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What’s holding back the athletes you work with the most?  Speed, strength, power, conditioning, injuries?  If you continually point to physical constraints as the biggest area of need for your athletes you are looking through the wrong lens and it’s time to refocus on most athlete’s true limiting factor; buy-in. 

Introducing a specific injury reduction strategy or speed development program looks great on paper but if you have any real-world experience you know without hesitation, things never go quite as planned.  We often make the mistake that the athletes we work with are robots who are all extremely motivated, focused disciplined and goal-driven.  When in reality they are inconsistent, moody, unpredictable and often times frustrating.

The harsh reality is that only a fraction of the athletes you work with are your ‘ideal’ athlete.  You know the one’s that perfectly fit the mold, the one’s you can simply plug-in and they go to work like it’s their job.  Most of the team falls in the middle of the bell curve.  They will do what they are asked and probably work hard but most will not go above and beyond what is required.  If your athletes are not completely bought-in then everything else is secondary.

So how do you get your athletes to buy-in? 

1) Meet your athletes where they are. 

This doesn’t mean giving in or being soft.  It just means you need to understand where they are mentally and physically.  Understand what they are capable of giving and what they are willing to give at this point.  Demanding excellence to someone who does not hold themselves to those same standards is a fruitless effort.  You can’t hold athlete’s feet to the fire if they don’t have any accountability themselves. 

If you want to change a behavior you must change an athlete’s self-image.  If they only see themselves as being average their effort will always reflect that perception.  Always strive to get to know your athletes more and what makes them tick.

2) Know what drives them

Drives direct reason, perception, decision making and even memories.  Human drives are broken down into a four part model.  These four drives help us understand what gets our athletes to act and helps us understand what we can do to compel them to take action.

  • Drive to learn- To understand yourself better and the environment you live in and how to improve it.
  • Drive to bond- To form meaningful relationships.
  • Drive to acquire- To develop skill, retain information, resources that will help, gain control.
  • Drive to defend- To defend our status, our home field, our relationships or what we have created.

The better we understand these basic drives the better we can make intentional use of them in our programs.

3) Use Influence tactics

Using influence tactics allows you to better organize and plan your approach to connecting with your athletes.  There are multiple tactics you can use but here are three we like to utilize.

Inspirational appeal- Appealing to your athlete or athlete’s values, ideals or beliefs. This is useful when trying to affect a group decision.  Coaches often use this tactic during team speeches or even in a vision or mission statement.

Rational persuasion- This is when we use logic or facts to persuade an athlete to buy-in to an exercise or concept we are trying to present.  An example would be talking to an athlete who hates stretching about the direct correlation between injury rates and mobility.   Another would be talking about the importance of staying hydrated and the negative effects on performance with as little as a 2% decrease in hydration levels. 

Consultation tactic- This tactic is great for creating autonomy within the group.  Simply asking for input or even suggestions from the group can do great things to increase motivation within the group.

4) Be the model, not the critic

  Stop blaming your athletes for being lazy and unmotivated, maybe they are and maybe they aren’t.  Either way as a coach or trainer it’s ultimately your job it get them better.  This means, if they aren’t responding the way you would like them to don’t give up on them and point the finger.  Yes, hold them accountable but you should be the one taking ownership for their results.  Why because if you don’t and they don’t who does?  When you take ownership that means you will keep trying to connect, adapt and improve the process and the outcome.  If you do not take ownership for your athlete’s behaviors then you are in essence relinquishing control and saying it’s on them to change.  And it is on them, but you need to create a path that 1) they are attracted to follow, 2) know how to follow, and 3) are confident they can follow.    

5) Programming is complex but coaching is complicated

Things like writing detailed periodization schemes for your athletes or teaching proper Olympic lifting technique are complex things.  They can be difficult and multi-factorial but they are predictable and the outcomes and even the process is usually defined and scripted. 

Coaching on the other hand is complicated.  Complicated things do not follow a linear path and are highly unstable and unpredictable.  There exists no perfect system or program that will predict mental change.  The reality is complex issues cannot be solved in a reductionist fashion.  This means there has to be quite a bit of improv going on.  This may be challenging for many coaches and trainers who have a “train by the numbers” or “stay inside the box” philosophy, but when dealing with the most dynamic creature on this planet, humans, being adaptable is essential.