Transcript
Speaker: Action! Welcome to the Captains & Coaches Podcast. We explore the art and science of leadership through the lens of athletics and beyond. Very special podcast for you today. I'm handing off a lecture that I gave at the Soldiers to Sidelines Summit in 2026 in Nashville, Tennessee.
Speaker: This is for lacrosse coaches. If you are not aware, soldierstosidelines.org. Check that out. It's an amazing nonprofit organization. They train soldier coaches that are retiring from military service, returning from deployment, and they can take the leadership skills that they developed in service and then help them translate that into sports. They lead football, basketball, lacrosse, endurance athletes, strength and conditioning, and soccer.
Speaker: So a lot of amazing coaches in that organization helping people transition from military into a second career of coaching. This podcast is going to be the the the presentation that I gave to the lacrosse coaches in that community.
Speaker: So they brought me in for both strength and conditioning and lacrosse. This is my presentation for the lacrosse coaches. What I get into is 10 things that they're overlooking at practice.
Speaker: This is going to apply. him Yes, I'm speaking directly to lacrosse coaches in the presentation, but this is going to be a value add whether you're coaching volleyball, soccer, basketball, it doesn't matter if you're coaching and teaching anything. If you're a parent and you want to observe how coaches can better operate and teach and empower your kids this is going to be a great value add for that for you so there are a lot of entry-level coaches in the audience so i'm aiming to take my experience and allow it to be listened to so they can take this information and apply it on monday at practice that's my thinking so here's 10 things that new coaches overlook
Speaker: at practice. It's going to be taking a 10,000 foot view step back from practice. Okay, what am I looking for in practice planning? What am I looking on communicating with my coaching staff And how am I aiming to reach these kids?
Speaker: So everything from practice planning to warm-ups to educating and teaching to skill development and everything in between. So awesome time presentation. it's about 50 minutes. i don't want to hold you back anymore.
Speaker: Let's hand it off to the 2026 Soldiers to Sideline Summit and the lacrosse staff. All right. Ready, ready, and break. All right. We're going to get into 10 things you're overlooking at practice to turn your program around. So this is assuming that you are presented with problems and things are not going perfect at all times.
Speaker: So the objective is to pretend to be in that position if you're a national champion, or if we're not, we get the opportunity to look at our team every single day. So that's what we're going to get into. So Tex McQuilkin from Houston, Texas. I didn't start playing lacrosse until I was 16 years old.
Speaker: So I was not a good athlete, but I worked hard and I was literally told this by my football coach. I work hard in the weight room. I work hard in the field. I'm just not any good. So what they decided to do with our junior class was take sophomores, put them all on varsity to give those kids an opportunity to lose for two years and then try to win against our crosstown rival who wins the state championship every single year.
Speaker: So they wrote us off. They decided our performance for that senior class and my juniors for us. And we didn't like it. We were a very tight knit family, essentially. So we decided to put our performance in our own hands and we started a lacrosse team.
Speaker: So a lot of this is based off of just pure attitude where we cannot fail because what else are we going do? We're going to go out here and just risk it all because why not? We're all having fun. We're here for each other.
Speaker: So a lot of these I continuing have to teach these lessons at the high school level because there's so many external pressures. I got to remind them that, hey, we're all having fun here. they Everyone's athletic career ends.
Speaker: And the important thing I have to teach coaches is that this is not your athletic career. This is theirs. This is their opportunity. So I go after this assumption, I'm going to spend the rest of my life battling this assumption that sports are teaching lessons. Sports don't teach lessons. Coaches do.
Speaker: So that's a big part of this presentation is understanding your power as a coach and exactly where and how your communication, how the brain works, how you're looking at practice.
Speaker: Because the one consistent thing we have, no matter the level we're talking about, is practice. We're going to compete in different levels, different games. But practice is the one consistent control that we have.
Speaker: And that's what we're going to into. So 10 blind spots, one practice plan, and I want you to be able to apply these tools next week, not next season. All right. So the first one is, and this is my biased opinion as a strength and conditioning professional, is that movement before stick skills.
Speaker: This is going to be crucial. If our athletes cannot slow down, if they don't have the body control and the coordination to then make the adjustments that we're asking them as coaches, well then we label them not coachable.
Speaker: So there is time every single practice invested in athletic development. But the hack is, that I'll get to it in a minute, is gonna be your warmup. So athletic development, this is how I view athletic development for our athletes. Not just athleticism, athleticism is one part of the puzzle.
Speaker: So I was told a long time ago, if you put a Venn diagram in your presentation, you're gonna be seen as a very smart person. This is it. I don't know what a three-part Venn diagram is, but these are three components of the athlete that I take into consideration and then aim to identify each part of these components with each athlete that I'm working with no matter level. So touching on athleticism, every single day at practice, we get an opportunity to develop as an athlete is through the warm-up.
Speaker: It's not doing the same warm-up every single day because that is it's called the law of accommodation. Eventually that stops pushing you. It stops developing you, and you get really good at that one specific warm-up, and it seems easy, and that's doing the exact opposite of what we need for practice.
