Hello and welcome back to Brain in the Game. Brain in the Game is a podcast that's been specifically designed for athletes, coaches and parents who are out there looking to do their sport just that little bit smarter. And I'm your host, Dave Diggle.
In this episode, episode 84, we're going to look at why modern day coaches need modern day coaching. And it's probably not what you think. Now look, I'm old enough to remember what my coaches coached like during the 70s and 80s and fortunately enough, during that time I travelled the world as a competitive athlete and I got to experience many, many different kind of coaching styles and strategies and philosophies, strategies from where I grew up in Great Britain through to the European, Eastern European, Russian, USA, Asian. There was a whole different influence of coaches around at that time. We didn't have the Internet, so it was a real immersive experience when we travelled to get a sense of how other people did what they did. Now, I've spoken to you before about my coach, Mitch Fenner, who was an incredibly successful coach of the time. A lot of the national team was made up of Mitch's athletes and you know, as a junior and a senior team, we did incredibly well dominating during certain periods of that time.
So Mitch had a very, very unique coaching style. And we can sit here and unpack just his style the whole podcast, but we're not going to. I was also exposed to our national coach, which was John Atkinson, known as Ako to all of us. Now, his style was incredibly different to Mitch's. Ako's style was very influenced by the Russian influence of the time around how coaches should coach and skills should be taught and athletes should behave. Now, Ako was incredibly scary, a lovely, lovely guy. Now I look back at him, but at the time he frightened the bejeebies out of me as an athlete. And so he had that very dominant coaching style around in that time. You know, I was also exposed to other national and international coaches when we were travelling, the likes of John Perry, Mike Weinstock, Jeff Davies, Trevor Loeb, just to name a couple. And interestingly, every single one of those had a very, very different coaching ethos. And depending on their background, their experience, their position and where they were in their coaching progression would dictate how they were coaching at the time. And I'm sure that those of them that were nearer the end of their coaching period were going to coach that way up until the day that they stopped coaching.
And then there's other ones that were start of their journey as a coach who were just learning how to coach. And so it's important for us as coaching staff today and as athletes to recognise that coaches are on a journey too. When I look back at the 70s and the 80s, when I was competing and being influenced by all of these great coaches, there was definitely a philosophy which was, I'm the coach, you're the athlete, I know exactly what you need to do. Your job is just to go out there and do as you're told. Don't ask questions, don't challenge, just rock up and do what you're told. Now, I'm not sure if that was necessarily their thought process or. But it was just of the time back in the 70s and 80s, athletes didn't really have a say. We didn't really have an opportunity to challenge and ask questions and better understand, which was really challenging for me because I was one of those really annoying athletes who wanted to ask questions. Now, just because those coaches coached in that style of that time, I just want to put a side note here and be really, really clear.
I'm not judging them as we didn't know what we didn't know. And I'm sure they were doing absolutely everything they thought was right for that time, a period of time of coaching. And I'm not a big believer in retrospectively going back and hanging people for something that we just did not know. I'm sure in 20 years time we'll look back at this time and go, what were they thinking? What were they doing? The reality is it's always progressing and moving and changing. Sometimes it progresses in the right way and sometimes, you know what? It doesn't. And for whatever reason, it is just a period of time. And the vast majority of coaches, I believe, in my experience, are out there trying to do the right thing. They're trying to do with the information that they've got. And that's why we're having this conversation today, because coaches often are just doing the best with the information that they've got. They focus heavily on teaching what they're taught to teach. And if they're not taught to teach it, it doesn't get taught. Now I'm glad I've said that because I don't want to go back and have to say that again.
That was quite challenging. But what I do want us to be aware of is that although during the 70s and 80s it was a very Wild west kind of coaching ethos, it was only because that was all that was taught at that time. Like I said before, Mitch was a coach that I think I know struggled with my constant asking of why, why does this happen? Why does that need to do that? Why do we need to do that? What's the outcome going to be? Now I know as a mental performance specialist right now that what I was doing was looking for my how, how do I use this skill, how do I own it? What Mitch would have seen was probably this very challenging, quite disruptive athlete who was just constantly just giving me more information, I think. And I said just before, I think he handled that incredibly well. Other coaches that I was exposed to during that period of time didn't because they didn't know me. You know, I'd rock up at a training camp or I'd rock up, we'd be on an international tour with coaches that maybe had one or two days exposure to me.
