Welcome everyone to another episode of snap Ray’s live we’ve been working with leaders and legends all across the country during the corona virus to try and expand the knowledge and the opportunity and the resources to all of our customers and perspectives people that we work with so that we can grow
Sport and and teams across the country and we’ve had leaders and legends and occasionally we’ve had both join us and that’s what we have today and miss Val valorie Kondos field and you know we can’t thank you enough for taking some time to share some of your wisdom and
Insights miss Val I am so excited to be here thank you so much for the invite yeah of course and so we we fundraise for teams groups and clubs and we’ve raised over 350 million dollars since we started in 2014 and we continue to help gymnastics programs across the country I
See some Washingtonians I saw the Stephanie gun bill I’ve seen Centennial High School in Nevada represented so we’ve got a diverse smattering attendees coaches and administrators and so it’s fun to have them privy to to what we’re doing here today and Miss Val you you talked about how you just taught a
Course about phenomenal coaching and leadership at at the collegiate level and you said it was a ton of fun and so I guess I want to get started on that and just have you kind of talk about the overarching philosophies that you talked about and how you enter weave you know
What you teach and what you see with some of the other great coaches and mentors in the athletic state thank you so much I was so excited when UCLA asked me to teach this course because I retired last junior year now and the reason why I retired was I’m just so
Passionate about continuing the conversation of redefining success and is all winning success and the fact that I feel like in every venture in life that there’s a win at all cost culture that most of us have adhered i we certainly saw it in the United States gymnastics Federation with what
Happened with you know the there Larry Nasser scandal and how he was able that pedophile was able to have so much access to so many young women it was because all we cared about was winning and medals and that really got me started with this you know this isn’t
Right you know this we have got so much damage that’s being done to our youth mentally emotionally and physically that comes from coaches and parents leaders that adhere to a win at all cost culture and they’re not will willing to accept the responsibility for the collateral
Damage that comes from this so I retired and I go out and talk to whomever will listen to me and that’s why getting back to a question I was really excited when UCLA said let’s let’s have you teach a course on transformative coaching and let’s studying the philosophies of
Coaches and leaders that have been that have one not been I mean you can argue if they’ve been successful or not but have one and so we studied Phil Jackson we studied Bobby Knight we say Pat Summitt Belichick and Saban we studied me we say obviously coach wooden and it
Was so interesting to see the commonalities amongst all these coaches you know the commonalities our attention to detail unbelievable structure within their programs unwavering commitment to their moral standards and to their foundation of their programs even Bobby Knight like unwavering but those commonalities are what allowed them to have his tremendous
Success now my question that I post the students was okay it wasn’t the principles they set forth it was how they went about executing the chuckles and that’s where you get the difference between someone who’s a yell or a screamer a cheer throw or a choker like Bobby Knight and someone who is
More Zen like Phil Jackson it was fascinating you you mentioned you know is all winning success and I know that you’ve been speaking on that a lot and so you’ve been on national morning shows and TED Talks and even speaking with human resources namely and and plenty of
Other companies and you know recently you know the description of success that I personally have arrived at it’s really just achieving the best possible expression of myself and and so that is you know being the most conscientious thoughtful considerate invested person that way and that’s a general
Description but I guess as you dive into that question and you explore it through your class and through your conversation what is the answer to the question that you pose is all winning success no right but what how do you define it what does success look like to you in your
Description success to me and let me just say your six definition of success is literally what coach wouldn’t coined as his definition you’re just you like using the words that that resonate with you more coach wouldn’t his definition of success success is peace of mind and knowing that you’ve done your best is
Really what kicked me off into figuring out how I wanted a coach and why I was coaching and so through the years and through thinking about this over and over and over again what is success success truly is I believe in what you said and what Coach wooden has said is
Being able to go to bed at the end of the night have some downtime reassess my day go through my little checklist was I honest was I hard-working did I was I considerate was I kind was I true to myself did I make excuses or not and if
