Summer School Part 3

There Are No Blank Slates

“We’re not starting from scratch—we’re starting from somewhere.”

In Summer School Part 1, I talked about the importance—and limitations—of self-organization. There’s also a lot there from my previous explorations of 3 of my favorite coaching books:

The Language Of Coaching - Nick Winkleman
How We Learn To Move - Rob Gray
Coaching Athletes To Be Their Best - Rollnick and Fader

Check out Part 1 if you haven’t already.

In Summer School Part 2, I laid out a 3-part framework for how I approach athlete learning: Direct Instruction, Guided Discovery, and Mutual Exploration. Now, I want to introduce a complicating factor that coaches often forget to account for:

Every athlete shows up with a learning history.

We are not coaching blank slates. We are coaching stories-in-progress. Each athlete walks into your gym already shaped by their experiences—coaches, parents, teachers, school, teammates, culture. That’s the case whether you run a high school program, a club team, or a national team. The environment you’re creating is never the only one that matters.

What’s Left Unsaid Still Makes An Impact

Let’s say you’re an eco-curious coach. You’re building your gym around player exploration and self-organization. You’re trying to encourage movement variability, avoid over-coaching, and give players space to solve problems. You’re following the EcoD recipe for success.

But what happens when an athlete comes into that environment with a deeply ingrained belief like:

“There is one correct way to do this skill. My job is to repeat that way over and over again until it becomes automatic.”

The idea that there is One Perfect Technique™ is pretty strong for a lot of players. They’ve hear “practice makes perfect” before. Even if you don’t talk about technique in that way, that meme still in their head. That’s not entirely a bad thing, but it can limit their ability to explore and find new (and better) movement solutions.

I talked about this tension in my Goldilocks articles. Players don’t always need more reps—they need better contrast. They need to feel too much, too little, and just right so their bodies can tune in to what's effective in the moment. A drill like Tape, Ten, Perfect isn’t just skill training—it’s belief reframing. Many players will come from a school of thought where variability is the enemy. You’ll need to pro-actively explain to some of them why deliberate variability is actually a potent tool for helping them learn.

Perception of Caring: The Feedback Trap

Another common learning history: athletes who were raised on constant coaching feedback.

This might sound familiar:

My old coach was always talking to me during drills.

If I wasn’t getting yelled at, I thought I was doing something wrong.

She always corrected my form on every rep. That’s how I knew she cared.

These athletes equate coach talk with coach investment. So what happens when they enter your gym, and you’re running a guided discovery model? You’re standing off to the side during reps, observing, letting players explore. You might think you're building autonomy—but they might be interpreting it as neglect.

This is where perception and pedagogy collide.

I’ve written about similarities and differences between practice coaching and match coaching. See here and here. In matches, athletes often want a strong, present voice. In training, we can loosen that voice to foster more autonomy. But if you flip that script too fast—light touch in training, light touch in matches—some players might read it as disengagement. To me, it’s worth directly addressing:

In the match, I’m always on your side. We’re all in it together to overcome the challenges the other team throws at us. But at practice, sometimes I need to be the challenge for you to overcome. So if I’m not holding your hand at practice, it’s because that’s the time for you to build your problem-solving skills.

This is where relationship-building becomes essential. In Coaching Athletes to Be Their Best, I talked about how this framework lets us build relationships that are supportive without capping player autonomy. By using tools like Affirmations you help players see that you recognize their strengths and you’re there to support them. Over time, many players will not want the coach to be a crutch but a partner in their development.

Ghost Coaches

Sometimes, the most powerful coaching in your gym isn’t coming from you. It’s coming from an old coach who isn’t even in the building.

This shows up most often in technical self-talk:

Get your elbow up! We have to talk! Use your legs! Move your feet!

You might not say those phrases once all season—but if a player has been hearing them for years, they’ve likely internalized them. Now, even in your environment, they’re still being “coached” by someone else.

This is where Check For Understanding becomes a crucial.

Not just:

“Did you understand what I said?”

(every player will just nod and say yes)

But:

What are you thinking when you do that skill?
What are you trying to feel or accomplish there?
What are you telling yourself before the rep?

The answers to these questions reveal mental models—and you can’t coach athletes effectively until you understand the models they’re already using. If a player has a strongly-held mental model that tells him that “a good defender is always moving his feet,” he’s going to be self-coaching himself on that all the time, even if you’re not. Here’s where I like to use the What Got You Here Won’t Get You There idea.

Hey, that’s great that a previous coach helped you with that. That was valuable to get you here. But now, to get to the next level, some things need to change.

Sometimes that means using more Direct Instruction. You may need to give athletes new mental anchors. Once those anchors are in place, you can shift toward exploration. But without those reference points, athletes may default to old habits that don’t match your current approach.

Reframing “Reps” as Rewiring

Let’s say a player has 5 years of experience being coached in a certain way. They show up in your gym, and you expect them to immediately thrive in a different model. That’s not fair—or realistic. You’re not just giving them new information. You’re helping them replace old instincts.

And just like with movement patterns, belief patterns take time to change. You need reps. You need variability. You need moments of success and moments of friction. Your gym environment must be built to accommodate adaptation—not just assume it.

The DDCDD model is useful for this. It helps separate a Discussion, which generally takes place apart from the immediate moment of execution and can be super-technical, super-internal, etc from a Cue, which should be succinct, external, and focus more on problem-solving than internal technique.

Loaded Files Not Blank Slates

Think of your athletes not as clean hard drives, but as laptops already full of software. Some of it’s useful, some of it’s outdated, and some of it’s malware. Your job isn’t to wipe the drive—it’s to identify what’s running in the background and decide what needs replacing.¹

Let me know what kind of internal models you’ve uncovered in your athletes. How many of you find yourself arguing with a coach from three years ago who isn’t even in the gym anymore? What are your strategies fo replacing old ideas with new ones? Drop a note in the comments and let me know.

1. ChatGPT came up with that metaphor. It’s pretty good so I left it in.