And it wasn't just me. I don't want to paint the picture that I was this big pain in the backside the whole time. Every athlete, if I look back now that I travelled with had their own idiosyncrasies and own needs as athletes that the coaching staff just were not across. So I want to keep that in context. As I say I will keep saying this and I'm going to say it time and time again. Today's coaching, however, a completely different beast from coaching of yesteryear. And that's because we are way, way, way, way more science driven today. There's a lot more cause and effect, there's a lot more focus on, you know, what's the consequences of our actions. Back in those days we weren't so aware of the consequences of our actions. We were way more focused on how do we win. It's got to be about the winning, got to be about the result. And if you look at that period of time in every aspect, it was, as I say, really Wild west compared to this really science process, athlete driven environment we have today. So that's why we're going to have this conversation, why I think coaches of today need better education, they need more specific education.
So let's unpack this. So say today's coaching is way more Science based, it's more about holistic collaborative coaching rather than this machine or mill coaching philosophy of yesteryear. We understand today that in order to optimise an athlete's outcomes, we have layers and layers of the athlete we have to work through. And in the 70s and 80s we just didn't have that data, we didn't have that process and you know, we weren't inside the heads of those athletes back in those days. The coaching fraternity of today have a way bigger task, they have a way bigger beast to deal with. Particularly if we're looking at high performance, high expectations and high financial consequence of getting it right. As a, as someone who's spent my whole life involved in sport, both initially as an athlete, then as a coach, then as an official, working as a judge and organiser, as a support specialist today, and the mental performance of athletes, but also as a parent of three kids who have all been through different degrees of high performance sport. I can see every single component, or at least I can see the consequences of each individual component from all different sides.
And I want to give you some context on today's different philosophies compared to where we're coming from. And I'll explain in a moment why I keep referencing back to the 70s and 80s. My father in law used to love to work on his car. There wasn't anything he couldn't do to that old vehicle from changing tyres to changing oil, to changing the engine. He would often sit in his garage over the whole weekend tinkering and working on the car in order to try and get it ready for work on a Monday morning. Now he used to tell me stories about all different things he had to machine himself or create or adjust just to get that vehicle back on the road. But when vehicles started to get digitised and you know, computers were doing the analysis and computers were involved in the idling of the engine or in the air conditioning or in the way that the fuel is gets dispersed. That's when he could no longer tinker with the car and he had to start taking that out to other people. Cars are different today. They're not as simplistic, they're not just an engine with four wheels and a steering wheel.
And I know there's a lot more to it of the old yesteryear. Cars today are high performing, high fidelity instruments. Now I, I've got a vehicle that we've had a couple of issues of it recently where the computer wasn't communicating with the engine and all of a sudden it would go into what's called limp mode. And you know, you got this lovely big car that you're driving along, all of a sudden becomes a tortoise and it's crawling along the side of the road and they go, yeah, we just got to recalibrate the computer, let's just do that. Thirty seconds later you're back on the road and driving like normal. If I think about my father-in-law and the way that he approached his cars, he would have just pulled that car over, fixed something, changed a belt, used a pantyhose to do something or you know, used something to fix a hole and that car would have been back on the road and he would have been happy to have done that. If we think about coaching, today's modern coaching. Coaches of yesteryear were like my father-in-law, they patched athletes up to get them, to get the result, to get them to the next competition.
As he, my father-in-law got the car to the next day of work, it was that ethos of, yep, it's just a set back, keep moving forward, keep moving forward, keep moving forward. And the philosophies around that weren't necessarily holistic or sustainable. It was just all about the next competition. Once you've done that competition, whatever bits were broken we put back together and we put you back on the treadmill for the next competition. Coaches of today are like the diagnostic engineers that work on today's modern vehicles. It's not just about does the car run, it's how efficient does the car run, at what idle speed is that, what fuel efficiency is it, can it start in the cold, does it still get the same outcome, does it? All of these different, unique today challenges come from a better, more science driven vehicle. Coaching is exactly the same. If you look at today's modern athlete, there are so many parts to that puzzle. There are so many different components that coaches of yesteryear would never have understood, would have never been able to understand that at all. Now, my father in law would often joke with me because if our car broke down, I'd look at it and I'd go, got no idea.