Speaker: So focusing on that ah opportunity for athleticism every single day, I don't have to do strength conditioning. If I'm dialing in specific warmup, I'm expanding that bubble within the Binn diagram. Then we have the mental side of things. This is often overlooked and we're forcing our kids into tough situations And then we we assume that it's going to make them mentally tough, but we're not giving them the tools on how to manage themselves in those scenarios. And last but not least, this is what a sport coach does. We buy a skill above everything.
Speaker: So each one of these, if I'm able to focus on giving my kids mental toughness tools, then they're going to be able to believe in themselves and do more skill work on their own.
Speaker: Or get to the gym and actually work out by themselves versus just talking to their friends or talking on their phone at the gym for two hours. Doesn't mean we worked out for two hours. So then we have skill, the bias. I get it. More time, more time, more time. It's going to expand that.
Speaker: And then our performance here, the middle of Venn diagram also expands. And then last but not least, this is where my argument comes in. If we become more athletic, then we're more coordinated. the time we do spend with skill, they can do more quickly because they have all the tools. And the beauty of working with high school kids is they're a different person every single year.
Speaker: So we can do the same programs, just restart it the next year because they've grown. They put on the muscle mass, and now we get the opportunity to work with them. So where these converge in our light gray boxes, this is where I want us to really understand that coaches have an impact.
Speaker: we are forcing where excuse We are teaching these lessons in these moments and can't assume. So athleticism and skill, and I look at this as a skill in itself, you're being coach-able.
Speaker: They're able to listen to my directions and then make these small adjustments within the the movement that I'm talking about and then have it translate into movement.
Speaker: So the more athletic we are, the more fine-tuned and connected we can get to our skill. That's coachability. Then we have athleticism and mental toughness. This is where the conditioning part of strength and conditioning comes into play. We're working on our our resilience, our mental resilience.
Speaker: proving to them that they can do hard things. So when a game is inevitable and hard stuff comes up, remind them that how many times they woke up at 5 a.m. leading up to this moment.
Speaker: So I can reflect on all the hard work that we put up into that point, and this is our time. And finally, we have skill and mental performance. Now it's game time. I can't be on the field with them.
Speaker: Set them up and set them free. That's a confident athlete. If they know that they can execute, not only against their run the play, now they can do it against someone else.
Speaker: All right. So this is where we get into it. Number two, warm up is seen as the same thing over and over again. Or the old ball coach sees the kid warming up, and then they have conversations. They talk about their day.
Speaker: they They joke and tease them, and it just pulls them out of the performance. And then five minutes later, they're yelling at them for not paying attention. This is our opportunity to get mentally and physically prepared. And I love to say it, and I put a little pot here, get your chili hot.
Speaker: So we're getting ready. So I'm very deliberate in how I run my warmups. I do three different phases throughout the season. And this, in turn, takes 10 minutes of practice.
Speaker: Every single day, I have Mondays change the direction. Tuesday is gonna be straight ahead speed. So I break it down into we're warming up for this specific athletic skill, and then they're working on it throughout.
Speaker: So vision, and I always put a reaction into this. So if we're running to different cones, I tell them orange cone, blue cone, or cone one, cone two. Because that's the same expectation. It's not just going through the same monotonous thing.
Speaker: It's giving them a direction, and they're allowed to make a mistake during the warm-up. And they do. Because then, like, oh, crap, I'm not paying attention. So then i then I tease them, not just tease them because it's the warm-up and I don't have to coach them yet.
Speaker: So every demand that the sport coach has is included in the warm-up. Visual, reaction, and change of direction all over the place. Okay, so now we're getting into the the third phase is we're coaching the level that you're taught.
Speaker: This is one of the most ah blatant mistakes that ah I have new coaches make under my watch. The beauty of living in Austin is I get amazing Division one rock stars that come and work for tech companies that want to give back and coach.
Speaker: The problem is Their job is also demanding. So we still have options for them. Middle school, youth. So then they bring their toolkit from a college, Division one university, to a middle school kid from Texas that just picked up a stick for the first time.
Speaker: We've got to meet them where they're at. So our expectation, okay, identify and assess or recall when you were this age, what were you doing? Not how good you were at lacrosse or how long you've been playing at that age. What were you doing at that age?
Speaker: So the objective is that if it's a nine-year-old, meet them at nine and then talk to them like you're trying to talk to a nine-year-old versus a 19-year-old within this kid. so That's the biggest thing. And how I've been able to accomplish this is deep in dive into how teachers learn to teach.
Speaker: So this is called Bloom's Taxonomy. And I'm going to show this up so I can hold them accountable. If I'm working with ah high schoolers, middle schoolers, doesn't matter, my baseline is I just need them to remember the different names on the field. If it's attack midfield or defense goalie, that'd be an example.
Speaker: A lot of kids don't remember the positions. They're new to it. Then, where are we on the field? Now I talk about riding and clearing. I need to name a specific position on the field and they got to remember, okay, we got the ball, where do I go?
Speaker: If they can't remember that, I just meet them where they're at, remind them, okay. How I like to do it is then use references that they're familiar with. If we're using the field as an example, I say cities in Texas.
Speaker: The farthest place away from the goal, ah the away from the box, is going to be El Paso. It's the farthest city in Texas. So the box, this is called Beaumont, B, box, Beaumont, because that is the city right on the border of Louisiana and Texas. So I got El Paso and Beaumont, the box, and then away from the box.