I could check off the boxes were positive then I had had a successful day and if I can chop up chocolate more successful days like that during the course of the year then I’m having a successful year and assess a successful season my definition of
Success as a coach as a leader is was it became so clear to me early on in my coaching that I believe this sport is a masterclass in teaching really really really tough life lessons that you don’t learn in the classroom and so I was gonna utilize the time that I had with
Our student-athletes to develop these young women into champions in life that we’re gonna go out in the world and make the world a better place and if I did that well enough and I could recruit talent I was at UCLA I could recruit talent then that champion mentality
Would transfer to competition floor and we would win and it did and that has given me a platform to be able to go out and speak to this obviously I would not beginning the speaking offers you probably wouldn’t be asking me on this this platform had I not won seven
National championships so the winning is what gets people attention but then I get to come through and give them a curve ball and say I never focused on winning ever I focused on the billable superheroes for sport well I’m going to throw you a curveball here because I I’m
Hearing the gotowebinar that sees you upside down so I’m going to ask you to invert your camera if you can are you on like a phone or something that you can turn upside down I know this is a um I guess that so am i right side up
I think that’ll fix it we we’ve gotten a couple of people saying it so if you don’t mind that that works for me I don’t know if it’ll stay like this though okay how’s that that’s great Kerry Kerry Martin from the Northwest I believe the saying that she she
Appreciated your insight she loves what you had to say so it’s something that’s actionable for people and so I’m gonna go back or the success and before the winning and before turning your your athletes into superheroes and something that was pretty phenomenal to me was the fact that you don’t have a gymnastic
Background at all but you were tasked with leading the UCLA gymnastics program in the early 90s and how does someone get honored with that challenge that opportunity without having a gymnastics background I know you are so strong in choreography but they had to see something in you even though you were
Kind of win at all costs initially and you documented that in detail of that so maybe if you can get a surprise of how things went from where they were at where they are now first of all I’m cracking up because you told me to turn
My I’m on my iPad to turn around cuz I was upside down and one thing I’d pull is I’ve never gone upside down like I would never a gymnast I’ve never done you’re like you’re upside down I was like finally I was congratulations okay so I was a ballet dancer choreographer
When I I was asked to be the head coach after I’d been there for seven years as the dance coach by dr. Judy Holland who was one of our athletic administrators athletic directors and she is the godmother of title nine in sports in the NCAA and she really hired she liked to
Hire women obviously title nine but she hired people that she saw the character in that she wanted to lead the program versus their abilities and so when she asked me to be the head coach and I laughed in her face I said you remember I don’t know the first thing about
Gymnastics and she told me she says I like how you are firm but you’re compassionate with the student-athletes and I trust shall pay the rest out and that was all I got so I made the biggest mistake of my career and I feel this is a huge mistake that so many people make
Now is especially with social media out there and comparing ourselves we live in a world of comparisons and I when I my first few years as a head coach I just mimicked other head coaches that have been successful I didn’t I had no foundation I had no culture ideal culture that I
Wanted to implement I just copied other coaches that had been successful and it was horrible and literally JT as we were talking to the beginning I happened upon coach woman’s definition of success about three years into my coaching career where we were horrible our team was like horrible I was horrible and his
Definition says piece of successes peace of mind and knowing you have done your best and I had this aha moment I was like I had been by mimicking other people I couldn’t try to be somebody else and it was so clear to me that in life whenever you try to be somebody
Else you will always be a second-rate then you will never be as good at them at being them as they were like even if I tried to mimic coach wooden I would have always been a second-rate John Wooden and the worst thing that happens is it’s ipols you from really becoming
The best you that you can be so I stopped me making other people I went back to my office and I thought what the heck do I bring to the table I had 17 years of classical ballet training okay how am I gonna figure out this job and