I have zero knowledge around mechanical engines of today. My son's a mechanic and he gets it. So my, my father-in-law, his granddad and, and him would have these conversations about what they do with vehicles and how they can patch things and take things from different cars and put them on other cars. But both of them would acknowledge cars of today are a different beast. The same way that athletes of today are a completely different beast, to use a different analogy. Think of those of you who grew up in the 70s and 80s, like I did, the game Pong, you know, the two little lines that went up and down the screen and there was a little dot, beep, beep, beep back and forth on the, on the TV screen. And that was like revolutionary. Let alone Pac Man and all those other things that started to come out. Compare that of yesteryear to the virtual reality, fully immersive gaming world of today and they're chalk and cheese. And that's like comparing athletes of yesteryear to athletes of today, chalk and cheese. Yes. They've got predominantly the same components that go on. You know, hopefully they've all got a head and all the limbs and all of the parts.
But, but the reality is the operating system is incredibly different and I think that's just part of evolution. So the question that we need to establish here is are coaching staff fit for purpose today? How does the coach better understand that athlete? I gave a lecture recently and I asked the coaching fraternity that was sitting in front of me, were you an athlete before you became a coach and were you a child before you became an adult? Now there's always one or two. He put the hand back down when I asked whether you were a child before he was an adult. I don't know why, but there was a couple of people who made that mistake. Maybe I didn't articulate or maybe they just didn't listen, but everyone agreed that the vast majority of today's coaches were athletes previously and the vast majority of adults were children at some point. And when we look at that, we got to say, okay, where did we learn to become an adult and where did we learn to become a coach? And we know through studies that the vast majority of people, whether they like it or not, parent the way that they were parented or they become real mavericks and completely coach or so completely parent the opposite way.
So if you grew up in a very strict environment, you become very loosey goosey as a kind of parent, or if you grew up in a non structured environment, then you become a little bit more structured because what you're doing, it's called the pendulum effect, you try and react to your exposure and alter it by swinging to the other side of the scale. We do that as parents. We do that in a way that we think we're correcting the mistakes of the past. So we do that as coaches too. So we either coach the way we were coached for the vast majority or we swing the pendulum completely in the other direction. Now, if you look at coaching and where we are and the success we had as athletes, something obviously worked, right? For whatever the strategies were, for whatever the Wild west mindset was of that time, there was clearly certain things that worked because we became successful athletes and then became coaching staff. And we don't want to use the old English expression here, throw the baby out of the bathroom water and say, right, everything was wrong, so I'm going to have to do it 100% different.
We just don't do that. But is it fit for purpose? Are there things that we need to be able to do different today for the different athletes? Of course. And if we coach predominantly the way we were coached, it's for a completely different era. Even if it was 10 years ago, let alone the 30+ years ago that it was for me, if not more, 40 years ago, it was for me. How old am I? Then you start to understand that the speed that when we look at the gaming analogy, going from Pong through to Pac Man and Asteroid, and that happened in that time, it felt so quick, but it took years. If you look at the development of gaming today, literally every week there's this new innovation, the whole AI world and all of those kind of things are moving so, so quickly. And athletes are exactly the same. If you look at the way that you are coaching today, even if you gave away actual competition yourself five or ten years ago, the athlete of today has innovated and changed compared to when you were competing. So your ability to communicate, your ability to coach.
Now, I'm not talking about technical, I'm not talking about the skills, I'm not talking about the way that the sport or the game is executed. I'm talking about what you're working with. The person, the human, they are different. They may physiologically look the same, but psychologically they are incredibly different. So for us, mental performance coaching, that operating system inside the new version of athlete, understanding that component in today's modern athlete is critical. And if we want to maximise and optimise the potential of that individual and that team, then we best know how to utilise that. So if you're an old mechanic and you get dropped into a modern workshop, you will struggle. Vehicles still have four wheels, still have a steering wheel, but what makes them work, what keeps them on the road, what optimises their outcome? You won't have a clue. So you've got to keep up with that. You've got to understand the new world, you've got to understand the new components that you're working with. And because of this, they need to understand how to optimise the athlete. Not the physicality, not the technical, but the psychological. So there's a number of athletes are utilising the psychology, mental performance of them for themselves because they know, they need to know how to create motivation, how to optimise, how to problem solve, how to communicate, how to prepare, perform, assess, rinse and repeat, how to recover.