Speaker: Then right in the middle of the field where the faceoff is, there's Dallas, because that's right in the heart of Texas. So naming, they know where these are because there's a lot of pride within my state.
Speaker: So now they can remember where to go. Oh, we got the ball? El Paso. So that's an example. If they can't remember, well, I meet them where they're at and I just beat it into their heads. I don't get mad at them. I just do the repeater.
Speaker: And I beat a dead horse to death with the basics and the fundamentals of the sport. Eventually, they start to recall that information. Then I can help them understand why we do that.
Speaker: Why do we get it? But if I'm leading with why as a coach and they can't remember, I'm going to lose the attention span of these kids and they're going to looking all over the place. And they're not going to remember because I'm just stuck in why.
Speaker: So I have to understand where they're at. If we can't remember everything, we're not goingnna understand why we do stuff. So that then gets into apply. This is us executing the plays onto the field.
Speaker: And this works for riding, clearing, defense, everything. If they can't remember what to what attack does on that play, well, I can't put you out there in this particular moment because you can't remember the plays.
Speaker: So that's what I want to do. If we can't remember the stuff, don't expect them to apply it during the game. It's just not going to happen. So when I'm teaching, I have to meet them where they're at. It's a constant check-in.
Speaker: Okay, do you remember what to do on the clear? Yes. What do we do? What do you do? What is the the first look on the clear for the goalie? And the goalie recites it back to me. OK, why do we do that?
Speaker: Well, I told them why last week. Can they remember why? And it just works its way up. And then we get to apply. Then more advanced high schoolers, we need to be able to do this.
Speaker: And if I'm getting juniors that are starting the sport for the first time, I just start right here. And they're on a higher learning curve because they're with their their boys and everything's moving faster.
Speaker: So we'll actually get to apply sooner. And then a common fallacy we see, what do people do when they first start playing lacrosse? You just go play defense. I was that guy.
Speaker: So if we got an athletic person that has the tools and we see them, and this is where do speed, change the direction, testing, reaction stuff, oh, they're going to make a a great offensive player and they got the the athletic toolkit, we just go put them with the offense.
Speaker: And we work with them on the side to remember alignment assignment technique, where to be, what to do when you get there, and then how to do it. So we're very fast with that. So we identify what they will be successful as a toolkit within their athleticism, and then we just get them up to speed using Bloom's taxonomy as our guiding light here.
Speaker: So then we get to analyze. This is film, and Coach Whelaner, you talked about it. Some guys are film guys, some guys are not. Unless it's a 15-second TikTok, we're not analyzing it.
Speaker: So, I'm not going to get mad at them if their brain, their whole culture is not based off analyze. but I need to be able to hammer these through. Why do we do this? Okay, we need to go do this and replicate it at practice, because our guys are not doing film on their own. That's the beauty of all these new film softwares is we can see who checks in, how long they're sitting on that site and not.
Speaker: So I identify who loves the game, who is analyzing it, and then I continue to pour into them specifically. I'm meeting them where they're at, because they need more or else they'll get bored.
Speaker: And then lacrosse, it wasn't hard enough. It's not my thing. Or basketball, i'm I'm more intellectually engaged in basketball because the coach is pushing me. Because the coach then sees that.
Speaker: He's probably ignoring everybody else on the team. But he probably sees that, and he's pouring into it. So we've got to find the smart people. And then let's evaluate.
Speaker: We can evaluate their games. We're not just analyzing the film or the other team. Now we're evaluating your game. We're going to watch last game. and we're going to break you down. If I'm spending time evaluating and breaking down the whole team and our guys don't understand why we're running certain plays at certain times, I'm wasting a lot of time as a coach.
Speaker: So it's a matter of meeting the kids where they're at and being as efficient with my time as I can because we only get so much with them that they're actually focused. And last but not least, create. If you get a guy that's writing his own plays, they're being creative, what I do is then give them more responsibility. now We practice middle school before we practice high school.
Speaker: So I'm also the middle school director for the program. I tell them, hey, meet me. Instead of meeting at 6 o'clock for practice, meet me at 530 at the field, and you're basically on my hip. And now we're getting creative. You're in charge of the offense today.
Speaker: So I'm incorporating them into the younger, because we run the same system in middle school as we do high school, just so they know the same vernacular, what to remember, where the places on the field are called.
Speaker: they We teach them why we're doing it. Hopefully they they grasp that concept and then go out and execute. So this is the the guiding light for how I'm communicating and meeting people where they're at. I can't get frustrated with them because they're not understanding something.
Speaker: I need to go back to basics. So this is a tool called chunking, and kids have learned to read using this tool. So we can recite the alphabet, and that's the greatest example of of chunking because we learn it A, B, C.
Speaker: Then it's ABC, EFG, I think I forgot D, but ABC, D, EFG, HI, JK, LMNOP. Those are chunks. And then letters become words and words become sentences.
Speaker: And then sentences become paragraphs, paragraphs become chapters and chapters become novels. So if we just start at evaluate analyze war and peace with a kid that's just picking up a sport, we're gonna lose them immediately. Lacrosse is too hard.
