Two words that have changed my coaching

Our team does pull-ups.

In fact we do a lot of them. Our amazing strength coach Matt Fraze, who has worked with us for many years, believes in building two things. The first is functional strength. The second is confidence.

Pull-ups do both. There is nothing like the look on the face of one of our athletes the first time they do their first pull-up. Or the first time they hit 5, 10, 15, 20...

We don't test very many things on our team. I'm a firm believer that I'm not running a Kinesiology lab. I'm a soccer coach so let's play soccer! But one thing we do test is pull-ups.

On Friday we tested our team after our lengthy winter break. They came back strong! It was awesome to see. But I've noticed over the years the players seem to go in order of their confidence. So as we got down to the end we had a few players that couldn't do a pull-up. It is usually freshmen.

After the first player went that couldn't do a pull-up I called her over to me. I asked "what was your score." She replied "half?" I asked again "what was your score." You could sense it was getting a bit uncomfortable. Players around me were starting to squirm a bit. She replied "zero."

That's when I said the magic words that have really changed the way I'm coaching.

"Not yet."

I told her your score was "not yet." It was amazing to see the energy in the face of that player and also all of the players that were listening in on the conversation. I did the same thing to 2-3 more players. By now everyone around me had caught on. The players that were being asked would struggle to answer and I would simply point to the other players and they would say "NOT YET!"

I even we so far as to instruct my assistant coach Kaycie that she should not write 0 on the score sheet for players that didn't get a pull-up. She should write not yet!

This isn't an original idea. It was the subject of a TED Talk by Carol Dweck.

While I anticipated my players would be motivated by this positive approach. What I didn't count on was the impact it would have on me as a coach. Rather than being disappointed that someone got zero I now saw that as simply their CURRENT score. Something that I can help them with and that we can work on together.

The reality is we are all a work in progress. I'm personally in a perpetual state of "not yet." Am I the person I want to be? Not yet. Have I lost the weight I want to lose? Not yet. Have we won a National Championship? Not yet.

Scores and grades are final. But people are not. Not yet...