Not talking physically, but I'm talking mentally and emotionally, how to perform under pressure, how to deal with mistakes and successes, how to build confidence and consistency and how to build a performance DNA. So if athletes recognise this whole new chapter in how they perform is a critical part of their preparation and their performance as a coach, how aware are you of all of those things and how do you optimise that? How do you. Is there a generic one size fits all? Do you cookie cutter your environment to create that in your athletes, or do you need to understand each individual athlete? Is each individual athlete's motivation the same or different? Is the way that you optimise how they turn up and perform exactly the same or are they different? Do they problem solve and solution orientate in the same way? Do they communicate and respond in the same way? Do they prepare, perform and assess in the same way? Of course, none of these are one size fits all. It's not like back in the old mechanics days where you could go down local hardware store, pick apart a fuel pump or whatever it is and fit it and it's going to fit almost all cars today if you've got even a nut.
I drive a ride a Ducati motorbike and there was a part on my Ducati that sheared off. So I went to a general place to try and get this part that sheared off and it had such a unique head on this that they only came from Italy. So I had to wait for weeks because it was a specialised component part. Could have they done it another way? Probably. Did they? No. Because in their mind, in order for that bike to perform at that level, it needed this unique component built in this unique way. And that's exactly what we're looking at with today's unique environment for athletes. And as much as a coach, you want to believe that the psychology of your athletes is nowhere near as important as the skills and the physicality and your coaching. It's not. It is incredibly important. You know, the physicality and the techniques, the techniques have changed, the physicality requirements have changed and all of those that hold those in one place is the psychology, it's a glue that holds that whole working mechanism together. So, as a coach, you have to either believe that psychology isn't important and if that's the case, please say hello to the 1980s for me, or you need to either engage an expert who does get it, who like the athletes that they're hiring, people like me.
At a rate of knots, there's a young Australian F1 driver who just reached out to a football player's mental performance coach, saying that there's nothing in our world that is going to get me to where I need to get to. I know this is important. So if you're looking at this next generation of racing car driver coming through now, I've worked in motorsport for several years and when I first stepped into that world, people looked at me like I was a voodoo doll. I was coming along, trying to go, well, I'm going to get inside your head, don't come near me. But now it's an accepted. Almost every driver is looking for someone to help, to maximise how they do what they do, along with all the other sports of the athletes are seeing this. If the athletes are engaging this, where does that leave you as a coach? Does that leave you with a whole table free of space, so you can kind of go, right, I can focus on the skills and the physical development and a team dynamic, or does it leave you in a position where you're looking at and going, I have no idea what they're talking about.
I am now no longer aware of how to optimise that athlete because what they're doing is taking themselves to a whole new stratosphere that I've just noticed circled in, like using that analogy, taking a mechanic of 50 years ago and dropping them in today's workshop. And I see way, way too many coaches who have the greatest of intentions, who have the greatest of knowledge in their specific sports, losing athletes purely and simply because they don't get them and they don't prioritise or create an environment that respects that. Athletes need to switch on the psychology, to switch on the operating system, to optimise the outcome, to look for, how do I do what I do, what's my performance DNA? How do I communicate, how do I optimise, how do I recover? How do I go from one competition to the next? Competition was, I need 12 hours or 14 hours in between. You know, we call that bounce in, bounce out. How do I create an environment where if I've not performed well, I turn that around. How do I create an environment If I'm not performing well, I can turn that around in the game.
If you as a coach don't know how to answer those questions, then this is why the modern day coach needs a modern day coach. You do need to understand what you're working with is a different beast to when you were competing. It's a different beast, hell to five years ago, and it will be a different beast in five years time. So if you're looking for longevity in your sport to make a name for yourself, to be around for generations of athletes, then you really do need to be better educated on how we do what we do today compared to how we do it yesterday. And that's something that both athletes and coaches really do need to better understand. Some, as I say, some athletes are embracing it. And my phone's never rung as hot as it rings now. And that's predominantly either a parent or an athlete reaching out and saying, I'm hit this wall. I don't know how to get past this. I need help. Often the biggest resistance is coaches, and that's not because they want to see that athlete struggle, because they don't. They want to see the athlete thrive. But there's this potential resistance to.
