Here you are--at the biggest event of your athlete’s career and you can’t even get close enough to talk! You are always right there for your athlete. Every problem the athlete has they look to you for the correction. Your athlete looks frightened and almost confused. You see them searching for you and you are yelling out to them, so much everyone that hears you stares…

 
We have to look at our role as the coach and what our responsibility is to the development of a self-reliant athlete. Sure, coaches are responsible for developing the training plan, the competition schedule and skill development. Often we even tell them when to get up, make recommendations for meals or even have the meals pre-ordered, determine the warm-up, the competition strategy, etc. We are right there to direct any changes in the strategy that might need to be made. All the athlete has to do is go out and compete—no worries—no problem. Coach has it all under control. Sounds like this coach is doing all the right things.

But here’s the problem---during the course of the competition, the strategy you (the coach) deliver breaks down. What you thought was going to happen isn’t going according to the script. You are too far away from the athlete for them to hear your frantic instructions. The athlete has to make a decision about what to do. Are they ready to make a decision? It might be one of the biggest decisions in their athletic career and have you given them the knowledge and the ability to make the decision? You can’t be heard—how will they know what to do?

 
What if they make the wrong decision—how do you respond? Your response is the key to developing a self-reliant athlete. Do you:

Send a substitute to the table, pull the player out and send them to the bench or do you show them how that play went wrong and how they could improve it?
Ask them to tell you the two options they had when the opponent made that move or do you just tell them what their two options were?
Do you teach them how to read changes in pace, to try to anticipate the move and to look, listen and feel all the different cues in a move?
Or do you respond “I” am the coach and just do what “I” tell you to?
How do you teach them to become self-reliant? First, you have to decide if you want them to be self-reliant. Some coaches and we have seen this type of coach even at the Olympic level, want total control over every aspect of the athlete’s life. The problem manifests itself as we watch the athletes struggle because the confines of the Games limits the access for the coach and the athlete doesn’t know what to do as they have never had to make those decisions.

Coaching is about a relationship—a working relationship with a common bond and a goal for achievement. A one-sided relationship is not a good relationship.

Five Tips

You can start teaching your athlete to be self-reliant with simple ideas that can be done in practice, such as:

Don’t over analyze—if they can remember three things that you tell them to do—that is amazing.
Have them describe what happened, instead of you telling them what happened. If they didn’t like what happened ask them what they would do differently—don’t accept “I dunno”.
Design practices so that you don’t do the same skill over and over again (block practice) but make it random—if you are working on three plays—mix it up—do one twice, then the third one, then the second one—the variability makes the athlete think much like they would in a game.
Stop workouts and ask them questions. How did it feel or I noticed this happened, why do you think that is?
Don’t give constant feedback—tell them what the purpose of the workout is—let them work on it. Let them experiment and give constructive feedback after 5, 10 or 15 tries. If you do it every time, they learn to rely on you and not on themselves.
A Prime Example of Why and the Benefits

In 1988, there was a coach and an athlete who had been working together for about 12 years. The coach was a great teacher and the athlete was a willing learner. The coach taught the athlete everything about her event—the High Jump. They would watch film together and he would ask what errors she would see in the technique. The athlete would tell the coach what she saw. He would challenge her with tasks great and small. One night he called her after the sun when down and in the pitch black, he had her come out to the high jump pit. With the light from a flashlight, she put down her marks. The flashlight went off and she jumped in the dark. How much courage that took—but more importantly how much confidence it inspired. (Do not do this with beginners) The coach wanted her know that she could make the jumps in any kind of condition—even blinded by darkness.

The Olympic Games of 1988, in Seoul, Korea this athlete walked out to the High Jump pit. Her coach had decided not to come to Korea. He didn’t want her to worry about where he was. He just wanted her to focus just on jumping. Before she left, they sat on the edge of the pit and talked about all the possibilities, all the different things that might happen at the Games. How would she respond if this happened and what she might do if this happened—a lot of mental preparation for the what-ifs?

The High Jump expert, who was announcing the event, did not give this athlete a chance to even make the final, even though they were friends. The jumper had overcome a number of knee surgeries and no one had expectations except the jumper and her coach. The competition was tough, but the jumper made the finals. She was having a great meet, and she kept watching her competitors as each of them jumped, analyzing what they were doing. At the end, it came down to her and one other jumper. She was in a tie for the Gold medal!

Every jump was critically important and she had no coach there to help her through it, but she did have all the knowledge that he had her learn over the course of the 12 years and all the confidence that he could instill in her. It was a jump-off—imagine the pressure—one mistake and you are done. She had dreamed all her life about a Gold medal, the medal being placed around her neck and hearing the national anthem played as she stood on the podium. This is the moment.

Each athlete took a jump and they both knocked the bar off the standard. They both jumped and again they both missed. But our athlete noticed that her competitor made the same mistake twice and our jumper knew that she had made a mistake and more importantly she knew how to correct her mistake. Imagine how her confidence increased when she realized that she knew how she could improve, but her opponent did not. Her opponent jumped and missed and as all eyes in the stadium focused on Louise Ritter, she made that third jump to win one of the most improbable medals of the 1988 Olympic Games. Bert Lyle, her coach, watched on TV as his athlete won the Gold medal in the most dramatic fashion and smoked his victory cigar, knowing that all those years of preparation and teaching had enabled Louise to win a medal for both of them.

By Catherine Sellers- USOC Coaching