A Fresh Start
For those on the RSS feed this new post may come as a surprise.
The blog will find a new life as I transition from Indiana to Alabama. This post is mostly to test a couple new add-ins.
Back in the Mix
Yes it has been a while. First had some technical problems, then just rant out of time. Anyway, I am back now. Since there has been so much material to write about in the interim since my last post, it is probably best to just go forward from this point and back-fill as time and current events dictate.
One incident that can't be over-looked from this past weekend is the University of Miami v. Florida International brawl. In a nutshell it serves as a great teachable moment for two important concepts. First, sports teams are ALL about team culture. "the u" as it seems the football players like to refer to their school, clearly has established a certain culture. This incident did not pop-up out of now where nor was there something special about FIU, that the brawl would have been inevitable with any other team. Clearly a case of having to reap what you sow. The second teachable moment is that bad things don't typically happen on "good days." Athletes tend to keep their cool when they are playing well. If you look at the egregious acts of the past few weeks, ask if any of these players where having "good days?" the answer is no and that is why when you are not playing well, that there needs to be a special emphasis on maintaining your character. Haynesworth, Thomas, etc., would probably like to have a do over that will never come.
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More Evidence You Can't Do a Don't
One of my graduate students is just now wrapping up the finishing touches on a study regarding the impact of different types of instructions on a closed motor skill (in this case Dart Throwing). A brief explanation of the experiment is in order. Participants were given two sets of three practice throws which were recorded. After finishing the practice trials participants either read or listened to a set of instructions for dart-throwing that either emphasized Positive instructions (what to do or focus on, e.g. "hold the dart gently between ..."), Negative (what not to do or focus on, e.g. "do not hold the dart too tightly"), or Neutral ("hold the dart"). Participants then threw four more sets of three darts each. The preliminary results showed an interesting pattern. There was no difference (what scientists call a main effect) for the Media, meaning that statistically there was not a difference in the performance of the group that read their instructions compared to those who listen to a CD recording of the instructions. There also was no main effect for Direction, meaning that when comparing the three different types of instructions (positive, negative, neutral) across all of the experimental trials (throws 7-18), the scores were not statistically different. However, when the trials were looked at in sequence a dramatic effect surfaced.
There was a very large difference in the performance of the negative group and the positive group on the third block (3 darts to a block), which was the first block after the instructions were given. The graph shows what is a typical "learning curve" for the first two blocks of trials as all three groups showed some improvement during the practice trials. The gradual improvement continues for the the Positive group (Blue Line) in Block 3 and there is a bit of a plateau for the Control Group (Gray Line). The Negative Group (Green Line) however, has a precipitous drop-off in performance. There is a noticeable rebound in performance between Block 3 and Block 4, but the Negative group never quite recovers back to their pre-instruct performance.
A couple of conclusions that can
be drawn are: a) negative instructions have an immediate performance reducing impact that is not seen with positive instruction, and b) when performers have access to feedback (in our case they could see where the darts hit the target) and they are left alone for a while they can recover from negative instructions. While these findings are interesting from a general teaching and learning standpoint, they possibly have dramatic implications for coaches.
First and foremost is the impact of giving negative instructions in a game situation. While this study does not necessarily support the idea that people tend to do the last thing they heard (so don't foul" does not necessarily lead to a foul), but the study does support the notion that they don't know what to replace the "don't" with. This confusion leads to lower performance. So to break my own rule "Don't leave a time out huddle telling them what not to do."
Secondly, our result were the participants in the negative group managed to rebound to end up at basically the same level as the other two groups by the end of the trials comes into play in practice situations. In our study, the instructions were only given once and the participants had access to their results. This however, is not typically the case in a sport practice setting. Imagine a volleyball practice where the team is practicing serves. The coach wanders around watching as the players take 5-10 trials. She sees a player who is stepping with the wrong foot and says (it would be worse if she yells) "Don't step with your right foot." If the player's results mirror our results, the next couple of trials would have problems. Do coaches tend to give an instruction and walk away? Not usually. If the performance is not instantly improved by the instruction, most coaches will added on more instruction. If this new instruction is also negative you can see the potential for a very frustrating (for both player and coach) downward spiral of performance.
So to help your players be successful in the shortest period of time, focus on what you want them to do and give them some space and time to work through things on their own before making further corrections. While not covered specifically in this study, otherstudies report that you can always reinforce what see them doing correctly.
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Winning the Next Play
While it may seem that an Indianapolis Colts theme is emerging, I assure you that it is only due to the amount of media coverage that they have received lately (although I do have the utmost respect for the organization). However, while watching the play-off game between the Colts and the Steelers, the single act that inspired me to write was performed by Steeler, Troy Polamalu. Not the interception, that was shockingly overturned after review (the NFL has subsequently stated that the overturned was wrong), but his response to this reversal.
