Author Archives: Sean Causier

A Positive Theory To Changing Values

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The world of strength and conditioning is like trying to find your way along the shores in waste deep water while heavy waves crash into you.  You may find some sturdy ground for your current values, then the sand washes away under your feet while you get crushed by a giant wave, and you are back trying to stabilize.  The industry turns into white wash with the world of “fitness” colliding with “sport performance”, I see it all the time in the private sector.  Good coaches ask good questions, and good coaches should have adaptive and changing values; for this I believe this wave crashing process to be a positive cycle.  New theories, methods, questions, and collaborations build a path to strong values and growth for the coach.  There may be times of self doubt, but if the right questions are answered back, and open mind to change is present you will come out with stronger opinions of your value.

What are your values as a coach?  If someone asked me this question a couple months ago, I could have given a long explanation that probably rambled back and forth sharing everything about my philosophy of coaching.  Through the HPCTL program at UBC we were asked to come up with a short presentation of our philosophy on coaching.  This turned out to be more difficult than I originally thought but proved to be more beneficial than I every imagined.  Spending some time to actually sit down and narrow down what my actual values are, then further turning those into a coaching philosophy allowed me see what I really valued in myself and the athletes I coach.  It helped guide my programming, and most importantly the program and culture I want to see in my training facility.

We are currently in the process of building a new 14,000sq ft training facility integrated with a sports injury rehabilitation clinic along with re-branding from our previous franchise.  The re-branding allows me to get away from previous corporate values and create our own.  I am lucky to have a great team of quality coaches who have all stuck with us during the move as they see the importance in the common values we all share; this is rare for a training center.  Although our core values are not fully set yet, it is an exciting time to put our own value into something new on a large scale.  I can guarantee each one of our coaches is on stable ground with their own values at the moment.

What Is A Leader?

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What makes you a good leader?

According to Kouzes & Posner in their book The Leadership Challenge, a good leader can be broken down into 5 leadership practices that all inherit certain leadership behaviors.

  1. Model The Way – this states that a good leader must set the example they would like others to follow.  They follow through on their promises and make sure others support common values and principles.
  2. Inspire A Shared Vision – Good leaders envision the future by describing or showing ideal capabilities in an upbeat and positive manner, while including and recognizing others interests
  3. Challenge The Process – Leaders search for new and innovative opportunities, they take risks, and are willing to experiment.  They challenge skills and abilities, often breaking projects into smaller do-able portions while always asking the question of what can be learned.
  4. Enable Others To Act – A good leader will foster collaboration with cooperative relationships to strengthen others.  They give others freedom and choice, supporting decisions made by others with respect.
  5. Encourage The Heart – Good leaders will creatively recognize, praise, and celebrate others contributions and successes through appreciation and encouragement.

A recent assignment I completed in the High Performance Coaching and Technical Leadership program through UBC, we conducted a 360 analysis through Kouzes and Posner’s Lerdership Practices Inventory.  This allowed me to assess my leadership skills and practices from my own viewpoint and from my peers.  I found this to be a very useful tool in which I was both humbled and relieved.  It showed that my peers saw me as a strong leader; however, it made me realize certain practices and behaviors in which I need to work on, along with practices and behaviors I should continue to be strong with.  An interesting fact that became evident was that I may be harder on myself than needed to be.  There were certain practices in which I thought needed improvement, in which my peers actually thought I was stronger than I presumed.  The little things count, and although these leadership behaviors may not be a major thought to my own leadership practice, certain behaviors can be viewed different in others who receive it.  With this new knowledge of where my strengths and weaknesses lie within my leadership practices, I have a new focus and direction with how to lead my team of coaches and athletes.

Are you a good leader?

What might your strengths and weaknesses as a leader be?

 

 

References

  1. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.studentleadershipchallenge.com/Assessments.aspx
  2. Kouzes, J.M., & Posner, B.Z. (1987). The Leadership Challenge: How To Make Extraordinary Things Happen In Organizations (5th). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass
  3. Kouzes, J. M., & Pozner, B. Z. (2013). Leadership practices inventory workbook: Understanding and making sense of your LPI feedback(4th ed.). San Francisco: Pfeiffer.

Be A Problem Solver

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In the world of coaching, we are constantly solving problems.  The ability to recognize a problem, evaluate the problem, and make the effective decision in fixing the problem is certainly one of the most important skills a coach can have.  It is a key component to being a great coach.  No matter what stage of the LTAD you coach in, problems will arise on a daily basis in variety of means.

