Getting the most out of them is a costly privilege that you must earn with skill and time.
“For a coach to get the most out of an athlete, he must earn the opportunity, the sheer privilege.
You can have the loudest voice, know the most about x’s & o’s, & have years of tenure.
But if you dont understand athlete psychology & how to reach them, you’re dead in the water.”
-Ray Zingler on X
You’d like to think as a coach, that you’re doing a good deed just by being there.
But the one thing the world does not reward on its own, is time.
Just look at it from a wide angled lens first, and then I’ll reel it back in.
People will graduate high school, go to college, get a degree, and then spend life from 22-65 (now, even older, thanks SS) working a job, for the man, with nothing more than very slight incremental pay bumps, 2 weeks paid vacation, and a couple of benefits (that these people actually pay for on their own dimes via the taxes and fees that are withdrawn from their checks). The only reward is being able to afford to live. That’s it.
Now, let’s go to the other end of the spectrum.
There are YouTube creators out there, under 30 years of age, with significantly less schooling, who are quintupling the salaries of those who have subjected themselves to the societal expectation that is the rat (death) race.
Why can the ladder earn far more than the former?
Value.
Whether you agree, disagree, like it, or dislike it, these “damn millennials” have created value, leveraged attention, and are earning, in direct proportion to the value they’ve created.
It’s simple. If you want more, create more (tangible) value.
Time doesn’t give a f*ck about it.
As I reel this back into coaching, we all “want” to get the most out of athletes, right?
I mean at least we say we do, but here’s the deal:
Getting the most out of an athlete is a responsibility. It’s not a right you are granted by happenstance. You must EARN the opportunity to access the mere privilege of getting the most out of them.
You can have the loudest voice. You can know the most about x’s & o’s. You can even brag about how long you’ve been doing it.
But unless you’re richly focused on your own self-awareness, evolvement, athlete psychology, and how to effectively communicate with and reach athletes of varying archetypes with different and readily evolving needs, you’re never going to get the most out of them.
Hell, to take it a step further, you’re never even going to have a chance.
