but one that could be replaced by infinite others and why it is such a powerful tool. And the fact is, if I tell someone to gradually rise as they push the ground away versus gradually rise like a jet taking off,
Speaker: The latter provides a much stronger, unavoidable visual in the mind, whereas the former does not necessarily. And so both have a place, but I find the the average individual benefits far more from what I like to call a verbal demonstration. That's what analogy is. It's a verbal demonstration in that it installs such a strong, relatable visual that I simply have to you know kind of do Simon Says.
Speaker: i just simply have to act as if. It's that simple. Time out. Coach needs a coach. I want you to take a second to reflect on this past season and what did not click. Were there moments where you lost your temper, lost your cool, felt your team was mentally soft, weak, not prepared to face competition? Were there are moments where they put their heads down and were not ready or accepting?
Speaker: Did they quit on you? Did they quit on their their teammates during a game? What was that experience like? How did you manage it? How did you handle it? I have a course out here.
Speaker: It's called Why They're Not Listening, Coaching Today's Athlete, where I dive into a concept I've been working on that's called social-emotional leadership. How do we use practices? How do we use strength and conditioning sessions to develop our leaders, to have self-awareness, social awareness, and then have a toolkit to then lead not only their teammates, but themselves.
Speaker: But it starts with you, Coach. i encourage you, check out this. My first lesson in the course is free. To find that, head to listen.captainsandcoaches.com. Start preparing now for next season, and everything that you're investing will start to pay off.
Speaker: Now, back to the show. Ready, ready, and break. I love it The... I feel connected to that because my coaching career began as a sport coach and then I'd take the guys into the weight room. Yeah. Then we'd use the sport to reference squat set up like defense.
Speaker: Exactly. And now coaching lacrosse at high school, I get a bunch of football kids or basketball kids that got cut, ask them what sport they play, what position. Exactly. Okay. And then i need you set up like this.
Speaker: Like close defense is just like offensive linemen. We're trying to protect. Exactly. We want to give. to make up ground. So leaning on that for another sport. My challenge now, and this is what I posed before, is introducing this style to sport coaches.
Speaker: they're They don't have the weight room, they don't have the thousands of reps, but they're really talented at their sports skill. So they lean into just like this and have the kid watch, but they don't quite understand to connect to what they saw from coach to what can their body do.
Speaker: So how do you start to introduce this concept to sport coaches to help them unscratch the surface without the thousands of reps in the weight room? yeah So I think at the end of the day, these principles are not unique to any certain skill.
Speaker: You know, it just so happens that, you know, from my perspective, being a strength and conditioning coach and obviously being one of the the louder voices on this topic, a lot of its initial example has come through what we might just call the the generic movements in the gym and on the field. But the number one consumer, I would say, of this content, in my experience, has been sport coaches.
Speaker: you know i've I've been asked to probably speak at more baseball-related events than strength and conditioning-related events, just as an example on the topic. And so the the sport coach community is incredibly interested because, you know, at the end of the day, so much of what they have to convey has to be conveyed verbally. You know, it's very big in sport. Let's say golf, tennis, baseball, where they'll have they'll use a lot of different constraints. They'll use different tools to teach swinging.
Speaker: But ultimately when you're out on on the tee box or in the batter's box, you don't get to bring any of those constraints. You don't get to bring any of those tools with you.
Speaker: And so that's not to suggest they don't have their place, they do. But ultimately I need to convert these these tools, these constraints, these physical, artificial manipulations that have good intention to help you develop a sense of of of skill, I have to be able to, kind of like the peel on a banana, do away with them and be left with the goodness that they're trying to promote. And that's where, for me, coaching language, which is synonymous with athlete focus, they're the same thing at the end of the day.
Speaker: And that's just it's an interesting point to for people listening or watching to pause on, is ultimately whether or not you've thought of it this way, what you are saying you are trying to promote is what they are thinking.
Speaker: And so are you always giving clean burning cues and thoughts that are gonna be helpful when when when the pressure's on, when they have to do this in reality? And so for for sport coaches then, it's it's no different.
