A coach outlines seven to ten principles for athletes to make better choices on and off the field. The teachable spirit, treating every correction as a compliment, breaks into three habits: listen with your eyes and ears, acknowledge the feedback with a nod or thank you, and immediately try to apply it.
One of our favorite proactive presentations is Life Lessons for Athletes. It's a presentation we can give to athletes themselves about making great choices as they go through their athletic experience, to coaches about really defining and clarifying what their expectations are, and to parents as well to hopefully reinforce what they're trying to teach at home. Life Lessons is about taking 7 to 10 principles and saying, here are things and choices you can make that will make you better as an athlete, make you better as a person, something you can take into your real life after sports and make an impact. One of our traits that we talk about is a teachable spirit. Teachable spirit's something we hear about all the time, might be referred to as coachable or other items like that. But when you look at it, what really is that? We talk about being able to take correction as a compliment shows a teachable spirit. Every athlete's gonna be corrected. Every athlete's gonna be said, this is what you need to do. And you have to understand when that comes from a coach, that's not coming after you to hinder you, that's coming after you to make you better, to support what you're trying to do. do. So you take that as a compliment. Sometimes it can be said pretty soft and sometimes pretty harsh, and what you need to think about is, how can it make me better? We talk about what it looks like. A teachable spirit looks like somebody that's learned how to listen, how to pay attention. Paying attention and listening isn't just done with the ears, especially in athletics. You have to listen with your eyes and ears, because athletes are visual learners. So when the coach is talking to you, you pay attention with your eyes and ears. But also when the coach is talking to one of your teammates, you do the exact same thing. You listen with your eyes and with your ears. The second thing is to acknowledge that correction, to look at the coach and let them know you understand it. Give them a nod, give them a thank you, give them a yes sir, yes ma'am, whatever it is to let them know I have this and I can move forward with it. The last thing we talk about is you immediately try the correction. Yeah, you might make a mistake, you might not be able to do it, but you try it, you have that willingness. A teachable spirit goes a long way. The ability to listen and pay attention, the ability to acknowledge, the ability to try something, that's a teachable spirit. That's taking correction as a compliment and moving forward. If this is some presentation you'd like to hear for your athletes, let us know at Proactive Coaching. 7 to 10 things that can make you a better athlete to help you reach potential. Thank you.
