High-performing young athletes often depend too much on external validation from coaches and support staff. To sustain success long-term, they need to develop what the speaker calls emotional proprioception: the ability to generate their own feedback and solve problems independently rather than constantly looking outward for approval.
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Is there anything that's just this commonality that every single high performer that you've coached and worked with, like, they have in common? There are a few similarities. One that I saw a lot in younger high performers who excelled very early in their careers was this validation need. So they would look to me or look to the other sideline for validation of what they were doing. Nowadays, it's like we're scripted down to the minute in our lives with our athletes. They've got this, and then at 9 o'clock they have this, and then they have that, and they're working with this coach, and they're working with this specialist. And but what it's created is this external locus of control and this external motivation, this extrinsic motivation in our athletes. So what I saw pop up a lot, even in high performers, was this: they would do something and they would immediately look for feedback. They need to be able to create feedback on their own. They need to be able to solve the puzzles on their own, because someday I won't be there. The big thing with a lot of the high performers I worked with was you have to figure out how to solve the problem. You can't always look to other people for the answer. Or you also have to understand how you're doing. You need to be able to emotionally propriocept your performance