But I should know that when I was competing, it was different to that. Absolutely. If I was coaching today the way that I was coached, and as I said, when all of those coaches I talked about before, from Fenner through to Acco, through John Perry, Jeff Davis, Trevor Lowe, Mike Weinstock, all of those coaches were phenomenal coaches. But if they stayed in that time warp of that yesteryear, they would never, ever have the influence today that they had back then. Those of them are still coaching. And unfortunately, Mike, Mitch Fernley has passed away. Those of them who are still around have probably recognised how they did what they did back then was for then, if they were coaching today, the strategy, the psychology, the application is very, very different. So this is why modern coaches need modern coaching. And if you want to learn more about this, then it's not a one size fits all, it's a strategy that you, you need to understand the athlete before you can understand how efficient and effective you can be. And we've got some training programmes that we used. The main arena coach is a membership where coaches from all different walks of life and sports come together and we walk through these kind of strategies of how do you communicate?
If you've got this issue, if you've got an athlete who's not responding to you, then how do you get inside their head? Or how do you get them to integrate back into your organisation, your team, your coaching philosophies? If you've got an athlete who capitulates under pressure, who chokes, then how do you deal with that athlete? In gymnastics or in acro based sports in particular, there's a high propensity of athletes who get mental blocks. And you know, we can go into the whole unpacking of why that is, but that's for another podcast. But then teaching coaches how to help the athlete correct, that is a critical strategy because that mental block, because of it's a fear based mechanism, becomes insidious and it starts to leech into the rest of the group and before long you've not got one athlete who's got a mental block, you've got several of that team who have mental blocks. So that can be incredibly frustrating as a coach and absolutely correctable from day one if you're aware of how, if you see the early signs and what you can do to stop that. So better understanding your athlete is critical to get to optimise and recognise that today's modern athletes need a modern approach.
So check out smartmind.com coach and get yourself on the main arena coach programme. We meet once a week for an hour and a half and it's an environment specifically designed to optimise coaches. It's an environment where we look at modern day coaching and I gotta be honest with you, I don't care if you're a football coach, a rugby coach, a golf coach or a cricket coach, or an ice skating coach, or a gym coach. How you do what you do is a strategy, is a process, it's an education. What you choose to do and what sport you choose to do is entirely up to you. But you do need to learn how to do what you do way more efficiently. Effectively. Otherwise the consequence of that is you're stunting your athlete's progression. And one of two things is going to happen. You're going to end up with an underperforming environment or an empty environment. It's just a reality of today's modern coaching world. So I hope today's podcast has been some fodder for you to really analyse the efficiency and effectiveness of what you do and to recognise that as coaching a coaching fraternity. And I put myself in that same category.
We cannot just sit there and expect it to maintain the same. It's all about the skills or the physicality. The psychology of today's modern athlete is just as, if not more important than their physicality or their skill set. If you've got the driver, the mindset, right, we can teach them the physicality, we can teach them the skill set. If we don't have that psychology, right, that operating system, the driver of the vehicle, doesn't matter what skills they've got or how physically capable they are, they will make more and more mistakes. And that's our job as coaches, right? That's our job to correct that and keep that and grow that. So, like I said, I hope you've got a lot from this. I've gone over the last couple of podcasts, I've wanted to go really, really deep on what coaches can do to better improve their environment. And we're getting a lot of really, really positive feedback. I'm being contacted more frequently by coaches and saying, look, you're making me challenge how I do what I do and it's uncomfortable, but I see it. So I challenge you. Now, if you're listening to this and you're a coach, ask yourself the question, how well do I understand what I'm working with?
And if it's not as equal to the skills that you have in your industry, your knowledge of your sport, then you're leaving yourself exposed until the next episode of Brain in the Game. Train smart and enjoy the ride. My name's Dave Diggle and I look forward to seeing you on the next episode.