Speaker: It's not. It's awesome. It's fun. We want you to be a part of it. So this is one of the most valuable tools that I've stumbled upon to use as as effectively teaching 80 different kids at 80 different levels, especially when they start to pick up the sport for the first time later in life.
Speaker: All right. So then we get into activity is not achievement. This is based off a John Wooden quote. Don't mistake activity for achievement. Just because we're on the wall or just because we're in the weight room doesn't mean we're actually getting better.
Speaker: So we're not checking boxes or blind spot of counting reps and volume as progress. Do they remember? Do they understand? Are they getting the reps in and applying this with intention? So intentionality is going to go a long way.
Speaker: Harrison said that earlier. so If I'm not able to identify where they're at, I can't teach them appropriately. So there's also understanding with our brain, but there's also and there's understanding with our body.
Speaker: So the tool that I use to understand their athletic ability, this is called the competency model. So i talked about chunking. Competency model, I'll get to in a moment, and an important educational term is called zone of proximal development.
Speaker: So I meet them where they're at, but I also teach one step above that so they're always reaching upward for that. So when the parents that are in here understand that you're gonna talk to kid not like a nine-year-old, you're gonna talk to him like a 10-year-old, an adult, and so we're just reaching up and expanding them ah piece by piece until they actually can hold a conversation versus maintaining baby talk throughout their whole life.
Speaker: So zone of proximal development is teaching them one step one ounce above where they're at and then pulling them along. That's how the friends that join the team later in high school, later in life, can accelerate because they want to be like theirs. And then the youngest brother, there's amazing stat that the USA Gold Sprinter, when we used to hold the the the Speed Gold, it was always the fourth brother in the family.
Speaker: So something like three or four American Golds in a row, they were the fourth brother. Because that's intention, you're moving, trying to reach up. And that they're they're learning with the zone of proximal development as kids.
Speaker: So competency model, this is going to be a skill check-in. For me, the first level, and it's four levels, is called unconscious incompetence. Meaning they don't know what they don't know.
Speaker: And they're not valuing our coaching. And if you've seen this movie, the lacrosse in this movie is so terrible that they don't know it's this bad. So they gave these actors sticks. This is American but Pie, 1999. I'm talking about an American Pie and you show up. It's great. So it's so bad, but the the film directors, they don't know that it's that bad. and anybody that's ever played lacrosse is like, it's painful to watch. It's not funny, it's painful.
Speaker: So have you ever ah made ah an adjustment for a kid or give them a direction and a cue, and they step up and they say, I didn't do that. Like, well, why else would I be wasting my breath to tell you that you did not do that correctly?
Speaker: So they're in this stage of unconscious incompetence. So if they don't know what their body is doing, we're right here. I'm not going to get mad at them for doing incorrectly. We need more reps. Now if it's a behavior thing where they start to push back and not value my coaching, that's a whole different thing. Because they're going to get locked in this and we need to go after the behavior versus the skill. If we continue just tell them and correct their reps, but they're not willing to receive that information, that's the problem.
Speaker: So understand the difference between behavior and skill when we get into it. With enough reps and enough time, they'll see themselves improve. And we'll get into conscious incompetence.
Speaker: Referencing a movie again, there's better lacrosse in this movie, but it's a bad movie. So they're conscious of the lacrosse, but the rest of the movie is incompetent.
Speaker: So we know that we're not good. It's not this beginner's luck, this high, oh, this lacrosse is easy. We've actually put enough time in reps to understand, no, lacrosse is really hard, and I'm not good at this.
Speaker: This is when kids quit the sport, when they see, oh, this is going to take reps. This is gonna be very important for us as coaches to then step in. As kids get more reps, more opportunity, and we're encouraging, this is where i lean into behaviors. can Keep showing up, keep it fun so we can work through this.
Speaker: Okay, just 50 passes against the wall on your own, you're gonna get better faster. It's that easy. It's not that easy, but I want the behavior. i want them showing up and keep going through it.
Speaker: So with enough time and reps, and how I've seen kids work through this stage is they start to ask for feedback. Hey, coach, come watch me on this. Coach, how do I do on that one?
Speaker: So now they want, they value the coaching now. They see that, okay, I am getting better, but I need specific direction here. That's a huge positive. So I need to encourage them up to the point where they are seeking feedback in this stage.
Speaker: All right. With enough reps, we get into conscious confidence. Now they know they're not good, but they're seeing progress. and it's working and they this this tumble effect starts to to progress. But the challenge with, um she just got named USC head coach, coincidentally. So the, I can't remember a name right now, but so conscious competence, we're rolling with it, we're getting better.
Speaker: It's just, it's slow because we have to focus on the execution. So I'm thinking about where my hands are. Yes, I have a great shot, but I'm thinking about it. We want to get to the point where we're thinking two passes ahead with enough reps. We're not just focused on what we're doing in this moment, which is conscious competence.
Speaker: We would want more reps, more practice, and now we start to see the game evolve from just us and what we're doing in this play to what all six people are doing in this play at that time.
Speaker: And this is going to be unconscious competence. We're not thinking about where our hands are. We're not thinking about what our feet are doing. we are looking two passes ahead and knowing as soon as I get the ball, I'm going to do something amazing.
