Addressing Youth Wrestling Coaches: Stop Being Negative

Addressing Youth Wrestling Coaches: Stop Being Negative

Wrestling is a tough sport, but coaching wrestling is even tougher. I spent the last 15 years as a full-time wrestling coach, and I picked up a few things along the way. Youth coaches play an important role in the development of our young wrestlers.

May 2, 2017 by Michael Malinconico
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Wrestling is a tough sport, but coaching wrestling is even tougher. I spent the last 15 years as a full-time wrestling coach, and I picked up a few things along the way.

Youth coaches play an important role in the development of our young wrestlers. They are the gatekeepers, so to speak. They introduce the sport to a new group of people every year. So the wrestling community should probably be on the same page as far as what type of message we're conveying to people that are just getting involved in our sport.

While I don't have all the answers I do have some ideas. At the risk of sounding preachy, I have assembled a list of things that I would love to see coaches at every level stop doing but most importantly youth coaches.

Stop Being Negative

Youth coaches need to stop being negative. It's not helpful at all. If you want to motivate your athletes, take the time to find out what makes them tick individually. If you look at it empirically, there are athletes who respond to negative reinforcement (even though most psychologists would agree that they can be cured of that), but how do you know which kids are motivated by what?

A few years back, I was forced to sit through a seminar put on by an organization named Positive Coaching Alliance. I went into the endeavor begrudgingly, but I came out with some interesting insights. Some of PCA's mottoes are kind of corny and not always realistic, and I don't think that you need to to take these as hard and fast rules.

I do, however, think there were some nuggets of wisdom in there. Here are a few:

Positive-To-Negative Remark Ratio
One thing that they talked about was that you're supposed to have a 5-to-1 positive-to-negative remark ratio. That means that for every one negative or critical thing that you say to an athlete, there must be five positive and encouraging remarks peppered in as well. I had a hard time hitting five on most days, but I will say this: It's a great goal to strive for as a coach.

Speaking in this way may take some practice (it did for me). After a while, though, this becomes second nature just like everything else. I think of it as the "Build-Burn-Build" rule. For example, if lil' Johnny is hitting his single leg all wrong in the room, I'd probably walk up him and say something like, "Hey, Johnny, that looks pretty good. Would you mind hitting it for me one more time? There are a couple of things that I want to clean up about it." After he makes the correction, I'd probably talk to him about how much better he's getting.

I've mentioned it before, but it is worth repeating.

Make Contact
Wrestling is a contact sport. A handshake, a high-five, a pat on the head goes a lot further when imprinting their young brains with information. I use this one for most of my life (in seven out of 10 times I tell my wife I love her, I have elbow control).

Honor The Sport
In all honesty, this one has different meanings to me depending on a host of factors. If I had to widdle it down to just a few sentences, the gist would probably be something like, "Is the way that you're acting and the words that you're saying helping move the sport forward or holding it back?" 

If you're not sure how to answer the above questions, then allow me to simplify it for you. Pick the coach in the sport that you most admire: John Smith, Cael Sanderson, J Robinson, Dan Gable, whoever you want. Now ask yourself if that coach would approve of what you're doing and or saying.