ONE Ingredient you’re missing in your life.
Challenge. Without it, you and I are mediocre at best. Squandering away the potential we have as human beings.
When we are not being challenged, we are not engaged, energized, excited, enthused, or entertained.
Those are the Five Important E’s if you want to be the best athlete, student, friend, and son or daughter you can be.
We have failed our student-athletes in this sense. If you are an adult, maybe you are failing yourself. But as coaches, we do a poor job of individualizing the challenges we give our athletes to match where they are at in their developmental journey’s.
EXAMPLE
We have an athlete who has been able to do 30 inch single leg box jumps since she was twelve.
She needs a progressively challenging program. We need to increase tempo, weight, direction, combinations, and more. If she stops being challenged she will stop growing and her motivation will die.
Eventually we will need to mix up the entire approach to her training. Doing more reps with more weight, faster, eventually gets boring and easy too.
If we as coaches aren’t challenging ourselves to grow and improve, we will likely fail to see opportunities to challenge her. Just as if you the parent are not challenging yourself in your life, it is hard to demand the same from your athlete.
We have a team we work with that currently reads books together and does a ton of team bonding. Guess what? They need next level modalities to challenge their minds and spirits to continue improving unity!
That is why we introduced various uncomfortable writing and “speaking in front of group” exercises. We explained to them why. They understood even though they didn’t like it :-)
You and I were wired to embrace and accept challenge. How do we do it?
1. Schedule the challenge. Create a new 30 day challenge every 30 days and have your athletes do it as well. Set the end date and the exact “meeting time” where you will discuss how the challenge went.
My current challenge? Build a landing page for a new book I have coming out soon. I have NO CLUE how to do that but will learn. Shhh, it is a surprise. Don’t tell anyone! ;-)
2. Individualize the challenge. Teams are made up of individuals who are all at different levels. Do not forget this! A challenge for the team or the family is good, but individual ones are necessary.
3. Schedule accountability checkpoints. We fail when we do not do this. Do an “analysis” of your progress and consistency once a week minimum.
4. HABITUATE! At the end of the challenge, SCHEDULE THE NEXT ONE BEFORE YOU LEAVE!
Challenges are likely not part of your habits yet. Which means you will need to run a couple of them before it gets hardwired into your brain to always have a challenge. Do not forget to schedule the next challenge during your 30 day meeting!
Your commitment to growing and getting better as a sports parent or coach is why I write. Thank you for your continued feedback. Feel free to email me personally anytime at andrew@pfpfit.com if I can help you, your team, your athletes coaches, etc. We are on a mission at PFP to transform what coaching looks like and positively impact the lives of millions of athletes all over the world.
Serving you and your athlete,
Coach Andrew