Speaker: So that's the goal is to do this practice so much that we get to the point where it's unconsciously competent and I can anticipate and expect different things to happen.
Speaker: but only with practice, only with guidance, coaching, and i mean pouring water onto the the kids so they find this buy-in and get to this level. That's what we want to to to find the passion through learning and highlighting any improvement.
Speaker: And I don't know how it is in every other state, but in Texas, doing the right thing doesn't get acknowledged or rewarded. You only acknowledge when they need to fix something.
Speaker: It's just, oh you did it correctly? Good. That's what you're supposed to do. And they get no feedback. So 50% of my team is football players, and then the other are just lacrosse players.
Speaker: So they get in, and they're used to just being MF'd up and down the field every single day. So as soon as you say it's something positive, they don't believe it. They don't know how to receive that coaching feedback.
Speaker: So it takes, don't know, four weeks for them to pro finally get to the point where, oh, we're actually being encouraged and seeing progress versus just grinding harder in this doom loop.
Speaker: um So unconscious competence, knowing where to be two passes ahead, that's our goal. And then wanting coaching, able to receive it, that's how we're gonna progress up through this this stage.
Speaker: Okay, now getting into into leadership. Captains are also appointed, but they're not developed. That's a problem we see at the high school level. We were talking about where the popular kid or the really good kid at your sport gets anointed captain because they're really talented.
Speaker: So everybody looks up to them socially or athletically. They don't necessarily have the tools to then step in. So We want to actually give them tools. We want to present challenges and how they would handle that.
Speaker: So going through Bloom's taxonomy, competency model, but we can do those same drills with leadership. And there's one layer I want to add on to, and these are behaviors. There's four major behaviors research says about transformational leadership theory.
Speaker: So these are very targeted since the 70s as four things that a transformational captain can do. So the first one is gonna be idealized influence.
Speaker: That essentially means that I am acting in good character. I hold my teammates to expectations and I too am executing that. So it's it's constraining certain behaviors. It's investing now for the future, delayed gratification.
Speaker: So it's not just hollow words yelling at the guys with passion and intensity, if at all. It's actions matching your goals. That would be idealized influence. Next, we have inspirational motivation, where we're aiming to try to lift people up. We have social awareness to read body language, and we can redirect it and lift up.
Speaker: I say this every day at practice. Leaders lift up. they're used to what does leadership look like in other sports. MFing, yelling, and getting on guys for no reason.
Speaker: That's not leadership. So this is redirecting and aiming to lift up. So we're appropriate learning to read body language and inspire in moments. So it's not waiting for somebody to make a mistake to get on them.
Speaker: It's leading with high expectations and high support. Then we have intellectual stimulation. I covered this earlier with the guys that are majorly into the sport, we gotta to feed them.
Speaker: If they're a specific position and they remind me of a professional, go watch this guy's YouTube clips. So that'd be intellectual stimulation. And we've seen the greats do it in all the other sports. If we look at the NBA, Kobe had MJ.
Speaker: LeBron had Kobe and MJ. And now every single kid right now has Steph Curry, LeBron, MJ, everything. So we can hack into that to stimulate them to get their creative juices flowing, and they'll start taking risks in practice to try to make these plays.
Speaker: Am I going to MF them for taking those crazy shots and risks? No way. i want that creativity expressed because that's showing me buy-in. So we're not leaning into the fundamentals as much as challenging, and that's going to be expressed with our athleticism as well.
Speaker: And finally, that leads us to individualized consideration. So a leader's ability to know each player on the team and then find out what motivates them. It's very difficult at the high school level to encourage a senior to have a conversation with a freshman.
Speaker: They just tell them what to do, and then when it doesn't happen, they tell them louder. Doesn't work. So having these guys in different scenarios, this is why I love the weight room, and then great lesson learned from Kevin Warren, my first year as a strength and conditioning coach at Division I level.
Speaker: I was very by the book. Okay, freshman, never lifted weights before. You're gonna be in this rack doing this program. Then guys over here are gonna be doing this program, and all the way up in this beautiful, perfect weight room, it's gonna flow, and I'll know where each person goes.
Speaker: Yeah, one look at that, Kevin was like, no, mix mix them up. I need the seniors and the freshmen talking to each other. So now my perfect program gets thrown out because more important than the perfect program was the culture.
Speaker: So now my seniors are forced to look at a freshman squatting like that, and then he's being like, dude, that's the ugliest thing I've ever seen. So they don't need a coach to tell them it's ugly because they got a captain to tell them it's ugly.
Speaker: Do they know how to fix it? No, but they know what bad looks like. And so now the kid's trying to find adjustments, and that's where I can come in and and fix that as an expert. So that's an example of individualized consideration, blew up the weight room program for actually getting communication amongst the guys. Those are all leadership reps.
Speaker: It's correcting squat technique or yelling at a guy for shortened reps. That's leadership that they're going to need on the field and know who to listen to. And better believe that the freshmen also were counting the seniors' reps.
Speaker: Whether they chose to call them out or not, that's on them. But there's still this opportunity to count each other's reps and support and spot and get in there. All right, these are all opportunities every single day for people to learn how to lead in these research-based, specific behaviors of leadership.
