DO YOUR ATHLETES EVEN NEED YOU?

A player who waits for you to hand them the answer isn't being coachable, they're being dependent. The fastest development happens once they stop waiting, and that shift starts with you deciding to be needed less, not more.

Watch a new player arrive in your programme and you'll usually see the same thing: every decision routed through you. What do I do here? Is this right? What would you do? It reads as respect. It's usually just habit, built by years of being told exactly what to do and rewarded for doing it well.

The problem is that habit caps how far they can go. A player who can only execute what you've told them plays exactly as well as your instructions are good, and no better. The players who break through are the ones who stop waiting.

The habit you're accidentally reinforcing

Every time a player asks a question you could have let them work out, and you answer it, you've confirmed that the fastest route to a solution runs through you. It feels helpful in the moment. Over a season, it trains dependency instead of judgement.

"You're looking at the behaviors first. You're looking at the software, because you know when that's down, we're never going to get the people committing the hard yards."

Software before hardware: the fitness, the tactics, the technical work all sit on top of whether a player will actually own their own decisions under pressure. Skip that layer and you're building on sand.

Self, then peers, then coach

A simple sequence worth teaching explicitly: before a player brings a problem to you, they should try to solve it themselves. If they can't, the next stop is a teammate, not the sideline. Only after both of those should the question land with you.

• Ask "what have you tried?" before you answer anything
• When a player brings you a problem, ask who else on the team they've asked first
• Notice and name it out loud when a player solves something without you
• Resist the urge to fill a silence with an answer, let them sit in it

This isn't about withholding help. It's about making sure help isn't the automatic first move.

The players who push back are usually the ones who improve most

There's a version of "coachable" that actually means compliant, and it's not the same thing. The players who take an instruction, test it, and decide for themselves whether it's working tend to develop faster than the ones who simply comply. Trusting an instruction less, not more, is often the sign of a player who's about to outgrow what you're giving them, and that's a good problem to have.

"I took everything a coach told me with a grain of salt. Never be limited with, you know, the coach said I can do this. No, I can do a lot more than that."

If every player in your programme takes your word as final, you've built a ceiling. If some of them push back, test it, and go further, you've built a floor.

Try this in your next session

• Pick one moment this week where you'd normally jump in with the answer, and wait instead
• Ask yourself honestly: is this player dependent on me, or developing because of me?
• Build in a habit where players check with each other before they check with you
• Celebrate the moments a player solves something without you, as visibly as you'd celebrate a result

The goal isn't to be needed less because you've stopped caring. It's to be needed less because they've grown enough not to need you as much. That's the job working.