Often times coaches are yelling at athletes to get off of social media while training, stop texting their friends and to stop worrying about what is going on in virtual world. As I have progressed as a business person and as I have spent hours coaching at international and national competitions, there is something I have noticed. Coaches tend to be on their phones just as much as athletes.
How can we get coaches to be present? The excuse is traditionally that they are looking at a program, they are filming for social media posts later and they are trying to make footage to promote their clubs or athletes. That is all well and good but it needs to be acknowledged that being present is imperative as a coach. Figure out the athletes program before the workout OR have it up on the computer so the coach knows what the day’s programming looks like without checking the cell phone.
As a coach this is something I have struggled with myself. I have put my phone down for 2-3 hours, only to pick it up and see that I have over 400+ texts, emails and voice messages on my Voxer APP. This was something of tremendous concern for me. How did I alleviate this issue? I stopped responding and holding conversations during training time! I try to leave my phone alone during the meat of the training session, I use my athletes phones to film and then send the videos to myself. All of these things are quick fixes to create a coach that is more present for their athlete’s training session! If the coach is not “present” during the session then the athlete certainly will not be present.