Well first of all hire good people hire assistant coaches that know everything you don’t know how to do which was the gymnastics part but there’s a big part of sport that I did learn through through the theater and that was how to prepare myself physically mentally emotionally so that when I was standing
In the wings I was calm I was confident and I was excited to get on stage and no joke but in the wings there were bucket it’s where some of the dancers would throw up before they would go on stage because they were so nervous and then I
Didn’t get that I was like why are you throwing up this is the fun part this is the celebration of all your hard work so when I looked at the athletes I was coaching their metaphor for standing in the wings is standing there at attention waiting for the judge to salute them to
Go up in the event and when you see athletes a lot of gymnasts they’re like their palms are sweating their mouth is dry they’re they’re taking these deep breaths I was like okay okay I can prepare them for that moment as well if not better than any other coach in the
Country so along that time as well I heard something that said never outsource your in your competencies and I thought okay I’m going to outsource my in competencies which happened to be all the gymnastics part but I would I made sure not to outsource what I was competent at and that really started
This trajectory of people saying how unorthodox I was in my coaching which to this day they say and I’ll never forget I had a senior a few years later said to me miss Val you finally became a leader worth following and I was like okay and
She says because you’re not trying to be anybody else so even when you screw up and make mistakes and you sincerely apologize to us we know your intention is coming from an authentic place and not from something you read in a book or someone you’re trying to mimic well you
Talked a lot in there about preparing athletes physically mentally emotionally and and we’ve got a question from somebody revolving around that in coronavirus and I’ll start by saying I guess that I’ve seen how much fun a lot of your athletes have like eight 100 she and some of the routines and the
Exercises that I don’t know if anyone can rival that I know Bev Blackie at the University of Michigan and and her her gymnast do a great job too but I mean you you’ve got it in space so the question is revolving around kind of maximizing the athletes during
Coronavirus you know they’ve been on pause for months and so the specific question from Alexandria she asked do you have any insider recommendations for coaches to help motivate and build confidence and athletes who have been away from their sports similarly any recommendations to build a sense of team
Among teammates and I couldn’t think of a better person to answer this question as it relates to gymnastics income competition than you is that question referring to when they’re coming back do you know yeah I think re-acclimating from the time away and how you build that camaraderie and the confidence and
And kind of present that maybe first of all all the research that I have done and everything that I’ve read and every panel I’ve been on says the same thing that especially girls girls do sports one one big reason is because they like to be with the friends they like the
Social aspect of it and I have spoken with a few coaches from gyms that have recently opened up have been opened up for a few weeks and they say how important it is to give the athletes time to just sit around and giggle and talk and do whatever they do to
Reconnect socially secondly is to to go just let everybody know we’re on the same page and is nauseating and when Dane is this can be we’re gonna go back to the basics and we’re starting with basics we’re starting with really strong conditioning program and you know athletes in particular but all humans I
Believe have a competitiveness in us we are born with some some type of competitiveness and so it’s important to set goals set a weekly goal with your team break it down into daily goals reiterate what those are every day and make them fun challenges and then celebrate those challenges celebrate the
Small victories so that we can get back and those competitive juices can start working again and and celebrate it and and break your team – – like we every single day would break up our team into blue versus gold and as silly as the challenge was it didn’t
Have to be anything really specific to our sport but a silly little challenge and you see how comes their competitiveness just like nice and then they go like time and that’s when you start building that team camaraderie especially the sport like gymnastics which is almost you know it’s it’s
Really an individual sport so I always thought it was really important to ignite that those competitive juices the beginning of practice with I’m talking like silly little games that they just totally bought into yeah I love that and I think that that’s awesome I I want to
Encourage our attendees to be able to submit questions so we’ve got our GoToWebinar control panel where you can submit questions here and definitely want to continue to ask them throughout so we had some hats beforehand oh yes miss Val is you’ve got athletes that are coming back in their sport let’s
