Punishment in Coaching

          As my coaching career nears the forty year mark I can honestly say I’ve seen plenty of punishment dealt to athletes.  I can also say I’ve seen a drastic increase in the education of coaches in alternatives to punishment over that time.  It’s been approximately 100 years since Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate to the sound of a bell (that’s 700 dog years).  Classic conditioning and reward/punishment methods still play a role in motivation.  But, just as the caveman found objects moved easier when you attached them to round rolling things, we have found many alternatives to punishment that are more effective for teaching and motivating than the cavemanish reward/punishment model.   So, why do so many coaches still use punishment as a primary tool in teaching?
          My first answer to this question is that most coaches begin their career coaching the way they were coached.  Punishment will never go away, but it is decreasing in use as more generations of coaches use better alternatives, influencing future generations of coaches.  My second answer is coaches find that punishment can produce the results they want in the short term.  This is a classic coaching trap.  The success we see in the short term blinds us to the long term consequences of our methods.
          Before we go much further, let’s get a clear understanding of what punishment is.  The Encarta Dictionary describes punishment as “a penalty that is imposed on somebody for wrongdoing.”  This seems like a broad definition showing punishment not to be a black and white concept, but one that has some grey areas.  And, this is true.  What eliminates much of the grey area is the word PENALTY.  To be more specific, it doesn’t matter whether an athlete is receiving a true penalty or not.  What matters is that they PERCEIVE they are being penalized.  If an athlete believes they are being penalized for something they’ve done (or not done) they will most likely feel as though they are being punished.  This is a key point for coaches to understand. 

          For example, an athlete performs a skill with less than satisfactory results in the coaches eyes, so the coach asks him to perform the skill five more times.  The coach may believe he is helping the athlete improve by asking for more repetition.  The athlete may feel like the five extra turns are a penalty (punishment) for not performing the skill properly.  For every action we take as coaches we must ask “what does the athlete PERCEIVE the purpose of this action to be?”

          What is the purpose of using punishment?  Our society punishes to decrease the likelihood that a behavior will be repeated.  If you cut off the hands of a thief you will drastically decrease the chances of him stealing again.  If you sit an athlete out of practice for performing poorly, you will eliminate any chance of them performing poorly (while they are sitting out).  You will also eliminate most of the opportunities available for them to improve their performance (because they are sitting out).
          When is it appropriate to use punishment?  Because there are so many better alternatives, it is almost never appropriate to use punishment.  NEVER PUNISH AN ATHLETE FOR POOR PERFORMANCE.  There may be instances where punishment is an appropriate response to misbehavior, but you have to consider two things before choosing punishment.  First, is the behavior really misbehavior or is it something else.  For example, if an athlete isn’t listening to their coach is that misbehavior?  Listening is a skill.  Skills improve with education and practice.  Should we punish our athletes for not listening or should we teach them how to be better listeners?  I choose the second option.  There are few life skills more important than that one.  If the behavior can be corrected with education and practice then punishment is a poor choice.  Second, we must ensure the punishment we choose is appropriate and weigh that punishment against any alternative actions.  If better alternatives exist then punishment is a poor choice.
          Understanding punishment at its root level is pretty simple.  The greatest downfall of using punishment is its effect on education and motivation.  Those topics will be covered in part two of this series.

Punishment in Coaching Part Two:  How Does Punishment Effect Learning and Motivation?

Punishment in Coaching Part Three:  Alternatives to Using Punishment

THE CHALLENGE TO ADULTS IN YOUTH SPORTS: DON'T SPOIL THEIR FUN

   Most kids love to be active.  The opportunities available for today’s youth to be active are much different than they were just a couple generations earlier.  We hear all the time how thousands of TV stations, video games, etc. give young people too many sedentary choices to fill their time.  While I believe this to be true, it’s not the focus of this post, it does however reinforce the points I hope to make.

