Please read the following actual email from a dear friend, whose daughter plays volleyball. The names have been changed, and some sentences deleted, but none added/created by me, to make it be more of a generic version of what I saw at USA Volleyball on a weekly basis:

My daughter is still into VB. She leaves on Saturday for our national season ending event. This week she’s spending mornings at a VB class. A summer favorite. She’s learned so much this club season from coach, but it wasn’t always an easy time. He tends to yell and scowl when the girls make mistakes, and frankly the girls had never had a coach like that. He’s used to coaching the older teams, and his way did not work with 13-year-olds. His yelling made them “shut down” and they were so scared to make mistakes that they stopped being aggressive, didn’t want to go to practice, played “scared.” He eventually toned it down, and the girls learned (with parent encouragement) to speak up when they felt uncomfortable or didn’t understand something. I wanted my daughter to learn that she didn’t have to be passive about things. The team eventually got stronger by banding together and encouraging each other, and the girls learned to be a little more thick skinned about his comments. They don’t like him, but they know he taught them a lot, as is evidenced by their amazing wins at the end of the season.

My daughter still sets, but is more comfortable at outside hitter. She says there’s less pressure on her when she doesn’t set… and thus less chance for coach to yell at her. She has the talent to be setter, but I don’t know if she has the mental toughness, or maybe she’ll develop the mental toughness with another coach.

So, I am reading that we have:
A coach the kids do not like; Kids who have to be thick skinned to be able to learn from a teacher; Athletes afraid to make mistakes. A talented athlete who does not want to take the key role of setting due to a coach yelling.

How does this happen in sport? How does such passion and time commitment on behalf of the kids, result in such negativity? Coaches who yell must be thinking that by doing such to help it will HELP the team succeed. That old school mentality results in what was read above, athletes who do not like the coach and who are afraid to push the envelope for fear of an error. Anson Dorrance, in Training Soccer Champions, subtitles one chapter with this statement. “If you have to yell at them from the sidelines, you haven’t coached them, coaching is about effect.”

The MOST important task of every coach, is to empower his or her athletes, giving them a better and better understanding of the game, while teaching them to enthusiastically move along past every mistake. Yelling does not empower athletes. A good coach uses the principles of good teaching, as they are a teacher first. If yelling (and its cousin “physical punishment, like push-ups and wind sprints) was such a principle, you would have first grade teachers yelling at you after you spelled “CAT” wrong, or biology teachers screaming at you, or making you drop and give them 20, after you dissected the frog incorrectly, “so you can learn faster.” I think you know if those teachers did such, the human principal would be in there that same day, to get that teacher back on track with the right way to teach. Yet sadly, coaches somehow think when they cross into the gym/field, that good teaching means yelling and physical punishment.

Remember, the kids play the game, not the coach. Learning from you, becoming your assistant coaches in practice, coaching themselves when you are not looking for you are only one person helping in a field of play of a dozen kids usually. They then can better coach themselves during the match, as they should. One of the “technique movements” we need to eliminate from each skill is that head twisting (and heart wrenching) look to the bench/coach after an error. That shows kids who are not empowered to problem solve themselves, thinking instead that the answers do not come from within, but from the outside, from someone else. Consider these words from Gandhi back in 1931.

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

You see, the best learning comes when there is no fear of mistakes. Each player will be asked to do things they have never done before, and thus, there will be lots of mistakes. Ignore them and focus on what is important, when they do it correctly or much closer to the intended goal. To quote Stephen Glenn, “Mistakes are wonderful way to learn,” or as he writes it ‘Misteaks arer a wunnerful way to lern.’

When the greats in other disciplines have problems, what is done is support is brought in. Have you ever seen musicians in a symphony making errors get out of their seat to drop and do 20 push-ups? When Pavarotti has problems singing what do they do? They bring in more help with vocal coaches, but they do not yell at him or make him do sit-ups. Production grows on an assembly line through cooperation and empowerment of the workers, including profit sharing plans. Gone are the screaming tyrant managers, and none of the workers are pulled off task to do physical exercises “so they learn.” The National Federation of State High School’s (NFSHS) Cynthia Doyle states “ Although rare, coaches, for example, have been known to disrespectfully address their own players, and offense that now can be penalized.” For 12.2.7f has been changed to state that unsportsmanlike conduct includes disrespectfully addressing, baiting, or taunting anyone involved in the contest, not only the opponent.

All your players can follow the Olympic motto of Swifter, Higher, Stronger. Please note that this is a personal motto, one pushing each athlete to be their personal best. The motto is not Swiftest, Highest, Strongest.

Another point about using fear/yelling is that you need to keep escalating to make it work over time. How much louder can you yell in a season? It would be better to take a tip from Joop Alberda, the 1996 Olympic gold medal winning volleyball coach of the Dutch men’s team, who, like Lang Ping, is humanistic, and empowering of his players. He told his team he would only get angry with them once a year…and left it at that. Those players knew he would be pushing them and guiding them without berating them or going off on tirades. He also did not have to get angry at all in some years.

Sure, it is frustrating to see your kids learning, through mistakes. However, ask yourself a simple question…”Are they making these mistakes on purpose?” If a player is, that means you have other issues to deal with well beyond the error. If not, why would you get upset with them?

It might be helpful to see the three stages of coaching from a different perspective.

The coach’s practice time. CAP Courses, clinics, summer camp talks late into the night with other coaches sharing ideas and being innovative, mulling around new thoughts and ideas.

The coach’s matches that must be won. The players’ practices and training.

The coach’s “vacation” time. The actual match as the players must show what they have learned/can do. A coach gets to play with rotations/tactics, call two time outs, and a few subs…a comparative vacation…so relax, have fun, and enjoy the PLAYING of the game, not the anger, frustration, yelling of the game.