In a twist of directorial brilliance, the television audience was shown a reply of the shot of Polamalu as he heard the review determination being made to the crowd. What he did was shake his head once as in "I think you blew that one Mr. Referee," but in the same motion grabbed his helmet and ran back onto the field to play defense. That was it. He didn't run onto the field to argue, he didn't pout to his coach, he did plead to his teammates, he ran onto to the field to get ready to try to win the next play. The fact that the Colts took advantage of the missed call, not withstanding, as it is quite likely that not every player on the Steelers defense recovered from the bad break as quickly as Polamalu, the picture of him just running back onto the field is a great example of the type of rapid resilience that is crucial for becoming a successful player. Bruce Brown calls it the What's Important Now" (WIN), principal. The Positive Coaching Alliance recommends having a "mistake ritual" to aid in quickly rebounding from mistakes (both your own and those of others). In fact Stanford Women's Volleyball coach, John Dunning has actually defined a Competitor as "someone who is consistently the person who is most ready to win the next play."
So why is it that Polamalu's reaction was remarkable? Over my years as an athlete, coach, spectator, I feel that there has been a growing need for players to be dramatic to ensure that everyone believes that they were robbed; basketball players standing still looking at officials, pleading for a call when they miss a shot, soccer players rolling around on the ground is pretend agony when they get the ball stolen, etc. It is not really about whether the calls (or lack thereof) were correct, it is about taking the calls for what they are and then doing something positive (meaning that will help you or your team be successful) with your very next move. With my teams we have always used the phrase "get to your spot" meaning that there is always some place you should be to get your job done, when you are questioning officials, looking over at the bench for sympathy, or faking an injury, you are not in your spot.
Finally, as coaches it is important to remember this lesson as well. Your spot is to be coaching and unless there is a recognized process for protesting calls, the best thing for you to be doing is coaching your team. A lot of times we (and I do included myself) feel we need to show everyone how much we know. I think that this normal human drive is responsible for a lot of the arguing and demonstrative behavior in sports. While it might be normal, it is not productive. I speak to hundreds of coaches every year and when I ask how many of them have ever had a call changed in the middle of a contest, the number saying they have would be less then 3%. That is 3 out of a 100 coaches have EVER had a call reversed, so if you figure in how many calls they had felt were wrong in their entire career, the likely of being hit by lightening, starts to look like good odds when compared to arguing calls. Coaching your team, getting to your spot, "flushing" mistakes and moving on, focusing on WIN, does not mean you don't know what you doing, it means the exact opposite, and with a little education your players and parents will understand that as well.
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Coaching and Playing Lessons from Michael Lewis' New Book
I just read the new offering by Micheal Lewis (who also wrote
Moneyball, and
Liar's Poker) called simply
Coach: Lessons on the Game of Life. I am glad that I did not get it for a plane trip, because at 93 small pages including several that are nothing but odd choices of photos, I read it in a shorter amount of time than it takes to taxi at the Indianapolis Airport. While short, the book is thick with both nostalgia (much of Lewis' memories conicide with the time line of my own high school days) and insight into how coaches have an impact on players. You can read other reviews of the book at
Barnes & Noble or
Amazon. I can't recommend it as a MUST read, but since the investment in both money and time is minimal, I do rated it as very worthwhile.
My take aways (the Lessons from the Lessons so to speak) are
(1) it provides a stark case study in when parents and coaches (or teachers for that matter) do not work together to bring out the best in a child. While I have never been accused of being a screamer, I do know who those parents are that run to the Principal, Head Master, or A.D. everytime their child is upset. When I publish my memoirs (don't hold your breath), one of the center piece stories will be of the mother of the one and only kid I ever kicked off a team that I coached, who told me that it was because I didn't understand the psychology of teenage boys and I would benefit with a chat with her husband who was the Psychologist for a School District. Passing on the opportunity to remind her that I had a graduate degree sport psychology, I did ask her how many teenage boys she had. "Two," was her reply. The reason this story came back to me while reading Coach is that while parents may know their children well, they forget that experienced coaches have seen it all before. They forget that the answer to the "how many teenage boys do you have?" for a high school or college coach is in the dozens, EVERY year. There is also a sentence in the book about there being "an invisible line from the parents' desire to minimize their children's discomfort to the choices the children make in their lives." The next line is that these same kids, whose parent were complaining about Coach Fitz, were caught drinking and the number of mandatory suspensions resulted in the team having to forfeit games because they couldn't field nine players.