Remember why they started to do the sport in the first place because it was fun and so I think coaches that are gonna bring their athletes in and feel that they have to make up all this time by being so rigid and stringent and strategic with every little moment or I
Think they’re missing the big picture how did that work with Kaylin Ohashi when you tried to be strict and stringent and you know coaching her hard that worked well um she looked me in the eye I think she did this with her head and said I just want you to know that
Everything you told me to do they do the exact opposite I was like oh and in my mind I’m going okay challenge accepted got it but you know I the last winter Olympics when the Netherlands took home so many medals they were interviewing I’m sure many of you know exactly what
I’m about to say they interviewed the director of their Olympic Committee and he said one reason why their athletes do so well is because they’ve never lost the sense of fun for what they’re doing and in the Netherlands you don’t compete on a team
Or like a Travel squad for a win for a score for a championship until you’re 13 and so kids grow up simply doing the sport because they love it and they feel that that is what has stayed with their mature athletes all those years and so how do you cultivate that fun and
Enthusiasm at the highest level because it seems like a challenge so I played college football I played for coach Harbaugh and it was you know better tomorrow than today you know better today than yesterday just like keep working out work out tough out physical out everything right
And it’s certainly a sport with a lot of testosterone and bravado but how do you integrate that that’s fun and I know you talked about the little challenges but you know in a sport like gymnastics where you’re trying to cultivate the peak expression of themselves athletically while understanding the
Challenges of the growing maturing you know young athlete how did you go about that and doing that basically better than anyone else ever has in your sport Wow I feel it comes through that and with the demeanor of the head coach because obviously a lot of people that the
Haters will say that I was able to win because I had Talent okay well we all know that you don’t win just cause you have talent right that’s that’s a rule that is the fact what exactly you know um so but I’ve always felt that we’re all basically doing the same stuff we’re
All doing the same amount of work we’re all doing the same conditioning you know all the teams they’re all putting in the same hours in the same reps it’s how that instruction is being disseminated to the student-athletes and is it like is it we’ve seen the coaches
That are just here and they coach from the ego and their dictators and the athletes are robots the athletes are little commodities for their chess game they’re playing you know versus the coaches that are in it with them and are excited about it and bring about ok guys listen
Today we’re gonna get 1% better this is how we’re gonna 1% it better this is what it’s going to look like we’re in this together and and working together as a team and I go into this in my TED talk quite a bit that there is simply a difference
Whenever you’re leading another human being your parenting coaching teaching leading whenever you are helping another human being better than themselves you can come about from dictating or you can come about it from motivating and motivating someone takes much longer then dictating and barking orders does
But I mean just think about the times in your life that you’ve truly been motivated to make a change in something that motivation is deep-rooted you understand and you are embracing the reason why you want to do this and the effects are long-lasting versus dictating change to an athlete which
That change only lasts that long you know if you’re if I’m telling the student athlete that she’s got to get her legs straight on her hanging from the bar her leg lifts from the bars get your legs straight punch toes I can bark orders all day long and she’ll do it
Because I told her to but if I can explain to her how getting her legs straighten point her feet is gonna translate to her gymnastics skills being easier and better therefore her score is gonna be better then she will have the motivation to want to do that on her own
Do you ever have the hankering to go to a practice or get back involved in coaching or what does that look like because sounds like you’ve learned this master class and got this wisdom and you’re teaching it certainly to to others as a teacher at UCLA in your your coaching
Class but do you ever get back out there do you envision you know rien gauging either maybe the US gymnastics community or UCLA gymnastics what does the future look like for you because you still have all of this great wisdom to share and provide and to lend to others okay so as
Crazy as it sounds someone asked me if I would ever get back into coaching again nice like yeah but I’m gonna coach a different sport I want another challenge I want to be able to learn and coach and figure out how to motivate athletes in a different sport