Speaker: So then I love to call it when I see it, i just give them different names. This would be a representation of teamwork, individualized consideration. Teamwork, I call it when I see it.
Speaker: Favorite example, and I give this to the guys at the beginning of the season, is Baker Mayfield. i was watching when he was in the Orange Bowl with Oklahoma Sooners. They're highlighting Baker and his story as a walk on at Texas Tech, ah Big 12 freshman of the year, amazing player, and then comes back the next year. And then his coach said, well, we actually recruited this star. He's going to be our starting quarterback.
Speaker: And so Baker bet on himself. He left, went to OU, walked on, and then number one pick overall. Watching that, they're telling a story pre-number one overall pick. But he's highlighting, he's bouncing around, and he notices offensive lineman's shoes untied.
Speaker: And he's on the camera, he doesn't know it, so he just pops down, ties his teammate's shoes for him, and then just gets back in the zone, and then they go they lost the game. in this If I could have it my way for the story, they'd win the game, but they lost. so now But that's a great representation of teammates, and I tell the guys the story minus who won and lost the game.
Speaker: And then guess what I see? Guys tying each other's shoes. So it's one thing for a teammate to tell them, hey, your shoe's untied. It's another for me to, your shoe's untied, dude, I got you. That is one small rep that then translate into a major lift up in the high stress of the game.
Speaker: So leaders lift. All right. And I stole this from JL Ruppert in our podcast. Fair and equal are not the same. So the blind spot coaches have, ninety i call this 90-10 attention.
Speaker: And when I was playing in college, 90-10 meant something special. It's 90% how you look, 10% how you play. So that's what 90-10 meant to me as a player. But now as a coach, I see 90% of effort from coaches go into 10% of the kids because they're really easy to coach.
Speaker: They're good at the sport. It's fun to coach them because you ask them to do one thing and they do it. And then everyone else, it takes you 10 times to say the exact same thing and maybe they get it.
Speaker: So these coaches, junior varsity level, middle school level, they have a habit of sticking to the people that are really coordinated and good. Well, we've got to break that habit. I'm not saying do the exact opposite and ignore the good. We've got to find a way to evenly disperse our time.
Speaker: But then our attitude, effort, attention, how we're disciplining, it's not going to be fair. And this is important for them to to learn as athletes, because guess what? The call is not going to go their way. A ref is going to make a bad call. How do you respond? Ah, that's not fair.
Speaker: Hands up behavior. Or blame, complain, and get defensive. So I'm intentionally being unfair, especially as a strength and conditioning coach. I get a lot of opportunities to be unfair at practice, one of which is, said 50% of football guys.
Speaker: In Texas, we have spring football. It is a full season during the spring, much like lacrosse's fall ball. Football is full on pads for 16 days. So they got 6 a.m. weights.
Speaker: And football is a class in Texas. You get a grade four. helps your GPA. So they have 6 a.m. weights. That rolls into football class, which is full padded practice. Fortunately, it's in the morning because it gets too damn hot.
Speaker: And now they got seven on seven or more weight room or speed or track something afterwards. And then we got lacrosse practice later on. So the kids are exercising plus school 16 hours a day.
Speaker: Well, being a professional, I acknowledge that versus ignoring it and say, okay, you guys are doing seven reps today. Everybody else, you got 12. That's not fair. Oh, last year we had to do all 12. OK, well, I wasn't here last year, so that's not fair. But that's what we're going to do, because I'm more worried about shin splints on those guys because they're contributing.
Speaker: That's when I get my jabs in, when guys start to complain and talk back. So that's an example. But helping them understand, like, this isn't fair. I'm focused on each and every one of yours performance. And you need 12 because you didn't.
Speaker: lift weights this morning. He needs seven because he lifted weights this morning. So finding a way to mix that in and aiming to to also help the younger coaches understand, yeah, it's really fun to coach those guys, but guess who else needs you out here?
Speaker: The other guys. OK. Then we have recovery and fuel. They live off the field. That is a problem. you You default to others to take care of this or parents certain ways. And I've just seen too many bad things in Texas, especially the football players lifting weights.
Speaker: There's a rash of shin splints and it's called spondy. That's when you get some major back pain because you're deadlifting with a big rounded back and then you come to practice and then you're rotating.
Speaker: So you get some fractures within your spine and whole bad stuff happens. So understanding that and knowing all this is going on, I have to educate them when they're in my grasp and set expectations.
Speaker: So they have to give me a copy of the weightlifting program. They got to show me how they're executing the lifts. We got to have the nutrition talk. What'd you eat? What I need at and anything. I didn't eat lunch. Didn't eat anything after school. Okay.
Speaker: Well, here's why that's bad. You're not going to feel good today. But here's why. You control your own behavior. So aiming to be proactive and not assume any of this because it's not sports skill. It's not lacrosse.
Speaker: can't assume it. I've got to educate and empower them so that way, come game day, I trust that they're prepared on and off the field within nutrition and sleep. All right, moving right along. This is going to be a big takeaway for you is coach the brain, not the behavior.
Speaker: I want you to aim to to remember and understand, to use Bloom's taxonomy, how the brain works under pressure. So coaching only thinking the brain when when the the the pressure's on or that they are a person when they're at game time.
