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Learning Styles and Effective Coaching: Empowering Your Athlete To Their Full Potential

September 7, 2018 by Robert Andrews 2 Comments

Every athlete has a way of being taught and coached that ignites their passion for their respective sport. Taking the time to find out the most effective and efficient way to coach your athletes can eliminate many stressful coach/athlete interactions, and make for a more rewarding and successful journey between coach and athlete. After all, helping your athlete reach their full potential and their dreams is a journey, a process that may last years. Your coaching style plays a significant role in how this journey plays out and what each of you find at the end of this road you will travel together.

When a coach is able to reach their athletes with effective and empowering strategies for learning, athletes learn faster, acquire skills and techniques faster, reach loftier goals, and enjoy their sport more. The experience of coaching is more enjoyable and rewarding for the coach as well.

This doesn’t mean that you have to coach every athlete differently. It means that you can learn to coach using different teaching/learning styles with your whole team. This allows you to reach every athlete effectively.
Womens Gymnastics

I hear from many coaches who are frustrated with their athletes lack of progress. I also hear from many athletes who are frustrated with the interaction that occurs between the athlete and their coach or coaches.

In many sports there is a dynamic in place where the athlete is sent clear messages to not ask questions, voice their opinion, speak up, or challenge a coaches tone, treatment and coaching techniques. The coach coaches and the athlete trains. The relationship is usually good until frustration increases and tension begins to build.

The personalities of coach and athlete can change dramatically under this kind of stress.

When something goes wrong in training, “corrections”, or feedback are given to help the athlete get back on track and progress. Too often these corrections bypass the athletes most effective learning style and the athlete does not improve as quickly as the coach might like. The coach might become frustrated, try to implement these corrections again, in an ineffective way, and continue with this cycle of ineffective coach/athlete interaction.

Over time, more and more of the athletes energy goes into avoiding making mistakes and upsetting their coach. Coaches can begin to “put the athlete in a box” or see them as incapable or un-coachable.

Using Energy Efficiently

Mental and emotional energy is the driving force behind excellence and brilliance in sport. This energy is also critical to building confidence, passion and rock solid belief.

Robert Andrews and his wife at the 2008 Summer OlympicsEffective coaching helps the athlete channel this energy into the acquisition and mastery of physical skills necessary to compete at the highest level. Physical, mental and emotional energy moves in a highly efficient and productive direction.

Ineffective coaching creates an environment where more and more of the athletes mental and emotional energy is channeled away from training and improvement. Personality can begin to change. The athlete can become passive, timid, too focused on avoiding mistakes, highly emotional, and afraid of upsetting their coach.

The more shut down the athlete becomes, the more frustrated the coach can become. This can lead to intimidating behaviors from their coach such as ridicule, shaming, yelling and ignoring the athlete.   In some instances the athlete receives extreme physical punishment or can get kicked out of practice.

Four Distinctly Different Learning Styles

Every athlete utilizes a specific learning style or combination of learning styles to learn most effectively. There are four different learning styles.

Visual Learning- Show the athlete visually what you want them to learn. Visual learners learn best by seeing what it is they need to work on or improve. Their brain processes information visually. Use video, images, illustrations or show the athlete the feedback or instruction you are trying to give them.

Aural Learning- The aural learner likes to hear feedback, instruction, and correction. Tell them what you want them to learn.  Make sure that they are paying attention and then give them feedback or instruction with your voice, a recording, or some other form of aural input.

Reading and Writing– This learning style prefers to read or write about the improvements or corrections they need to make. When working on skills, they learn best by receiving written feedback that they can process. They also like to write or journal as a way of learning.

Kinesthetic- This learning style likes to hear and see feedback and then go to work making the necessary changes or corrections to help anchor in effective learning. They process best by taking in feedback visually and/or aurally and then getting to work mastering the skills and corrections. Tell them what to do, show them what to do, give them something to read, and then let them get to work. They learn from making mistakes, falls, and others struggles. They need time to integrate and learn.

Formula for Success

I have worked with world class athletes in trampoline, men’s, women’s and rhythmic gymnastics, track & field, swimming, fencing, football, baseball, basketball, judo, figure skating, ballet, luge, skeleton, and other sports.  These athletes come from all over the world and many different cultures. Those that have reached their full potential, in most cases, have worked with coaches who are open to teaching them in ways that maximize learning and evoke passion. This is a common denominator for success at the highest levels.

This doesn’t mean that an athlete won’t reach peak potential with ineffective coaching and teaching. We have certainly seen this in many sports where the athlete is not allowed to question a coaches style or have a voice in their own training. These athletes have become Olympic and World Champions.

I strongly believe that these athletes could have been even better if they had been coached with more effective and empowering coaching and teaching styles.