The real life protagonist of Coach, Billy Fitzgerald, "Coach Fitz" is protrayed as INTENSE. Actually, I didn't think his persona was really all that unusual for a coach who began his career in the mid-1970s. Coaches who yelled and had a penchant for menatally and physically testing their athletes (the book tells the story of Lewis and teammates being made to slide head first on concrete hard dirt, in the dark, after a loss) were actually pretty common back then. It sports this was an era of training excess. Remember that this was just far enough removed from "The Junction Boys" era for coaches to use that leap of abstraction that says "This is what Bear Bryant does and Bobby Knight does and they win championships, so if I want to win championships, then I should do it too." What did strike me, especially just coming off of writing about Tony Dungy (see Jan. 9th post), is how many times what Lewis was really saying about Coach Fitz is that he was deathly afraid, not of Fitz physically, although he was (is) very imposing, but that he was afraid of letting Fitz down. Pretty much the same thing that current and former players for Dungy had said, even though Coach Dungy isn't known to yell, break things, or respond to loses with excess amounts of running. So to finish point one, great coaches get young athletes to stretch themselves, to get over the fear of being uncomfortable, by getting their athletes to care about what the coach thinks. In the 1970s and 1980s many coaches did it with intimidation. We survived and many still thrived. Now, however, most parents do not want to see their children uncomfortable and thus make it much tougher for the coaches who do use intimidation to get the athletes to care about what the coach thinks. I will probably need to write more on that later.
(2) So what's a coach to do? The bad news is that most players do not respond to "negative" coaching they way they used to. There are a lot of reasons for this, but for now let's just say times have changed. The good news is it is possible to get players to care what you think, to be loathe to let you down, by being a positive coach. I don't want to stray too far for the book, but I did want to make the point that being positive with the athletes gives you a chance to establish the relationship with the parents that does allow you to work together so that all of your athletes (or at least a majority of them) have the chance to experience what Lewis did on that hot, humid night in New Orleans, when one adult convinced him that he was "about to show the world, and myself, what I could do."
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Coach Tony Dungy and Level 5 Coaches
While in a Barnes & Noble, the January 02, 2006 issue of
EPSN the Magazine caught my eye. It was clear that it had gone to press before the tradgey of Coach Dungy's son, James, death. The irony of the cover story was one thing that grabbed my attention, but the subtitle of the story, "Why isn't Tony Dungy Getting Any Credit?" is what made me pick up the issue. The actual article by
David Fleming entitle "SSSHHH! Coach at Work" provides several examples from Coach Dungy's career in the NFL that support the conclusion that he fits what Jim Collins terms in his book
Good to Great, as a Level 5 Leader. It also supported my instant conclusion when I saw the magazine cover - "it doesn't matter if he is getting any credit." As quoted in the article,
Coach Dungy said,"The joy I receive from coaching in this game comes from the preparation and the winning...not getting the credit of the attention." In today's era of an increased percentage of "look at me!" coaches he may not be unique, but he is an a small fraternity. The other exclusive clube he belongs to is the one defined by success on the scoreboard that has done it by building a TEAM. Bill Belichick comes to mind as well. Coach Dungy's thoughts on using lots of players and giving everyone on the team a sense of being an indespensable part of the team's success are illuminated in the article. The strongest statement is a saying by his father, Wilbur Dungy, who always reminded Tony that "the best teacher [coach] is someone who brings out the best in every one of his students, someone who can do it without tricking them or bullying them or wanting credit for their acheivements." My sense is that he is one of those coaches that would be just as satisfied if he was coaching middle school football, as the preparation, striving to win, and the ability to teach life lessons are the same. As a resident of Central Indiana, however, I am very happy that he is plying his trade with the Colts and I consider it a privilege to get to watch Coach Dungy work week in and week out.
We hold his family in our prayers.
To find out more about Level Five Leaders check out http://www.jimcollins.com/lab/level5/index.html
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The blog will find a new life as I transition from Indiana to Alabama. This post is mostly to test a couple new add-ins.
There was a very large difference in the performance of the negative group and the positive group on the third block (3 darts to a block), which was the first block after the instructions were given. The graph shows what is a typical "learning curve" for the first two blocks of trials as all three groups showed some improvement during the practice trials. The gradual improvement continues for the the Positive group (Blue Line) in Block 3 and there is a bit of a plateau for the Control Group (Gray Line). The Negative Group (Green Line) however, has a precipitous drop-off in performance. There is a noticeable rebound in performance between Block 3 and Block 4, but the Negative group never quite recovers back to their pre-instruct performance.