   Two generations ago was the tail end of the baby boom.  Most neighborhoods were filled with children.  There were ten houses on my side of the street where I grew up and most of the time I didn’t even need to cross the street to find other kids ready to play.  Pick-up games were common in our tiny front yards.  Games were adapted to the number of children on hand and whatever we chose to do.  3 on 3 basketball, 2 on 2 football, Frisbee bombardment, Frisbee football (a precursor to Ultimate Frisbee) a simple game of catch, hot-box, 300, 500, horse, pig, who could kick the longest field goal over the basketball goal.  These were the activities that filled our days.  We participated because the games were fun.  If a game wasn’t fun, we would adapt it to make it fun or stop playing and make up something else.
    After studying motivation in youth sports for over thirty years it’s easy for me to see how fortunate my generation was in regards to sports participation.  Motivation research overwhelmingly supports the belief that intrinsic motivation is the ultimate form of motivation.  Doing something because it’s fun, because you enjoy the activity, to challenge yourself, to complete tasks within the activity, to see improvement in yourself, these all fall under the umbrella of intrinsic motivation.  The flipside of intrinsic motivation is extrinsic motivation, doing something for social recognition, for money, to avoid punishment or disapproval, or just to win a trophy or medal.  My friends and I loved the games we played in our neighborhood.  Our primary motivational forces were intrinsic.
    Self-Determination Theory (SDT) is one of the most widely studied theories in sport and exercise motivation.  The basic concept of SDT is that we are most likely to be intrinsically motivated when three basic psychological needs are met.  These are:
   ·         Autonomy:  The perception of control we have over a situation.  The more we are involved in the decision making process the greater feeling of autonomy.
   ·         Competence:  Our perception of our abilities.
   ·         Relatedness:  A sense of belonging, to a team, to a group of people who enjoy the same activities, etc.
    In that one little block of houses on south Vine where I grew up, our psychological needs for intrinsic motivation were being met most of the time.  The kids had complete autonomy in developing their activities and choosing whether to participate or not.  We had an uncanny (and unknown) skill for enhancing our feeling of competence.  If the activity we developed turned out to be too hard, we modified it to make it more reasonable.  If the activity turned out to be too easy, we made it more challenging.  We had our own methods for handicapping to make up for various levels of skill among the kids participating.  We didn’t have to be told to do these things.  Doing these things is what kept the activities fun and challenging.  It was just logic.
    I will now, finally, get to the point of this post.  The children I grew up with had opportunities to play organized sports and we did, a few months of baseball in the spring and summer, a few months of football in the fall and a few months of basketball in the winter.  Doors were opened to other sports only after we reached high school.  Compare this to my Grandson’s generation where nearly all sports activities are organized and governed by a set of rules dictated by adults.  This isn’t a bad thing, but this slide toward organization by adults has eliminated some valuable experiences for our children.  Even with that, there are still many, many great things happening in the world of youth sports.  Most of these are enhanced by coaches, parents and league organizers who understand the benefits of an intrinsically motivated child. 
    The evolvement of youth sports into what it is today has created challenges for adults that were largely non-existent just two generations ago.  Because a certain amount of structure is necessary for an organization to create a level and fair playing field, a number of decisions that were made by children in “the sandlot days” are now being made by adults.  Adults who recognize this will make an effort to include their athletes in the decision making process whenever it is appropriate and when the children are capable of making the decisions logically.  Not only will this teach a valuable life skill (the decision making process), but it will increase the children’s perception of autonomy (a basic psychological need).
    It’s easy in organized sports for an individual to base their competence on how they compare to other participants.  This is a mistake.  There’s nothing wrong with wanting to win a game or a competition, but winning doesn’t give an accurate assessment of competence.  Competitions most often include individuals and teams with varying degrees of skill.  A greater skilled competitor could win a game while performing poorly.  A lesser skilled competitor could lose a game or match while performing at their highest level ever.  A good coach will create a motivational climate where success is based on comparison to past performances and current goals.  They will help the athlete determine a progressive set of goals, creating small stepping stones to success.  This string of small successes creates continual progress which develops a strong feeling of competence and leads to the accomplishment of long-term goals.
    More and more of today’s youth are choosing a single sport and focusing on it twelve months a year.  This specialization isn’t bad as long as a few things are kept in mind.  First, children should be exposed to many different activities at a young age.  If they fall in love with one sport and just can’t get enough of it then more time with that sport is a logical step.  If this eventually leads to specialization, that’s okay.  What’s important is that the child has followed a process of elimination to find the sport they love.  The opportunities can be created and presented by adults, but the decisions in the process should be made by the child. 
    Second, if your child is going to train with one organization twelve months a year, choose an organization with a cooperative style of leadership.  One where the child is involved in the decision making to the extent they are capable, one where guidance, communication and education in the sport are core beliefs vs. a dictator style “my way or the highway” belief system.  Children don’t learn much from a dictator style coach, except how to follow orders.  It’s preferable for your child to be part of an organization that teaches self-discipline (vs. forced discipline), decision making skills (vs. “do what I say”), the process for success (vs. win at any cost), sportsmanship, etc.  It sounds clichéd, but you should choose a program where proper life skills are taught alongside sports skills, because LIFE skills (good or bad) last a LIFETIME while sports skills only last as long as the person is participating in the sport.
    I’ve used a lot of words here to explain one simple point.  Children love to be active.  The challenge to all of us adults is to not mess that up.  If we can meet that challenge we will have happy, productive kids that reach adulthood with many great life skills and positive leadership models to follow.  It’s worth the effort to be that model.  Our legacy lives in the people we’ve touched in our lifetime and how those people use what they’ve learned from that relationship.