Speaker: Step one with all of this is there is no magical cue. There is the right cue for you. And that requires that we step back to go through a very sequential process, which coaches are hired to do this, whether or not they know it. That is, what is the rate limiting factor for this movement? And here I'm talking now sport, where there's a lot more, as you say, complexities in hitting a baseball than probably doing a back squat.
Speaker: Let's be honest here. So what is the rate limiting factor? that That's step one. And that goes back to, you need to know what is wrong. and you and the athlete kind of need to be aligned to that, especially as you go up the ranks.
Speaker: You then have to figure out, is the rate limiting thing ah physical thing um or a mental thing, generally speaking? It's really, really important. My good friend, Stu McMillan, what once said, and he may have been quoting Dan Path, but I do think it was his quote, you know you cannot fix a mechanical problem with a technical cue.
Speaker: Meaning if you're a baseball player and you don't have enough hip rotation, right? Or you're a pitcher and you don't have enough, you know, external rotation or thoracic extension, whatever it might be, those are gonna cause downstream changes to your technique.
Speaker: And you might even have an athlete that their mental model of what they're focusing on when they're throwing or hitting, for example, is perfect. But, you know, you could be in a Porsche on the Autobahn in Germany, and if there's traffic, you ain't going anywhere.
Speaker: yeah So i was like we we we got to clean up the traffic. Once you know it's nots it's not physical, like they can do this thing, they're just not doing it. Okay, great.
Speaker: Now we're squarely in the world of coaching communication. And you may play around with constraints and whatnot, and absolutely, we could talk about that. But you still need to symbolize...
Speaker: how I'm interacting with that constraint do what I'm focusing on. So you still need to leave them with that that thought, that prescription, if you were to use an example of glasses, with which it allows them to see better.
Speaker: through the nature of what they're trying to change in that skill. And so, once I understand the the rate limiter, I understand if it's physical or mental, I've gotten to the point where now we're just dealing with that mental piece. And this can all happen in parallel, right? This isn't taking weeks. This can be over sessions, this kind of stuff is happening.
Speaker: Now it's a matter of, okay, what idea, what simple idea can I put in their mind that helps them solve this problem, but here's the key, while still preserving the outcome of the task.
Speaker: So if I'm a baseball player, if I'm a hitter, I'm trying to do what they say is the hardest thing in sport. right I'm trying to make pre-conscious decisions to hit this baseball going 90 miles per hour.
Speaker: And so if I'm giving you too many thoughts around your hip position, your shoulder position, your thoracic position, your hand position, and those thoughts are pulling even for a fraction of a second away from your focus on the outcome, which is the pitcher, the release, and the ball, then it doesn't matter. i might have the perfect cut at the ball, the perfect swing, if it's too late or ill-timed,
Speaker: I'm not gonna hit that ball. And so how do we always honor the outcome we're trying to achieve and convey that outcome in terms of a very, very simple cue that will promote a technique to increase the positive output that we want?
Speaker: This is the great challenge with with with with a coach. And so, you know, I'll give you an example in baseball. A good a good friend of mine, um researcher in this space, did a study kind of on constraints versus cues. And Rob Gray is his name. Many people in baseball would know Rob Gray has written a number of really good books on this topic, both on constraints and language. But he wanted to help improve launch angle.
Speaker: Anyone in baseball understands how important that is, right? The angle of the ball comes off the bat. And he gave your conventional internal cues where, hey, you know, you want to you want you want to have you know your your your hands kind of stay under the ball type of thing. An external cue, you want to hit the bottom half of the ball, right? So from hands to ball, that's internal to external. But then what what they did is say, hey, I want you to imagine that there is a a wall behind second base, a varying heights, I want you to smack the ball over the wall. And what they found was that the the external cue and kind of that constraint worked far better than the internal cue. But even more so, the the focus on hitting the ball over the wall worked the best. Now, we're bringing this back full circle. Well, could I not then put a put an athlete in the batter's box
Speaker: And I say, hey, I want you to imagine center field wall, but I want you to pull that damn thing right behind second base. Mentally like your Inception, pull that wall nice and close, see it behind the second baseman, see a massive wall. And as you are focusing on that ball, ho feel your energy cascade, cut through that ball and put it right over that that wall.
