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The human factor.
That’s something that many mentors and leaders in all realms, including sports, ignore in their dealings with people.
The focus herein is on the coaches, trainers, and parents—within a sports context—who often overlook that athletes are human beings, too. It’s a miscue that can lead to a crash-and-burn for everyone involved.
While their efforts may be well-intentioned, coaches, parents, and others in the sports and performance world often fail to recognize the destructive nature of what they are doing.
Let’s explore the elements of those damaging efforts and a few simple solutions.
Too Much Training
Many coaches and parents believe that more, more, more practice is better, better, better. Wrong! When dealing with humans, less is often more.
Research conducted by Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer (1993), The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, demonstrates that humans can only endure one hour of intense and sustained individualized practice. Due to physical and mental exhaustion, any more than that will likely result in deteriorating performance and disdain for the coaches and parents who are coercing it. A collegiate golfer once shared that his coach instructed him to practice on a golf course during the team’s off-season for a minimum of seven to eight hours a day!
Team and group practices can run longer because they are less intensive and individualized; therefore, two-and-a-half- to three-hour sessions are fine.
Another thing modern-day youth coaches often do, which ignores the human factor (and that parents passively align with), is demand year-round, coached practice. Contrast that with professional teams that get months off from regimented training when the season ends. Many youth and high school athletes are forced to devote themselves to year-round training with minimal time off.
What happens with such forced, elongated commitment? Burnout and distaste for a sport the athlete once loved and enjoyed. It’s like this. Think of your favorite food. Imagine what would happen if you ate it almost every day of the year. You’d probably get tired of it.
Another negative outcome of too much practice is overuse injuries. That’s another story for another time.
Spending too much time on a sport also interferes with having a full, meaningful life. Human beings are much more than athletes. They have families, jobs, school, and friends. Athletes also possess other interests that are all neglected and damaged by obsessive devotion to a sport.
Overdevoted athletes are also deprived of opportunities to discover other passions and talents hidden inside them. They are not living a full life.
That’s what happens when the human factor is ignored!
Simple solution: Less can be more. Shorten practice sessions and give athletes adequate time off between seasons.
Forced and Coerced Training
What if you were not only eating your favorite food every day, but were being forced to? When asked that question, most people say they would lose their appetite for that food and come to despise it, not to mention resent the person(s) forcing it.
The human need for choice is ignored.
That’s another aspect of the human factor that coaches and parents dismiss. They don’t recognize how they are deflating the performer’s passion for their sport and harming the relationship between the athlete and the people who are not allowing choice.
Many of those coaches and parents are influenced by the “10,000-hour” rule, popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers (2011). It’s based on the results of the Ericsson et al. study that found that elite performers had invested 10,000-plus hours of devoted practice and training in a specialized sport to achieve their elite status.
The 10,000-hour rule, however, has been badly misunderstood. That will be detailed later on.
Simple solution: Allow athletes more choices in their sport endeavors.
Unrealistic Expectations
Another coaching behavior that is dismissive of the human factor and partly fueled by a misunderstanding of the 10,000-hour rule is leading athletes and parents to believe that a college athletic scholarship or professional career will happen if they put in enough practice time.
Given that only 6 to 10 percent of high school athletes receive college athletic scholarships and a much smaller percentage reach the professional level, it’s a scam to be pushing such a belief. Yet many young people and their parents buy into it, creating an unrealistic expectation that only creates pressure, long-term disappointment, and potential devastation when those expectations don’t materialize.
Some coaches and sports administrators promote those false expectations because they believe that it will motivate athletes to work harder and make their team better. Some do it to market their youth sports business and coaching reputation. All that ignores the negative impact it could have, once again dismissive of the human factor.
The Ericsson et al. research explains that the intensive practice and specialization in one sport, as described in the 10,000-hour rule, is a personal, independent choice—not the coach’s or the parents’—based on the athlete’s personal desire and self-recognized talent. Athletes don’t have the maturity and experience to make such an independent, well-founded decision until the age of 16 at the earliest, according to Ericsson’s findings.
Simple solution: Allow the athlete to decide to commit to focus on one sport with intense training.
The Net Effect
Threat of a failed sports career if they don’t practice enough. Fear of getting cut, losing playing time, or getting in trouble if they don’t adhere to the unrealistic year-round time demands of a coach, and dropping out of other activities to specialize in one sport.
The threat and fear that they’ll be letting their parents down if they don’t get a college scholarship after all the time and money invested in their attempt to reach that expectation.
Fear of identity loss, due to a life and future that has been entirely defined by sports.
Threat and fear can work in the short run. It can motivate us to study for an exam, but that sort of motivation for something intended for enjoyment can lead to loss of interest, burnout, and quitting.
Sustained motivation comes from a desire and hunger for what you’re doing. Imagine how excited you’d be to devour a food or sport you hadn’t tasted in months.
“Freedom” and “relief.” That’s how many athletes express their experience when they are finally released from the threat and fear of today’s youth sport culture upon leaving the sport. It’s as if they’ve been locked up since they began playing, and now they’ve escaped imprisonment.
Simple solution: Erase the threat and fear by lowering forced time demands and enabling freedom of choice.
Enable the human factor.
