What motivates… inspires… drives your athletes ?
Of course, I cannot answer that question for you…. but I can share a few things that I have learned about motivation.
- There is no “cookie cutter” approach… every athlete is different.
- There is no “magic bullet”… it often is a variety and an accumulation of things.
- What works one year, may not the next… every team is different.
- You have to develop a relationship with your athletes and team to find out what their “hot button” is.
- Every athlete has a story… a set of circumstances that make them unique.
And I was made keenly aware of one more things this past week…
Sometimes the best motivation happens daily… it is often tied to the mundane and is in the minutia.
A discussion broke out on Facebook the last couple of weeks among a group of former student-athletes that I had the honor of teaching and coaching 30 years ago in Osceola, Missouri.
It started with a Throwback Thursday photo (thanks Brandon Shelby) showing the cover of our playbook from 1986.
A rapid exchange of posts followed…
More pictures of old playbooks
Men recalling names of plays in the playbook (Gambler, Kelly)
A picture of the football we used (USFL ball) that our QB (Paul Carney) had saved.
And an email to me that included a digital copy of the entire playbook! (Thank you Ryan Self)
I have written about the value of a playbook as a teaching tool MANY times (The Value of a Playbook, The Playbook is dead… Long Live the Playbook, Flipping the Practice Field) but the playbook as motivation?
YES… it is clear to me that it was important to this group.
We were the “Osceola Air Force”… it was our identity.
We were a 1A school… but I wanted our student-athletes to think bigger… I wanted them to have pride in everything we said and did.
It was at the height of the USFL… the Houston Gamblers and Jim Kelly… we were running a “spread offense” in 1986 using “run and shoot” concepts.
- The mundane… a playbook.
- The minutia… the name of a play.
- The daily… the type of football we used in practice and games.
And 30 years later these men (and their sons and daughters) still talk about it… they have saved their playbooks, and their old beat up football.
It is clear that this stuff was important to them… it helped motivate them.
It all matters… It has a cumulative effect.
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Remember – You Can Do More… your brain is lying to you…. Don’t Believe It!
Jeff Floyd – youcandomore1@yahoo.com