Patience is king.
So you’ve worked with your athlete to understand the
benefits of focused purposeful practice, and you’ve built the mental silos for
practice mode and game mode mindset. And
now? It’s time to be patient. And flexible. And resilient.
Youth athletes mature and
develop at different paces. The star one
year becomes the role player the next, the role player the star, and back and
forth it goes from player to player, season to season and sport to sport.
Know and accept that progress on any goal will not be
linear. Typically, when first starting
out on any new skill set, there may be rapid growth and improvement. This can sometimes create a false sense of
confidence and a set up for a let down later on.
Once the athlete gains a certain level of ability, the
progress slows down. It has to. At the beginning, there is so much room for
improvement that any progress is noticeable from day to day. However, when the athlete gets better the
room for improvement shrinks. This can
be frustrating. The athlete, parent, and
coach are left thinking, “What happened?
Why are we losing steam on our rate of progression?” But it is much easier and noticeable to move
from a 10% free throw shooter to 50% (1/10 à
5/10) than it is to move from 80% to 90% (8/10 à
9/10). Be patient.