What would be your preferred sport I don’t know if you know this I don’t know if they pulled this up in my bio or not but three years ago when coach Mora was still at UCLA and they had their spring game and it was blue versus white and he
Had our women’s soccer coach coached the blue team and I coached the white team and I was so into it and yes we won so I want to know in football you know is is all winning success you know in that instance we’re gonna chalk that one up to this value yes absolutely
I like I would be remiss if I didn’t mention John Wooden and something that we tell our people who work with you know our teams groups and clubs especially during coronaviruses like you want to be sensitive to the conditions of the club but you want to help them
Right and sometimes you just have to ask and you have to reach out and so in your conversations trying to get John Wooden to speak with you and interact with you you try to go through your husband who was a football coach and no new coach
Wooden and so you said hey I’d like to invite him over for dinner and your husband’s like hey yeah I don’t know he probably gets a lot of invitations and everything and and you you just kept asking you just kept asking and then finally he said yes and would you mind
Maybe detailing how that night went because it sounded like it was pretty eventful leading you to eventually kicking him out of your home please share if you would it’s true and I have a whole section in my book called the art of the ask because quite
Often I’m sure you get it as well when sometimes people ask me they’re just downright annoying and like even if I want to do it I’m like I do it because you’re just annoying so there’s an art form to asking and my biggest ask came in 1982 when I was dancing professional
In ballet and I heard you sell you needed a dance coach for their gymnastics team and without any hesitation I picked up the phone I called the head coach daven my credentials and they offered me a full scholarship to go to UCLA so my entire career adult career happened because I
Was not afraid to pick up the phone and make the ask and I remember thinking you know what the worst thing they can say is no I’m not gonna take that personally it’s like no you suck they just say no and so the next big ask came when I
Asked my husband to call coach wooden because my husband was our defensive coordinator he knew coach wooden I had never met coach wooden and I was like why not let’s just ask him and I told Bobby I said my husband grew up sharecropping in Texas coach wooden grew up farming in Martinsville Indiana
You guys can talk about farming all night long you know maybe he would welcome it something different and I did not ask my husband but I nagged him for about three weeks straight did you did you call coach wooden did you call coach mean and I don’t know when it was to
Shut me up or cuz he finally saw the wisdom in making me ask but he did call coach and he did say what you said you know coach I I’m married and our women’s gymnastics coach and we would love to invite you over for dinner but we know
How many invitations you get every night and how full your calendar is and how many obligations you have and coach wooden said Bobby I don’t mean to interrupt you but are you asking me over for dinner or are you giving me all the reasons that I
Shouldn’t come and we Bobby said no no please come and so coach comes to dinner was 5:30 because he was 88 I figured that was the time octogenarians eat and he stayed till 11:30 and I told Barbara farming story this is the majority of the time and yes I think I’m learning a
Few people on planet Earth as ever kicked coach wouldn’t narrow their home I had to get up really early I was like come on coach but that simple ask and and not asking something of him but asking him to come join us in our home
And not have to sign books and not have to give a speech and not have to meet somebody else it was just an authentic would love to get you know you coach wooden that one ask started the relationship that my husband and I had with with coach and his family until the
Day he died and we were we were like family we spent many many many many days occasions together and I mean how did that happen like how did a ballerina end up getting the greatest mentor in the planet the desert mentor yeah well I I guess I’m gonna I’ll ask for just a
Little bit more insight there you at the time were successful and obviously there was a the UCLA fraternity sorority Brotherhood sisterhood and and so what did you take away from that interaction with Coach wooden that you founded the most transformative or what didn’t what did he teach you that you didn’t already
Know because you strike me very much as someone who’s a lifelong learner and so what what characteristics did he you know did he reinforce or what thoughts did he create inside of your mind that you felt really made you better as a coach or better as a human I guess it’s
A really broad you know why was coach wooden so great for you personally no but that’s a great question because it’s it’s a very simple answer but when you think about it it’s massively transformative and that is I knew coach wooden his philosophies I know I knew
