The focus of Cricket Coaching is effective learning, the faster our players learn the closer they move toward achieving their individual and team goals.
How Brains Really Learn
Lets refresh how brains really learn, they are connection machines, they wire together absolutely every experience that comes into them, to make neural maps.
They are Goal Seeking Mechanisms, the mind chooses goals and hands them over to the brain to help achieve them.
As cricket coaches we are seeking to help our players and teams to develop new, better neural maps to play better cricket and to be happier, more effective people.
If they are playing from old ineffective ‘cricket maps’ they will keep going to the same destination, called ‘inferior performance’.
We assist our players to choose challenging goals and help them plan and prepare to achieve them.
In doing this and we are creating new maps which are loading up the right mental ‘software’ for cricket performance.
We plan the learning journey for our players and teams so that they can embed quality learning from structured training.
In training we help their brains to learn quickly and effectively through simulating and rehearsing what they must do in game time.
We do this until it is automated in the cricket players subconscious mind.
A key question for us is ‘Who’s Brain is doing the Thinking ? when we coach.
Engage the Players Brain
The first thing we do in coaching is to make sure that we engage our players in their own learning process, that they actively participate.
How do we do this ?
We ask them questions …… intelligent questions that assist them in paying attention to the right thing with the right intention, at the right time.
This allows the cricket player and the team to use their own brains to create the right ‘connections’ and ‘wiring’ about situations on the cricket field.
They then create their own solutions which they have thought through and practiced over and over, this allows the solution to come up to consciousness and operate on automatic.
The opposite of this is to be telling them what to do all the time, they then don’t have to think, we as cricket coaches are doing the thinking for them.
They end up thinking with the coaches brain and not their own brain.
Makes for slow learning and weak players.
We as Coaches give them power over their own decision making, it allows them to take responsibility and accountability for their own performance.
The wiring that is taking place in their brain, about their game, belongs to them, they are generating it.
Where does this matter most ?
In the middle, when the player or the team are under ‘pressure’, they need answers to the questions that the game and the opposition are asking them.
When they go inside to their own mental and physical resources they are playing from a place of personal power, the solutions have been self generated and are overlearnt.
Allowing them to respond automatically to the games’ challenges.
What are the Key Coaching Tools ?
Questions are our primary cricket coaching tools.
What? How ? Where? When? Who? Which?
‘Why’ is an incredibly powerful tool, it needs to be asked in the right context though, it is a great question to tap into sources of motivation for the player.
Danger, Danger, Danger
Beware of using the ‘Why’ question to ask players to justify their performance, it takes them into a defensive part of the brain which is unresourceful and closes down the opportunity for learning.
Giving Permission to Learn
Giving permission to learn means acknowledging that the player and team will fail whilst they learn.
Which means to be off track to get on track.
Which means fall over, get up, fall over, get up , fall over , get up.
This is learning.
Our focus as cricket coaches is on performance, what we can learn and how we can put it to use in helping our cricket players play better, next time.
Keeping our focus on performance allows us to keep our emotions and agendas out of our coaching, we can then give feedback to our players based on the ‘facts’ of their performance rather than our perceptions.
About Richard Pybus
I'm Richard Pybus, I've coached Pakistan, Bangladesh, Middlesex, Titans and the Cape Cobras in South Africa and the goal of this site is to help you to play winning cricket.