In the S&C world, this is the essence of what we do, with the goal of minimizing the amount of problems that might arise.  Not strong enough? not fast enough?  Constantly battling injury?  Overtrained?  These are  constant problems we are always working on and trying find the best solution for.  On a daily basis we are faced with common problems that we have a standard solution for, but new problems often arise that might require a fast solution.

From the core competency matrix, we know that must reframe problems, experiment with different approaches to find better solutions, and we must take responsibility for these problems.

Taking responsibility of a problem can be both the easiest and hardest thing to tackle.  It is easy to place blame or neglect if you don’t have an immediate solution; however, this will simply escalate the problem.  For example an athlete might show inefficient technique during a squat – which we know can lead problems in itself.  It is easy to turn a blind eye to the athlete, especially in a team setting.  Without proper evaluation and responsibility for why this is happening, there is a chance this athlete may injure himself.  This injury might be short term or long term.  Maybe this athlete has an undiagnosed hip impingement, and with repeated loaded squats the develop a labral tear and potentially further down the line the femur calcifies and they develop early onset of arthritis.  Now this is an extreme case but not unheard of.  If responsibility is taken, we can effectively evaluate this situation.

Good S&C coaches are constantly evaluating their athletes on a daily basis.  This does not have to mean that you are testing the same thing.  Careful on going observation of how the athlete is moving and responding to interventions, and taking quick notes that can easily be reviewed is crucial.  The is nothing wrong with the element of trial and error as long as you are learning and taking note for future problems that might be similar.  This is best done with teamwork.  Each week I have my coaches get together and talk about what problems they might be having with their clients and athletes.  This is great tool to have as we can each share our own response and knowledge to the problem, and everyone learns.  This makes the problem easier to reframe and look at from a different angle.

No matter what type of coach you are, do not run from problems.  Face them head on, take responsibility, come up with an effective solution using your knowledge, experience, or team members as help, and look at it from a different view.  Being able to consistently and effectively do this, will lead to an abundance of success on multiple levels.

Valuing Yourself And Your Athletes

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In the field of strength and conditioning, it can be very challenging to find your value and be confident with that value.  There is an endless supply of contradicting methodologies, ideologies, and variations, especially when working in a high performance sport environment; whether that be from sport coaches, physiotherapists, higher management, or other S&C colleagues.  There are a lot of S&C coaches out there that have big egos and think that there way is the best and only way, which is a problem with the industry itself and could probably use it’s own blog post – so I’ll save that rant.  Taking value for yourself and your work as an S&C coach requires integrity, an open mind, and a focus on what the specific goal(s) for your athlete(s) is.

I have recently just finished our off season hockey training camps that consisted of a large volume of individual athletes looking to improve their performance, which always tests my values as an S&C coach.  From recruiting, organization and management, programming, monitoring progress and coaching, I get a lot of outside input, complaints, success, and pressure; this often has me questioning the value of the product I am providing.  In order to provide value for myself and for my athletes I have taken an approach of open mindedness – taking input from other coaches with programming, reviewing previous experiences by doing a gap analysis, and having continual open communication with the athletes to ensure they are valuing what we do and also themselves.  With having a more open mind to accepting more feedback and input, I feel that this was by far our most successful camp.

In previous camps I had decided not to add cleans into my programming, despite coaches and athletes asking to have it put in.  I had decided that due to the technical difficulty of the exercise  and having such a short period of time to teach and produce enough positive gains from, I had left them out and chosen alternate exercises with the same product.  This year I found a way that I was happy to add in the lift, although not for every athlete (mainly older athletes), and was happy with the outcome.  I feel this built some morale with coaches and the athletes got more value out of our camp this year.  In turn I find myself with more value and a greater feeling of accomplishment.

Recently I have been working with a russian/Japanese pro hockey player trying to get a new contract in north america.  He came to me with a very different background and experience with training and we found it difficult at times to get on the same page with the vision of his development.  Being open to his wants but keeping my integrity on what I know will get him to achieve his goals, we have been able to make massive improvement in his performance both on and off the ice and I now have his full bought in attention to the program.  Coming over with no contract nor any direction, he now has been offered big contracts in Europe and will be attending a training camp in North America.  Taking the athletes values, while sticking to yours can be a fine line, but if common ground is achieved, you will have the greatest results produced.

Now that this summer has come to completion I am looking forward to doing a more in depth gap analysis on this years camp as further my knowledge with this through the HPCTL program.

