Designing Internal Pressure for Your Sports Training: Athlete Responsibility

One of my favorite quotes of all time comes from a book I’ve devoured (multiple times), notated and referenced over and over again – “Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance,” by Angela Duckworth. The full quote is eight words, but my favorite three are these “effort counts twice.”

As much as talent counts, effort counts twice.

ANGELA DUCKWORTH, GRIT

When coaches look at a training group or session, we try to create the best possible environment for growth and grit; we design a session that will push athletes to the edge of their comfort zones while also creating opportunity for them to learn, acquire new skill, train a developing/current skill and give them chances to compete under pressure. We are trying to create pressure situations and we expect effort.

External pressure from the practice design is only one part of the needed pressure to create effort and it’s usually the easiest part to understand in a coach/athlete relationship. Athletes are used to performing for their coaches, for each other, for their parents but many of them need to be trained in how to compete or perform for themselves. That internal pressure is what creates the effort necessary to not only grow and learn, but to prepare for the pressure that comes in competition and the knowledge of what to do with it when it shows up.

Most athletes are inherently aware that the reason they train is to get better, but many of them are not equipped to handle more than the learning part of sport when it comes time to cash in their training and use what they know on the competition field.

Pressure is a Privilege

A few seasons ago, I coached a team through mental skills and team dynamics as they prepared for their conference tournament and NCAA appearances. After a couple sessions with the team and captains, it was clear the team wanted to go into the tournament with “no expectations - no pressure.” This was one of the guiding principals for their season and post-season, something like “we have nothing to prove.” On the surface, this seemed to them like a great way to play loose or play for fun (and in some individual cases, it does work); but for the large majority of teams and athletes when expectations and pressure are removed completely, it’s difficult to know what to work towards. Without being fully aware of it, outcomes and results override our thinking by default. When you win, it feels great because “hey! no expectations.” But if you lose or play poorly, it can lead to thinking “what if we gave just a bit more.”

The team I was coaching had some great first rounds, and even a big upset over a higher ranked team - however, in the finals of the tournament, they fell short. A couple of the steadiest players struggled to get into a rhythm and without their points, the team lost. They went on to lose in the first round of the NCAA tournament. This was still a great finish for them as a team, and in general, they had great leadership and a connected culture. But it is a good reminder that pressure is a privilege. You may not want it present, but when you acknowledge that it’s there, you will actually play much freer and have more fun than pretending that it doesn’t exist.

So why didn’t I push to change their focus from no expectations/pressure to acknowledging the pressure of the moment? While they did have good team cohesion and cultural values in place, had I dismantled the carefully crafted plan they had been implementing all season, it would have been very disorienting for the team and may have created more issues. Additionally, I entered the picture mid-season and I needed to build trust. With their main mental structures in place, we worked on adjacent skills such as clarifying and communicating their values, pushing through/how to fuel adversity and giving them a central focus and mental cues they could internalize. Ultimately as coaches, we guide the mental work, find ways to replace unhelpful behaviors and then let the group work the process.

Creating Pressure, Taking Responsibility

EXTERNAL PRESSURE is created through focus, keys/cues and intent of the drill.

INTERNAL PRESSURE is added by the athlete. Taking responsibility for learning, effort, adjustments and attitude.

For training to effectively transfer into effort on the competition field, both external and internal pressure should be present. Can it work without the athlete creating internal pressure and relying on the external pressure alone?

Yes.

It works all the time. But as athletes begin to take their sport more seriously or the level of competition rises, they begin to take on more responsibility for their outcomes. The idea though is to get athletes to own their training time so that when pressure is created by a drill, a tough opponent, an adverse situation in competition, an athletes effort is not affected. Pressure prepares us to compete. Therefore, we need to practice being in pressure situations instead as often as possible. Training or practice creates these opportunities.

This isn’t a call to arbitrarily put more pressure on athletes for the sake of having a better practice or creating desirable difficulty – though both will likely happen. The goal here is to begin placing responsibility on the athlete as they progress through the sport. Why though? Because it’s their journey. As coaches we guide that journey. As parents, we support that journey and as athletes, you live that journey. When athletes don’t take responsibility of their journey (within developmentally appropriate means), the likelihood of burn out is greater.

What seems to be on trend the past decade or so in youth sports is medal counts, number of athletes committed or signed and flashy drills or workouts that don’t translate to competition. What seems to not be trending? Those club teams posting the same athletes de-committing, entering the transfer portal after one season or the ones who come home after a year because they couldn’t handle the pressure.

See, effort isn’t going to show up just because someone is playing a sport or chasing the coach or parent’s dream. Effort comes as a result of the right external stimulus for growth (the practice plan) plus the internal drive and pressure (making that practice work for me) to meet the demands of that stimulus. When these two meet, kids don’t just get better at sports, they become better at adjusting along the way and making adjustments in real time and become reliant on more factors which they can train.