I had an assessment the other day.  I put the athlete through everything, went over the results, went over how our program can help them out, and as we were wrapping up, I finished the way I always do with this:

“You have to WANT to do this.  You have to come in with a great attitude and be ready to work.  I know we can help you out and get you to accomplish your goals, but if you dread coming here, then you are going to waste your parent’s money and my time.”

I receive emails from a colleague of mine, Ron Golden, who has run a baseball academy for decades here in Central Ohio.  His last one was about the same thing – what type of work ethic and attitude does your player have?

He made note that not a lot of athletes have the elite level skills or can even develop them to get close to that level.  But, the advance up the ladder because of a tremendous work ethic and the proper attitude.

I always tell people that as much as coaches love working with great athletes, most of the time they would take working with a kid who busts his/her butt all the time with average ability over the elite athlete with a cr@ppy attitude.

Think Allen Iverson’s “Practice?!!  We are talking about practice.”

As valuable as I feel speed and strength training can be for an athlete, it only indirectly helps our athletes get better.  They still need to put work in on their particular sport.  Knowing that, when I see how hard kids work for me I can usually tell how hard they will be working during their own practices.

Here are clues to me whether your athlete has a great attitude/work ethic or not:

    • Is the athlete ready to go when he/she is supposed to?  Meaning, do they get all their warmups in and pre workout stuff needed (going the bathroom, shoes tied, etc.)  I don’t care if you constantly have to go the bathroom before we train, but it should not be at the expense of delaying your start time.  If we start at 4pm, then all that stuff should be done and you should be ready to train at 4pm.

    • Are you focused during your training or do you waste time doing stupid stuff?  Do you always have to go the bathroom during your training?  Do you check your phone at every break wasting more time?  Are you constantly having to waste 30 to 60 seconds to blow your nose?  All these little things we as coaches notice and to us it seems like you are trying to waste time so you don’t have to do much work that day.

    • If we aren’t watching, are you doing all the warmup exercises we ask or are you skipping the ones you don’t like?  We ask you to do all these drills for a reason and at a certain point we assume you are mature enough that we don’t have to watch you each time.

    • How do you enter the facility?  Do you walk with a purpose/focus or are you sauntering down taking your sweet time?  Especially if you are running late, this really bugs me.  Act like you know you are disrespecting me by being late and at least hustle to get started.

 

  • Do you come up to us to ask what is next or do we have to always ask “are you ready”?

  • Do you keep to yourself or do you encourage the other athletes and congratulate them when appropriate?

  • Basically, do you try to get in and out of our facility in the quickest amount of time?

 

There are definitely other cues and one might argue, “maybe your training sucks and these kids hate being there.”  And maybe that is true, but you can see a lot of this during one initial assessment.

To a coach, if it looks like you aren’t working hard, chances are that is the case.  And if you are doing that with us, training that is supposed to help you improve at your sport, I can only imagine what your actual coach has to put up with when you are at practice.

Photo courtesy of Zac Doner on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zacdoner/