New Athlete Interactions

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One of my biggest tasks for my annual workload is creating, managing, programming, and coaching a 5 month high performance off-season training camp for elite level hockey players from peewee to professional.  This camp involves a 3 month prep camp where I have athletes come in at different times following their seasons to de-load and then prepare for our main camp and get ready for the next season ahead.  Our main camp is a full integrated on and off ice program that has me in contact with these athletes coaching at least 10 hours a week for 8 weeks, along with more casual interactions as they are around the facility and ice most of the day.  Some athletes have worked with me for years, and some are brand new, all having the same goal to reach.

Learning how to interact with each player is absolutely critical in getting the most out of athletes, whether that be in an individual setting, group or team settings.  There are many different types of interactions that need to occur in a number of different situations in order to understand what drives or motivates an athlete, and the sooner you can find that out, the more effective their training will be.  I recently had 3 Swiss international players with me for 3 weeks in order to prepare for their upcoming U-18 tryouts.  They all had goals of coming to Canada within the year to either play CHL or NCAA hockey, and wanted to learn how North Americans play and train.  In order to get the most of these players who don’t speak fluent english in such a short period of time I needed to gain their trust, that I am the guy that can deliver them on their path to success.  In order to interact well, you must observe well.  I observed their behavior on the training floor, off the training floor, and went to watch their practices on the ice.  Through this I was able to differentiate how to interact with each one individually and as a group.  By the end of the 3 weeks, they didn’t want to leave and had an unbelievable experience with data to show big improvements.  All 3 of them made the U-18 Swiss national team and 1 has been called to the U-20 camp.

When it comes to attempting to understand athletes behavior, there is one tool that my coaches and I use that narrows the athletes down into categories or who they are.  Each category has a unique characteristic that highlights weaknesses and strengths, along with how to best interact with each athlete.  This table was derived from coach Brett Bartholemew’s book “Conscious Coaching” through his research in the art of coaching and building buy in or trust from athletes.  After week 2 of our 8 week main camp, we had a staff meeting bringing each athlete we work with to discussion in order to collaboratively decide what archetype(s) each athlete relates to.  Athletes often do not portray one certain archetype, but can be a combination of a bunch.  Check out the table I have placed below that shows the archetypes that Brett has created.

Anyone can create a solid program on paper, some coach that program very well, but few can coach that program and get every single athlete bought in and performing at their absolute highest ability.  I find the skill of being able to effectively interact with athletes consistently to be a rare trait in coaching and often differentiates the best from the rest.

 

Archetype Who they are? Weaknesses How to connect
THE TECHNICIAN Perfectionist. Takes pride in performance. Seeks understanding, knowledge and mastery. Mind can get in the way when in a chaotic environment. Acknowledge interests. Offer technical insights for efficiency. Sandwich technique Postive/Insight/Positive.
THE ROYAL An aura of superiority. Great self belief and confidence. Trouble getting out of comfort zone, hides weaknesses. Talk to them, allow them to share strengths and relate exercise to that. If they struggle with an exercise public praise to someone who does it well.
THE SOLDIER Does as told with vigor regardless of skill and ability. Forge ahead at all costs. Walks a fine line. Lay out a “mission” and let them align it with their personal goals and values and then provide support.
THE SPECIALIST Their sport is all that matters. One track mind to their sport – miss out on connecting the dots. Meet them where they are and bring it all back to their sport.
THE POLITICIAN Charismatic, know what they want and how to get it. Will only appear when it suits their needs. Don’t want to inconvenienced with something not important to them – miss out on the process. Present them with choice but limit their options.
THE NOVICE Wide-eyed, overwhelmed, over-eager. Starting with fundamentals. Eager to keep up. Remember when you first started, show empathy. Be steady and consistent while you control their path.
THE LEADER Ability to use their own strengths to bring out the best in others. Carry the burden of others, inappropriately take the blame for a loss while replaying every step in the process. Get inside their heads. Acknowledge and appreciate what they bring to the table and give power.
THE SELF-SABOTOGER Two kinds: Hard worker with self doubt or a natural talent who lets outside events and actions derail the process. Paralysis by analysis. Find areas that give confidence. Use that to guide them through areas that induce fear/anxiety. Face fear in the face safely through reps.
THE MOUTHPIECE A distracting force but can heighten energy and rally their peers. Spend too much time and energy on what to say. Compromise – let them do their thing but know when to pull them off stage.
THE WOLVERINE Rage, introversion, distrust and rogue tendencies fuled by past traumas. Very self sufficient. Struggle finding an outlet when their emotions run hot. Takes time and trust. Be real, stable and consistent. Don’t sugar coat things.
THE FREE SPIRIT Everything they do is in a constant state of play. Lack of focus/Absent mindedness. More task oriented than ego driven. Guide to achieve mastery. Show your relaxed side while giving task oriented goals.
THE MANIPULATOR Lay low until they see an opportunity to help you but they have their own intesrests in mind. Short term success runs their friends out of favour. Involve others in the process and seek to understand why the manipulator is trying to disguise their intentions.
THE UNDERDOG A person who is at a disadvantageous to succeed. The ability to stay consistent in their constant uphill battle. Continuous help and support. Find a partner to help them along.
THE CRUSADER An athlete with a higher purpose. An inspirational force. Nurturers who need to let others help themselves from time to time. Learn more about purpose and path, then get them involved in the process.
THE SKEPTIC Always asking why! Adaptations take time and the many why’s may get in the way while disrupting the buy-in of others. Understand origins of skepticism and keep your emotions under control while responding.
THE HYPOCHONDRIAC Heightened sense of awareness in their body. A good beacon for the training program you are delivering. Minor blips stunt progress and mask confidence. Remind them there is no ideal state of being, get to the bottom of the issue while pumping their tires.
Athletes aren’t always one archetype. They can change from year to year, month to month or week to week. It depends what group they are in. In general athletes aren’t just one archetype they are a blend.

