Over the past several weeks I have had the opportunity to talk with quite a few performance coaches regarding testing and identyfying talent.
This has been an especially hot topic that comes up every year about this time due to the NFL Combine. And why should we test you may ask? Well the primary reason is to identify the athletes physical strengths and weaknesses.
After testing and evaluation is completed usually a common scenario goes something like this:
"Johnny let's sit down and go through your testing results. Out of these 6-8 tests here is where you stand, overall you performed very well. In fact, your agility times were one of the fastest yet!" Okay you get the idea from here.
The Coaching Trap
Now here is what's crazy, practically 100% of the time coaches will 'tell' the athlete what their strength is based on their testing results. However, this should not always be the case. What if the athlete simply just had a bad day? What if the athlete was not allowed to have a warm-up?
The point is, as coaches we need to be careful not to place too much emphasis on testing in order to determine an athlete's strengths. In fact, how about trying the following:
Before actually testing an athlete ask him or her what they think their own strengths are! Now there's a novel idea.
In my experience the majority of young athletes will just give you a blank face followed by wanting to ask what their choices are. They don't even know their own strengths! (another post coming)
Then there are a few who can answer you immediately with one or two specific areas.
Ask Before You Tell
The take home message is ask your athlete's what they think their own strengths are before telling them. Doing exercises such as this will encourage self-reflection which rarely occurs in young athletes.
One of the first principles that my athletes are taught is to 'know your own body'!
Try this with your athletes and I would love to hear some their responses as well as your thoughts!
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