Short Circuiting the Brain

It is very frustrating for an athlete to have their learning style short circuited by a coach who only gives feedback one way. The athlete has to take in and process information, feedback and correction in a way that does not allow them to learn at the highest level.

Most of these gymnasts are strong kinesthetic learners. They learn best when their coaches show them what they want them to work on or correct, and at the same time tell them what they need to improve or correct during training.  The gymnasts is then empowered to get to work integrating the feedback they have received. They work hard, struggle, fall, and are free to make mistakes. The coach gives them more visual and aural feedback and corrections. The gymnasts then goes back to work integrating and learning. Gymnasts learn skills faster, increase the difficulty and execution of their routines, and progress in their development at a much higher level.

Many coaches interrupt their gymnast learning styles by getting on them when they make mistakes or make them do conditioning if they don’t get a “correction” quickly, or the first time.  In worst case scenarios, coaches kick their gymnasts off of the apparatus or out of the gym. This is incredibly unproductive. Gymnasts don’t get better sitting on the sidelines watching or skipping an apparatus that they are struggling on. It is also very embarrassing for them, and it breaks trust with their coach.

“There Are No Mistakes, Only Learning”

Kinesthetic learners learn best when they are free to make mistakes.

Many coaches punish their gymnasts for getting emotional during training. They don’t understand that their coaching style might be contributing to the gymnasts frustration. The gymnasts is afraid to make mistakes. They are afraid to upset their coach. When the brain focuses on not doing something, it is guaranteed that they will experience more struggle. And most likely make more mistakes.

I work with gymnasts whose coaches tell them “you will never improve if you don’t get corrections the first time”, “you will never make it to level 10 if you keep making mistakes”, you will never make national team if you don’t get this skill by next camp”. If the gymnasts doesn’t improve quickly, the coach becomes frustrated. These coaches don’t understand that if they create an environment where it is safe for their gymnasts to struggle, they will go far beyond their current skill level.

Kicking them off the apparatus or out of the gym, shaming them in front of their teammates and yelling at them will only increase the gymnasts upset and the coaches frustration.

These types of coaches are usually highly reactive, meaning they bypass their most effective coaching traits and go strait to negative and dysfunctional methods of coaching when things aren’t going well in the gym.

If we retain the old abusive culture, nothing will change and we will continue to experience athletes with no voice, no sense of personal power, poor interpersonal boundaries and life skills, and low self esteem.

I think it is safe to say that in gymnastics we all know where this type of coaching has gotten us.

Building a New Culture

We are in the process of building a new culture in gymnastics. It will take open minded coaches willing to ask questions, seek out information, show a willingness to learn and admit mistakes, listen to their peers and pay attention to interactions with their athletes. This open minded coach will become a better coach. Athletes will grow in confidence and belief in themselves. They will acquire skills faster and reach higher levels of success. They will show up authentically and will be free to express their unique personalities in their gymnastics.

And I believe they will achieve greater success.

What kind of coach do you want to be?

Filed Under: Abuse in sports, Abusive coaching, Gymnastics, Mental Aspects of Sports Injuries, Mental Training, Sports Shut Down and the Mental and Emotional Impact on Athletes Tagged With: Coaching, Gymnastics, Gymnastics abuse, Gymnastics Performance, USAG

Gymnastics season is here. Are you working on your mental skills too?

December 19, 2016 by Robert Andrews Leave a Comment

Gymnastics season has started and my phone, email, and text are already lighting up with inquiries from all over the U.S., Canada, Australia, Great Britain, France, and other countries.  Gymnasts are looking for help with their mental approach to gymnastics. Parents, coaches, and gymnasts are searching for answers to anxiety, fear, lack of focus, mental blocks, and many other stressors that effect performance.

Facing Stress and Pressure

For many the pressure to move up a level, add skills, deal with new coaching styles, college recruiting pressures, and return from injury are causing too much stress and pressure.Womens Gymnastics

When the mind focuses too much on these distractions and not enough on just hitting routines problems can occur.

Working With the Best Gymnasts in the World 

I wanted to re-publish an ESPN article  that came out before the Olympic games. The article focuses on my work with 2016
Olympic Team, All Around, Floor, and Vault Champion Simone Biles, and team Gold and Beam Silver Medalist Laurie Hernandez.

ESPN’s Alyssa Roenigk did a remarkable job of capturing the essence of the mental/life training they embraced to reach the top of their sport.

Gymnasts, you can have access to the same mental training program that these two, and other Olympic Champions and Medalist embrace to reach their status as the best in the world.

Contact me for individual and team sessions. Yes, I travel!

Champions Mental Edge Video Series 

Or check out the Champions Mental Edge mental training program. This ten part video series comes in downloadable format so you can have access to this state of the art program on your phone, tablet, or computer. It contains information for athletes, parents, and coaches on mental skills, peak performance, personality and performance, overcoming mental blocks, how stress and pressure impact performance, parenting athletes, championship culture, addressing the mental and emotional impact of sports injuries, and so much more.

