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- Creating Communication
If you have heard our FREE2COMPETE team speak in person at a coaching clinic, you know how important we think using journals with your athletes is. Many coaches aren’t quite ready to take that step, and I completely understand why. I didn’t just start journaling with my team over night, my journey to implementing journals with my team was 10 years in the making. Your journey to that point might take some time as well.
Today, I wanted to share a simple tool that you could use right away to create a line of communication with ALL of your athletes. I’ve shared this tool with multiple coaches who were able to implement this with their teams right away. This was the earliest version of COMMUNICATION with my team that eventually led us down the path to journaling.
"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
COMMUNICATION CARD
My coaching staff and I created these communication cards over 15 years ago and used them for years before evolving to journals.
Here is how they work:
Print one of these cards for each of your athletes.
Find 10 minutes in your practice and give your athletes one of these cards and a pen and ask them to complete each section.
Have your coaching staff take 10-15 minutes after practice, or even during it, to read through the cards. Discuss anything that stands out to you as a staff about an individual athlete, or themes within your team.
Use what is written on the communication card to initiate a 1-on-1 conversation with any athlete that you need to follow up with.
"The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said."
The part that we found the most informative when we used these with our team was the stress inventory. We believe that training does not live in isolation from life. Stress outside of sport will impact what happens within sport. School stress, family stress, friend stress will all have an impact on performance. The tough part about coaching, is it is hard for us to truly know the stress that our athletes are feeling. These communication cards helped us have a better understanding of that stress.
If we have an athlete that is feeling high levels of stress in multiple areas, we know that we need to be cautious with their training in the upcoming week (NOTE: we had our athletes fill one of these out every Saturday in season so we could make training plans for the week ahead). Sometimes we would even go as far as giving an individual athlete a day off. If a large number of key contributors were dealing with high levels of stress, we would try to throw something fun into practice or give them an unexpected day off.
SCHEDULE US FOR THIS SUMMER!
Are you interested in having us work through activities like this or even more with your team, athletic department, group of students or school? Respond to this email to set up a ZOOM meeting where we can find out what you are looking for and discuss how FREE2COMPETE can serve your students, coaches, and/or parents.