Feedback in Children's Sports

Parents, coaches, teammates, officials, the crowd, and the performance itself all provide feedback during and after a child’s sports performance. The chronology of this feedback is important. Understanding where we fit in the order of feedback given to an athlete will help each of us provide the most useful information to that athlete. I’ll use gymnastics as an example. Following a performance in competition, a gymnast will get feedback in this order, or something close to it:

1. From the performance itself (a self-evaluation)
2. Crowd reaction may play a role at this point
3. From their coach or coaches
4. From their teammates
5. From the immediate environment (other coaches or gymnasts in the area)
6. From the judge (a score)
(In a women’s meet they will repeat this process 4 times, once for each event).
7. From the awards ceremony (where did they place on each event)
8. From parents, family and friends who were in attendance

Every sport has its own chronology of feedback. In some sports feedback from an official is nearly immediate, “Strike three, you’re out!” putting it in front of information from a coach or teammate. In other sports, such as gymnastics, it’s delayed. We teach our gymnasts to set their goals based on performance standards, not scores. While judges are calculating scores we have an opportunity to give feedback based on performance and goals. This puts coach feedback in the line up before judge feedback, which works great for us.

For best results, all adults involved need to understand the typical order of feedback in their child’s sport and how it affects their role in the situation. A coach or parents place in the line up will have an affect on what type of feedback they should provide. A parent shouldn’t run to the dugout to tell their child to “watch the ball ‘til it hits the bat”, and a coach shouldn’t go home for dinner with the family just to say how much he liked Johnny’s diving catch in the second inning. A tuned in coaching staff can manipulate the order to a certain degree. And they should if that’s what’s best for the athlete.

After a game, Johnny has heard from his coaches, teammates, the umpires and himself concerning his performance. He doesn’t need technical information from his parents at that moment. What he’d probably enjoy is hearing what they liked best about the game. “Nice diving catch in the second.” Not technical information, just what made his parent’s happy. It would be good for him to hear what his parents enjoyed about how others played as well, as long as it’s not a comparison to his performance.

Not only should the adults involved be aware of the order of feedback given, but they should also consider the importance the athlete gives to each piece of feedback and should have a clear understanding of their role as a feedbacker (I think I made that word up, but it seems to fit, so I’ll run with it).

 

Pat Summerall: “John, this team has quite a feedbacker crew.”

John Madden: “I’ll say, have you been watching that middle feedbacker. He’s over here, then he’s over there, then he’s back down here. He seems to be everywhere. That young athlete’s lucky to have someone he can trust on his side. It’s seems like the feedbacker can read his mind and knows just what to say.”

 

Pat: “Ya, what about that blitzing feedbacker?”

John; “He’s always first on the scene, throwing encouragement everywhere, there’s still some lying on the field, see it over there. He mixes in a little technical or tactical information, followed by some more positive comments, and WAM, you’ve got a feedback sandwich. Makes me hungry, anyone seen my turkey?”

 

Pat: “Later John.”

John: “oh, oh yeah. And, those outside feedbackers, they cover their territory, analyze the situation and never leave their posts unless needed.

Pat: “Don’t forget those drop-back feedbackers.”

John: “Oh, of course not. Every kid needs his drop-back feedbackers. Those who drop-back, watch the whole scene and provide unconditional, positive support. This kid’s parents are great at that.”

Everyone plays a role in the process. Coaches and parents in particular, but also officials, teammates, parents of teammates, etc. need to consider:

- Where you are in the feedback line-up.
- What are the needs of the child athlete when they reach your spot in the line-up.
- Are you the right person to fill those needs or should another “feedbacker” take that role?

With a little practice you will get very good at this quick analysis and you’ll find that you are there when you need to be, not there when you shouldn’t be and comfortable knowing your child is getting the best feedback available.