Speaker: every No one rises to the occasion you fall to the level of your training. So if we expect them to to be a certain person in practice and then show up come game time, we're ah in the wrong scenario.
Speaker: But that goes for us as coaches as well. How are we reacting to certain situations in games And that's going to help us understand there's three phases of our brain. So we have our prefrontal cortex. This is going to be our thinking. When we're caught in conscious competence and we're thinking about where our hands are, what our feet are doing, then we ignore the the situation in the world around us. We're going to act slow. We may make the right decision.
Speaker: but it could be at the wrong time. Then we have the the midbrain. This is unconscious competence. We are in flow state. We are free flowing. We're reading and reacting and then thinking two steps ahead.
Speaker: If there's a mistake made, you are then busting your tail to overcome that mistake for you or your teammate. Then we have limbic brain. This is fight, flight, and freeze. So ah us as coaches, if we step in and we're yelling,
Speaker: We shut that off. We force them into their fight, flight, freeze their limbic brain. And now whatever cue, direction, fix, correction we give them, they're not going to hear it. So how we're feeding back in a feedback loop is very important.
Speaker: Because if we come in hot with our emotions, then they're going to try to simply aim to regulate our emotions versus keeping theirs calm and then thinking about, OK, next time that happens in the game, I will do this.
Speaker: So it is challenging. It is tough, especially when they make a boneheaded play. Well, they're probably overthinking it or they're super tired. They're in fight, flight, freeze mode because they've been out there too long.
Speaker: So where are they? I got to meet them where they're at now of physically and emotionally for this moment to make a correction. Sometimes that correction is body language to get back in the game.
Speaker: and then no matter of the XYZ that I give them, they're not gonna remember it because they're so in their head or they're so fatigued and tired that they can't hear anything anyway.
Speaker: Or their tempers flaring because they made a mistake and they're beating up the bench. I can't give them an XYZ correction. Usually give them space to to calm down and then, okay, when we're in here.
Speaker: ah Aim to accomplish this by giving them numbers on how mad I am during practice. I never reach a 10, but I tell them I'm at a 7, I'm an 8, or I'm a 9.
Speaker: Or if I'm boiling because they're acting up, guys, you don't want to see me at a 9 today. So now I'm associating numbers, but i so I do this to set up game time. Because if they're at a 9, a coach default is to jump to a 10 and try to suppress them down.
Speaker: Well, I can meet them at a 9 and then bring them back down to a 6 or 7. Now we're in coaching mode, and they can listen to my stuff. So I aim to set that up versus just yelling at them and getting a 10 into limbic brain until they they shut up and comply.
Speaker: So the aim here, everything I do in practice is effectively preparing for a moment in a game when the stress is the highest.
Speaker: All right, winding down, this is going to be an important one. Social emotional learning, SEL competencies, these are assumed and not coached. And with lacrosse in Texas, it is a club sport.
Speaker: These are coaches that are talented athletes that have not had formal teaching training. So social emotional learning is a major component in K through 12 education.
Speaker: So yes, they got to understand math and history, but it's structured in a way, it's scaffolding is the key word for education, in a way that kids can follow along and then we can work with where they're at.
Speaker: So it's Bloom's taxonomy before emotions. So there's five competencies. You have self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship building skills, and then last but not least, responsible decision making.
Speaker: So the aim, all of those carry over into sport. So we are assuming that when we get a kid, they should have learned all this stuff. what i And I used to make this assumption as well. So the the turning point for me came when our our team captain tragically at 16 had an undiagnosed heart issue and passed away during the summer.
Speaker: So he was a rising junior and we heartbreaking because he was the heartbeat of the team. And then I was the the the hard ass. I was the authority. I came in and he was a buffer. He was able to filter in everything that I had given to the team and then keep the guys up and motivate them in a true way.
Speaker: But then we lost him. But I still came in at a hard ass But I couldn't connect with them. They would turn their back. They would talk back all different behavioral issues.
Speaker: So I had to grow as a coach. And I knew these kids for six years. And that that was it. OK, why is he talking back to me? I'm um not his friend. i'm I'm connected to him. I'm not an enemy. Why is he talking back to me?
Speaker: So then i understood i knew his family. They had a violent divorce when they were seven years old. And now here he is in high school, this this particular kid, not the kid that passed away. So now we never had fisticuffs, but we're getting to that moment.
Speaker: Well, at seven, that's when you learn interdependence. within elementary school PE games, where my performance is relying on your performance, and you're relying on me to do my job.
Speaker: So PE e games evolve with SEL to then teach us these lessons through those games. And we learn how to be great teammates at that 7 to 11 block.
Speaker: But now he's not being a good teammate. And he's talking back to me. You don't do that. So what I learned to then do is separate the person from the behavior. Because he was a good kid.
Speaker: He was making a poor decision. So I deep dove into child development and then saw this major gap that I was making as a coach and a lot of coaches still continue to make.
Speaker: So our objective is to get away from the assumption that sports will teach you how to be a man. Sports will teach you great character. No, you need the deliberate mentor and it's pulling on one of those five competencies, I believe. Self-awareness.
