On the power of engaging your athletes when teaching
You have to stop looking at yourself as an instructor. Instead, begin to embrace the title of edutrainer - an educational, entertaining trainer.
To teach, you need to keep people engaged in what they’re doing in a manner that they like doing what they’re doing.
They need to look forward to what is going on. After all, we have all been in situations where a teacher comes in and is droning on about something. It becomes boring and monotonous and we tune that teacher out.
Next thing you know people stop coming to classes and stop learning,
simply because they weren’t engaged enough. Their interest wavered and the spark was gone. On the basketball court, this manifests itself in players being bored and they start acting out, or misbehaving. Their attention has wavered and they’ve become distracted.
You want people to learn because they want to learn not because they have to learn. That means you have to change the environment to make it a “want to” environment. An environment where players come in because they want to; they work hard and engage because they want to.
When you want something, you will stay with it for longer in the face of adversity and failure. When something interests you deeply, you don’t need external motivation to keep coming back to it.
That is teaching and that is the essence of coaching.
Can you change the environment to keep things engaging, fun and interesting enough for your players to want to keep coming back?
The only player that doesn’t get better is the one who isn’t there