Speaker: And so what we're doing now is we can be providing cues like hit the bottom side of the ball. that's That's great. It connects the technique that leads me to the bottom half of the ball and the focus is still to hit it.
Speaker: Or I can take some of these constraints that I use where you know coaches will put barriers out in the outfield to give you visual targets that won't actually be there in a game. But then once I've done that, I can say, well, now imagine it's there.
Speaker: I've given them the mental symbolism that they can use, that they can take into the match, they take into the game. And so, Ultimately, there is no quick fix, but if I can identify the real problem, and here's the cool thing, if I identify a problem and I'm coaching the heck out of it, but that problem is not changing the outcome of what I'm seeing, maybe I got the problem wrong.
Speaker: And so I think a big thing for me, Tex, with a lot of this is in going through this process of an intentionally identifying a problem, identifying a cue, have the athlete use it, let them run it out, have a bit of a chat about it. It will quickly reveal whether or not the cue is effective.
Speaker: And if it continues to show itself not effective, maybe you got the wrong cue, but maybe you also got the wrong problem. But it keeps you actively engaged in co-problem solving with with the player.
Speaker: And in doing so, once you do get the problem right, then you can start to work on that cue and find that focus. And over time, invite the athlete to help co-create, as I talked about yesterday, co-create the idea that's gonna help them unlock things. And a simple way we can do that is we can give three different cues about the same thing and say, which one do you prefer?
Speaker: Which one do you like? Well, hey coach, wanna try them all. Great, let's try them all. Three reps in, six reps in, two a piece. Okay. which ah I think that that second cue you gave, okay, let's go with that for the rest of session, then we'll pick up on it.
Speaker: and that just That creates this active co-learning because it's not just the athlete that's learning. It's the coach that is learning about the athlete. Every athlete presents a new learning challenge for a coach.
Speaker: And so... While a coach will go into a session, no doubt with expertise, they've seen it before, they've got their arsenal of things that work for the majority of individuals.
Speaker: Every coach knows with the best will in the world, every athlete at some time is going to present them with new challenges, whether it be their body, their thinking, some combination thereof. Do you have an approach to coaching that allows you to flexibly adapt to who's in front of you? So that is a overly long-winded way of saying that this is is beneficial, excuse me,
Speaker: For sport coaches, as it is for for strength coaches, and I'll let you in on a little secret. I actually think that sport coaches, by and large, from what I've seen, are far better at this in many cases than a lot of strength and conditioning coaches because they have less background in biomechanics and technical jargon, and they just can kind of go at it through the simplicity of day-to-day human speech.
Speaker: But the question I always ask is, are you doing it by chance or choice? A lot of what I'm trying to do is to promote choice and intention thought with all this, whether it be sport coach or a strength coach. Yeah, and I ah love it. I want to wrap it up there because you're challenging coaches to hold the mirror up versus start blaming the athlete for not listening. Exactly.
Speaker: taking their behaviors as poor communication skills that may be coming from them. And sometimes the athlete isn't listening. Oh, I get it. You know that. But yes, 100%. Yeah, behavior is the X factor of teenagers, especially. 100%. So i look I want to wrap it up there. This is beautifully said, as always.
Speaker: Final question. Are your kids going to get into curling or rugby? We just decided a path yet. not not Neither, neither. we weve we've got We've got one that absolutely loves football. Now, coming off my accent, people think i' talking American football, but loves soccer. And then another one that loves loves basketball. Okay. we're so We're sticking to the round, sticking to the round ball. one One's kicking and one's shooting. Dual citizenship?
Speaker: ah not yet, but 10 years in, I'm sure it's probably on the Double in the odds exactly for their chances to to make it to the Olympics. I get it. exactly Well, Nick, I appreciate all your work. I appreciate your time this morning, man. And again, killer presentation.
Speaker: Language of Coaching is the book. I'll link it up in the show notes. And yeah, man, I continue to reference back and still pull nuggets out. Now, even... The kids' lens was so beneficial, but now I'm going to tackle the sports lens as well, even with this this little nugget you shared here. So thank you. Thank you for tuning in and seeing you.
Speaker: Cool. 30 minutes, nice and tight.
