Physical and Mental Preparation
A new book I’ve just begun reading has one piece of advice for leaders everywhere.
Dictate less and coach more.
Fewer announcements and more questions.
I like that. I’m going to try and heed that advice.
Last night I began a new program with the players of Friesdorf FC, the team that I coach for in Germany. Our team is tactically strong.
Every practice we spend hours working on technical minutiae buried deep in the weeds of football know-how. Drills to perfect the right angle at which to spin. Exercises to optimally stabilize the neck during a header. German Fußball prowess at its pinnacle.
What I noticed at the end of last season was the lack of attention given to the mental side of soccer. In contrast with the physical and strategic training the absence of any mental preparation whatsoever is stark.
So, I’ve made training our players to be mentally fitter this season my responsibility.
As a newly minted sports psychologist, I’m making up the training plan as I go. This first week we’ve been creating goals. One individual goal for preseason fitness. Two individual goals for regular season performance and one goal for the team.
Yesterday I reviewed each player’s goals. Under my book’s instruction, I focused on asking questions and using their answers to steer us toward elements of real goals.
As 18–19-year-old men — an important time to start making good goals — I was surprised at their inability to create a good goal. Almost every player sat down next to me and proclaimed, “I want to be a more important player for the team this season” which while noble doesn’t make for a very good goal. It’s almost impossible to look back and say with any certainty whether the goal was accomplished.
We don’t create exercises that espouse, “run in that general direction for a little while.” We’re not going to build goals in that vein either.
With each passing “I want to be more important” I asked, “what do you mean by important?” “In what specific way do you want to be a more valuable teammate?” The real goals slowly oozed out. Some took the form of, “I want to be more positive and motivate my team more.” We created goals for those players that looked like this: Say/yell/make five positive and/or motivating comments/gestures every game. It’s a great goal because it’s very clear what needs to happen to be successful. As a result, it’s much more likely to be followed, practiced, achieved.
I feel like I’m belaboring this point a bit so I’ll wrap up with a final question. Hopefully, it’s the obvious one by now.
Why aren’t these young men learning how to create a goal in school? What is a school for if not to give our students the knowledge needed to create a path for their lives? What another way to create a path exists besides creating good goals?
These are the questions drive me. These are the questions that I want to build the next phase of my career around.
I’m honored (and overjoyed) to start that phase working with the fine men who comprise the 2016/2017 Freisdorf FC Blau-Weiß football team.