Speaker: If a kid doesn't have good self-awareness, he's not coachable. If they have low self-esteem, they're not coachable. If they have this story in their head that I'm not any good, i I believe that. And we're trying to lift them up and give them good feedback. It's not going to happen.
Speaker: Now, if they're overconfident and they're way up here, they're the player that gets burned on a play and then comes off with this fake hamstring injury. to save face from actually that they made a mistake out there.
Speaker: That's not coachable. So we got a level set on their skill set, create this self-awareness, which is the key to unlocking then. If they can trust their own feelings, now I can have social awareness and be able to read other people's feelings, and then I can step in as a teammate.
Speaker: Self-management, things will not go my way. How do I respond? Do I always immediately go to a 10? Well, that's poor leadership because now kids are going to hide mistakes from me as a coach because they don't want to bring me problems. If I'm leading a company, they're going hide a lot of stuff and not bring me problems because they don't want to see me mad.
Speaker: Well, now the whole organism program suffers because they don't want to see me upset and want to make sure that I have a good day. Well, great social awareness, however, not a good decision that they're making.
Speaker: So all of these are different behaviors that are anchored in child development. And then how i go about uncovering these is having a conversation with the kid. if i see mom a lot if i see dad a lot if i don't all of these are cues for me to then find out and then ah use stress strength training whatever it is to elicit a response and then remind them that you're a hard-working kid i've seen you do it before or help prove to themselves that Dude, you couldn't lift that. This is why weights are so awesome, because it progresses up. You do the work, it'll show up.
Speaker: Two weeks ago, you couldn't do that, or a month, if we're tracking in our notebook. Look back a year ago. that's Now your warm-ups are more heavier than that. So you you have to prove to them that their behaviors, that they can do hard things by investing in this.
Speaker: But it's all connected to these five CASEL social-emotional learning competencies. So I need to also regulate myself within that and understand my own self-awareness and limitations within there. If I'm bad at reading the room, that's going to go a long way. I can't lead the mental and emotional state of the team.
Speaker: Keys here. OK. So here they are listed out again if we want to take notes. Self-awareness, social awareness, self-management, relationship building skills, and responsible decision making. OK. Last but not least, coach the stage your team is in.
Speaker: This is one of my favorite things. This is called Tuchman's Stages of a Team. And this is from business, but I apply it to sports. So there are five phases of a team, forming, storming.
Speaker: Norming, performing, and then adjourning. I like to call adjourning morning because that's the end of a season, and it's sad to see those seniors go. So forming, this is going to be where everybody is pretty reserved. There's not a lot of conflict here because they're they're afraid to put themselves forward, and everything's cool. Everything's peachy.
Speaker: And then we have our storming where we start to have conflict. Our masks come down. We are who we are around our team. If you got roommates in college for the first time, now the mask is off and I see who that person really is.
Speaker: so There's conflict in here. We have to teach them how to have conflict. That's the beauty of of sports is it's testing conflict, and then I give them the tools to work through it. If we suppress or ignore during storming because, oh, we don't want frustrations or guys shut up,
Speaker: Get over it. Those are not solutions. We need to have this conversation. Understanding is only reached after confrontation. So storming is going to be important for for our social, our cliques, breaking through those and having freshmen and seniors talk to each other. You don't have to be friends.
Speaker: We've got to respect each other. All of that happens during storming. And then finally, we get to a ah level set where we're not hiding information for each other. We're not talking negatively about each other. it's we're We're positioning ourselves into a team.
Speaker: And finally, we're performing. I like to accelerate these stages through training, but some stages, they just naturally happen. In the early stages of coach, you have to be proactive. We're teaching them these tools.
Speaker: So what I do is I'm very invested. the The cover of this presentation was me in the huddle with the team. I start the season that way, and then I intentionally go back. So once I feel we're performing and we're approaching the first game, now I'm gone because I need now the captains take over. Now I need the storming to happen again, and it will. But the captains are teaching them, the younger kids, the conflict.
Speaker: And if the captain is doesn't have the tools, then I just work with them individually. And they go and try different stuff with the team. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But this is where individualized one of the the first eye. If my ideal, if my model is not a good person, if he's going out and drinking on Fridays before a Saturday game, then nobody's going listen to him.
Speaker: So then we have that conversation. He gets mad and frustrated because nobody's listened to him. Well, what decisions are you making? So it presents this opportunity. When I go away, I establish expectations and execution of a team and a leader and then put it on the captains and expect this this to go away.
Speaker: And I know I did this right. If at the morning and the end of the season, seniors truly give everything they have in the playoffs and they're crying and they're emotional afterwards. If they're like, I'm glad it's over,
Speaker: I failed with that individual. Good luck in the next phase of life, but you're probably not gonna come back for the alumni game. So understanding these stages goes a long way, and then one of the tools that I've led up to this moment will take you there. So this is the summary. Feel free to take a picture real quick.
Speaker: And the the big takeaway, three things is meet kids where they're at, teach and mentor at the individual level, but then I want you to coach and lead at the team level.
Speaker: And that is a great coach. If I'm able to zoom in and zoom out and see how the individual affects the whole and how the whole affects the individual, you're unstoppable. So to reinforce sports don't teach lessons, you do.
Speaker: That's the end.
