Making It Look Easy

As a coach–or a teacher–you get a lot of different types of kids. This guy is a perfect example of stereotypes in coaching.

Have you ever watched a team and thought a player was loafing it? Have you ever wondered, “Hey, if she would just work harder, she could be even better!” Yup. The problem is, frenetic energy use doesn’t mean the job’s getting done. I’m reminded of a Jim Stone quote: “We’re sweatin’, but we aren’t getting better.”

Sometimes, you get an athlete like Özil. I don’t pay attention to football (except for the World Cup), but you watch Özil and he never looks like he’s going full speed. He looks casual, as if he’s playing out the string or resting on his laurels after earning a big paycheck. As the link notes, that’s caused a lot of whining about his time at Arsenal. Özil is almost the reverse of the Stone axiom: He doesn’t look like he’s sweatin’, but he certainly WAS better.

The thing is–as a coach, I know better now than I did when I started coaching. Sometimes things look ‘easy’ because the person’s sport IQ is so great, they see things early, get to the key spot in advance. Sometimes it’s how the person’s body works—heck, if you watch Usain Bolt run, his stride is so long, so smooth, he looks like he’s out for a jog while he’s doing a 9.6 100-meter sprint.

The catch–because we have stereotypes about athletes who don’t work hard, coaches don’t always take the time to really observe what’s going on. Do they have a high-IQ kid? Is it a kid with great body efficiency? –It means another of the (many) challenges for a coach is getting past physical stereotyping, approaching each athlete with a clear perspective–rather than comparing the athlete to others.

As a postscript: Bill James has written a great deal about this with baseball families/siblings. He notes that in many cases, the youngest sibling is declared to have the most ability but in most cases, disappoints. He notes this with a number of father/son relationships as well. His hypothesis is interesting–basically, the youngest sibling succeeds early because he’s been around older siblings at a high level–it means his sport IQ starts higher than anyone else at his age level–he has a head start on the competition. Eventually though, others catch up and then, if that youngest sibling doesn’t also excel physically, he gets passed by. –something to think about when coaching families with multiple kids in your program.