A coaches advice to players might not be what is expected. Even when everyone has the best of intentions.
The key to having a great rapport with your coach is communication. The coaches know it and the players know it. It barely needs repeating here. But good communication typically means your coach talks, you listen, and then let your feet do the talking.
I tried to close the gap in understanding with my coaches as quickly as possible by learning Spanish. But I’m still learning the codified language of a coach’s advice.
Hear you, I do
Giving my best every week at training is the minimum expectation but I am burning to know what I can do differently to ensure my name gets onto the team list each week. Unfortunately a coach’s rationale isn’t always transparent to the players. I was reminded of this when I asked what I could do to improve (and thus get selected). To which my coach replied without hesitation:
I can’t tell you that.
Getafe Coach
Boom. Hard to unravel this explanation without a lot of second-guessing which can be deflating. So after a bit of soul-searching, I turned to the Jedi Master Yoda for an interpretation:
Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.
Grand Jedi Master Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back
But like a young Padawan, I need to accept this advice from my Jedi Master, I mean coach. Believing in myself means having an ego healthy enough not to be crushed when I get feedback that I don’t like.
A coaches advice for young players
I must continue to bring my best attitude and performance to training, but the coach will decide what the coach decides. And the coaches advice for players who have just joined the team is to accept your coaches decision.
I might not need a 900 year old Luminous Being to explain that but Yoda is remarkably accurate when it comes to a coach advising his players:
Happens to every guy sometimes this does.
Grand Jedi Master Yoda. Click here for more quotable quotes.
Tell me about a time when you’ve felt like a young, impatient Luke Skywalker struggling to lift an X-wing fighter out of the swamp. What did you take away from that experience?
[…] cast our minds back to just a few weeks ago, when he wouldn’t answer my question about how to improve. That suddenly feels a long time ago when here he is telling everyone in the team. About how I […]