Are ready to reach the goals you have set for your gymnastics season?

Step up! Take action now! Your gymnastics will never be the same!

Filed Under: 2016 Rio Olympics, Champions Mental Edge Video Series, Gymnastics, Laurie Hernandez, Mental Aspects of Sports Injuries, Mental Training, Simone Biles, Sports Shut Down and the Mental and Emotional Impact on Athletes Tagged With: Champions Mental Edge, Gymnastics, Laurie Hernandez, mental training, Olympic Champions, Simone Biles

ESPNW Article Laurie Hernandez and her Mental Training Coach Robert Andrews

July 30, 2016 by Robert Andrews Leave a Comment

Check out this great article about the work Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez and I have done to get her ready for Rio…

With one performance left on the biggest night of her career, Laurie Hernandez paused, placed her right hand over her belly and closed her eyes. She inhaled. Paused. Exhaled. She felt her belly expand and contract. She became aware of her breath. And slowly, the anxiety and adrenaline melted away. Then she raised that same arm toward the judges and turned to face the beam.

“I was really calm before beam,” Hernandez said. “I was able to calm myself down and go out there and enjoy the moment.” It’s a technique Hernandez learned from sports psychology coach Robert Andrews, who heads Houston’s Institute of Sports Performance and also works with three-time world champion Simone Biles. Watch Hernandez closely before she presents to the judges at each rotation and there she is: hand over belly, gaze softened yet focused, her shoulders rising and falling with each inhalation.
Laurie Hernandez’s pre-routine ritual includes this breathing exercise that calms her right before she goes.

Laurie Hernandez’s pre-routine ritual includes this breathing exercise that calms her right before she goes.

“And I pray,” she said.

Her pre-performance ritual is working.  Read more

Filed Under: 2016 Rio Olympics, Gymnastics, Laurie Hernandez, Mental Training, Sports Shut Down and the Mental and Emotional Impact on Athletes Tagged With: Laurie Hernandez, Olympics, Pre-Routine Ritual, Robert Andrews

Texas Monthly on Simone Biles and Her Mental Training Expert Robert Andrews

July 5, 2016 by Robert Andrews 2 Comments

Great article in Texas Monthly Magazine about Simone Biles, her amazing parents Ron and Nellie Biles, her world class coach Aimme Boorman, and the work Simone and I have done over the last three and a half years to help her prepare mentally and emotionally for 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Simone BilesEarly on a gray morning in April, dozens of elite athletes—rangy pole vaulters, wrestlers with bulbous ears, beach volleyball players with baked-in tans—hugged themselves for warmth on the windswept plaza outside the Today Show studio, in New York’s Rockefeller Center. In exactly a hundred days, they would march into Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã Stadium as part of the opening ceremony of the 2016 Summer Olympics. But on this chilly morning, as they waited to appear on live television, the beaches of Brazil seemed a long way off.

“I guess this isn’t Rio,” joked a middle-aged spectator wearing a vest festooned with hundreds of commemorative pins from previous Olympics. Several of the athletes shot glares in his direction.

Meanwhile, the biggest stars from the most popular summer sports were standing apart from the other athletes on a sand volleyball court that had been set up for the occasion. Eleven-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte, the swimmer whose rivalry with Michael Phelps in the 2012 London Olympics electrified audiences, chatted with Gabby Douglas, the peppy gymnast who led the 2012 women’s gymnastics team, nicknamed the Fierce Five*, to gold.  Read more

Filed Under: Gymnastics, Mental Training, Rio Olympics, Robert Andrews, Simone Biles, Sports Shut Down and the Mental and Emotional Impact on Athletes, Texas Monthly Magazine Tagged With: Gymnastics, mental training, Rio Olympics, Robert Andrews, Simone Biles, Texas Monthly

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The Institute of Sports Performance™
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Suite 180
Houston, TX 77008
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713.522.2200

robertandrews@tinssp.com
kierstincollins@tinssp.com
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From Our Blog

Overcoming Mental Blocks in Sports

What Happens When A Season Disappears? Drug and Alcohol Issues And The Sports Shut Down

A Parents Guide to the Sports Shut Down

Cancelled Seasons and the Mental and Emotional Wellbeing of Athletes

Learning Styles and Effective Coaching: Empowering Your Athlete To Their Full Potential

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Contact Us

The Institute of Sports Performance™
2500 East T.C. Jester
Suite 180
Houston, TX 77008
Find us

713.522.2200

robertandrews@tinssp.com
kierstincollins@tinssp.com
michaelheck@tinssp.com
andreaestrada@tinssp.com
galenandrews@tinssp.com

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