Word play
I've been in my internship for roughly a month at this point, and I am learning like I've never learned before. Each year that I've coached, I start with one of those Mead comp books and use them as my coaching journals. I fill them with notes, thoughts, practices, reviews, etc. and usually use two to cover an entire season.
A month in, and I'm halfway through my first. I'm anticipating three, possibly four might be employed by the end of June when my internship finishes.
One of the lessons I learned early on as a coach was to choose words carefully. I'm still not an expert at doing this, but the idea is that the language you use and how you convey your thoughts has a massive impact on your athletes and their mentality. This makes sense to me. After all, we have our coxswains emphasis words as they talk.
"Focus 10, looking for leeeeeeeenngth in the water."
Coaches do this as well, but there's also how you speak to your athletes, and how you speak to them plays on their mentality.
I try to never use the word, "sacrifice." To me, sacrifice means you're giving up something, willingly or not, but you're not getting anything back in return. Practicing isn't a sacrifice. It's an "investment." It's an investment because what you put in, the effort you invest, is what you get out.
Tonight, while chatting with a couple of coaches on the team, we worked on eliminating the word, "fun." The idea is that fun is similar to going to a movie, or going to an amusement park. Of course there is an element of fun in the work that we do, but we shouldn't refer to it as that. Instead, let's call it, "enjoyment" which can be the same thing, but again, different mental image. Yes, the word fun is still used, but rather than having fun at practice, we enjoy practice. We enjoy working out. Enjoying conveys satisfaction without the lack of effort that can be associated with fun.
I'm also learning to incorporate other words into my coaching lingo. Catch is out, placement is in. Catch sounds violent - think baseball - where placement sounds like finesse. I'm also saying "saxboard" rather than gunwale, and stroke side/bow side rather than port and starboard - though this is taking longer to work in. And I'm starting to think metric - km, kg, celsius - all thanks to Jamie.
It's been an enjoyable month - see what I did there - and I'm looking forward to more.
I should probably invest in a few more Mead comp books as well.
A month in, and I'm halfway through my first. I'm anticipating three, possibly four might be employed by the end of June when my internship finishes.
One of the lessons I learned early on as a coach was to choose words carefully. I'm still not an expert at doing this, but the idea is that the language you use and how you convey your thoughts has a massive impact on your athletes and their mentality. This makes sense to me. After all, we have our coxswains emphasis words as they talk.
"Focus 10, looking for leeeeeeeenngth in the water."
Coaches do this as well, but there's also how you speak to your athletes, and how you speak to them plays on their mentality.
I try to never use the word, "sacrifice." To me, sacrifice means you're giving up something, willingly or not, but you're not getting anything back in return. Practicing isn't a sacrifice. It's an "investment." It's an investment because what you put in, the effort you invest, is what you get out.
Tonight, while chatting with a couple of coaches on the team, we worked on eliminating the word, "fun." The idea is that fun is similar to going to a movie, or going to an amusement park. Of course there is an element of fun in the work that we do, but we shouldn't refer to it as that. Instead, let's call it, "enjoyment" which can be the same thing, but again, different mental image. Yes, the word fun is still used, but rather than having fun at practice, we enjoy practice. We enjoy working out. Enjoying conveys satisfaction without the lack of effort that can be associated with fun.
I'm also learning to incorporate other words into my coaching lingo. Catch is out, placement is in. Catch sounds violent - think baseball - where placement sounds like finesse. I'm also saying "saxboard" rather than gunwale, and stroke side/bow side rather than port and starboard - though this is taking longer to work in. And I'm starting to think metric - km, kg, celsius - all thanks to Jamie.
It's been an enjoyable month - see what I did there - and I'm looking forward to more.
I should probably invest in a few more Mead comp books as well.
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