Jump In The Fire!

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picture: https://quotefancy.com/quote/1717055/Jon-Gordon-Challenges-ONLY-make-you-STRONGER

A common phrase “Challenges only make you stronger” can be a powerful message during difficult and challenging times.  In my opinion this is only true with the right amount of challenge, how that challenge is overcome and the resulting situation.  I intend to be critical here for the purpose of creating discussion and sharing some of my recent experiences with challenges that I have had.

Something that seems to be ingrained into my DNA is to go towards the fire, go where others might shy away, go into situations I later reflect and wonder why I chose to engage in certain things or take on certain tasks.  Whether these turn out to be the right or wrong decision, it varies.  Some challenges can be sought after and some happen by chance; do you ever find that a challenging situation you have sought after gets compounded by more and more challenges, creating the perfect storm?  How do you cope with this?

A challenge I recently sought after was the decision to go back to school to complete a masters program in high performance coaching and technical leadership at UBC.  The start of this program happened to land in the middle of my busiest weeks of the year in my current role building this years off-season on and off-ice development camps with elite players from around the globe coming for 8 weeks of our world renowned program.  In the middle of this throw in 2 out of town weddings, another work related annual presentation (that was out of my control in scheduling) along with still managing day to day functions of the facility and training my athletes.  The only choice I have is to jump in the fire!  Live it.  Not a problem, but a challenge.

Some coping strategies, other than the nice local IPA I have beside me:

  • Lists – lots of lists
  • Get enough sleep – mental fatigue is your worst enemey
  • Exercise – nothing clears the mind and gets the juices flowing better than a good lift!  Today I chose 4 lifts, complexed them and banged them out in 20 mins with a decent sweat, good to go.
  • Delegate – handed over a few less important tasks to staff which also gives them some leadership of their own.
  • Put the phone away – dump the easy distractions for an hour at a time and get it done!
  • Utilize your support system – family and friends are great people to keep you motivated, give them a call.
  • Take some brief time away – I have a tee time booked with some friends tomorrow morning to reset the mind.  Get outside!

A recent presentation I listened to the other day by Dr. David Henry brought about the study by Rees et al, 2016 about the difference between elite athletes and super elite athletes.  An interesting finding was that almost all super elite athletes had a negative life event (challenge) and compounded that with a positive sport-related event.  They found ways to deal with a challenge that created a positive outcome.  Having the proper tools to manage the challenge at hand is the key becoming stronger from the challenge.

A friend and mentor Peter Twist often presents the phrase: opportunity is nowhere.  Do you see the word “nowhere”  or do you see the phrase “now here”.  Opportunity is now here!

 

 

What I Am Writing About

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  1. What do I know about this competency?  How does this competency relate to my coaching or leadership practice?
  2. How have demonstrated this core competency and what evidence do I have?  Are there any portfolio items that show evidence of applying this competency?    (see below for examples of supporting evidence that may be integrated or topics identified in other courses)…
  3. Related to this core competency, what changes have you made or would like to make to my coaching or leadership?  How will this competency improve your effectiveness as a coach or leader?