His moral ethical code his character I knew that he was extremely Christian that he grew up with a Bible that he was an English major I knew he loved poetry I knew that he adhered to the commandments do unto others as you wish them to do unto you I knew that he was
Raised with a very very strong moral code but he was also in the sport of athletics he also won ten championships in twelve years you know how do you do that maintaining this ethical moral code and being around him is in every like so many different areas where I was eating
Over at his house for dinner or taking him to speak in front of ten thousands of people are taking the Rose Bowl football basketball whatever it was coach wooden was always the same and whether it was just coach and I speaking for him speaking like I said in front of
Masses amounts of people he was always kind he was always humorous he never ever said a disparaging word about anyone coach was exactly what you read and heard about him was who he was even in his personal private time and that really resonated with me because I you
Know I grew up onstage and so when I would drive into the parking lot to go to a gymnastics meet I literally would sit my car take deep breath and go okay Showtime here we go and I would turn on the lights and I would become this bigger-than-life version of me and then
After the event after the meet I’d get in the car and I come home and I would just collapse and my husband said to me one time he goes you know I understand that it’s it’s the exhaustion that comes from being in a game or being in an
Event or having to be on all the time he said but you’re up here you’re so up here and you’re this magnetic personality and when you get home it just dies and he goes and I get nothing of that and I was like yeah why do I do that
What why do I have to be two different people and I that’s when I started studying coach Whitney it was like I just be me just be normal I don’t have to be way up here just be normal well to that Amber Taurus from Lynnwood High School in Washington is asking a
Little bit about how you stay calm during meets and competitions she said that your energy just radiates when your athletes are between rounds and you can stay so stoic she would love to know how you’re able to give how she would be able to give athletes that type of
Confidence when they’re going just no doubt that they’ll be amazing instead of feeding off of her nervous energy amber that is such a great question thank you for asking that and it’s so important okay first of all you got to know your wife what’s your North Star why are you doing
Your doing I really reinforced every single day I’m developing superheroes champions in life through sport it’s not about winning and losing because if you only focus on winning and losing then all you’re focusing on is bragging rights and your ego being able to say haha we beat you okay sport is much more
Than that then ego and so you have to keep hitting that refresh button on why you’re doing it second of all is I always looked at our competitions as a celebration of all their hard work and so to me it was performance time it was like that’s when
We get to be on stage and you’re gonna make mistakes I mean the thought that you’re gonna have a competition or a game or me and your athletes are not going to make mistakes it’s not gonna happen it’s I I can’t think of one meet where
We just hit 24 for 24 routines lights out and you know coaching you know as an athlete you know as a coach it’s not how many times you fall it’s the intention with which you get up and move forward and so in competition I kept reminding myself that we’re celebrating all of our
Hard work and if I wanted my app okay here we go amber pay attention because I’m going off a spell on you right now if I if you want your athletes to be in that zone of relaxed and calm and joyful and playing together as a team and
You’re sitting back there worried about every little thing or whether you’re gonna win or not they are gonna pick up on your energy and I always felt I was a big fat hypocrite if I allowed myself to get nervous about the outcome of the meet that was being hypocritical because
I coach them to stay in the moment I coached them to stay in what we call our Bruin bubble which is our team like this I coated them up to be loose and have fun and joyful and celebrate it’s a celebratory event so I need to model
That behavior and there were many years that I did not model that behavior and when I started holding myself accountable to it I started having my athletes tell me they were having they felt they were having the best competitions of their lives because they were feeding off of my energy which was
Positive versus nervous energy the pac-12 feature that I saw on you showcased your greatness in this regard in being able to just say the right thing at the right time to project the right energy I thought there was somebody who under performed on a vault and wasn’t sure if they were going to
Perform on the beam later on in the in the competition and you’re like well I’m going to think about it right we’re gonna see you know what the energy looks like and how the team’s coming together and where she’s at in her headspace and then if I remember correctly he put her
On the beam she absolutely crushed it and it’s like there goes miss Val and within all of her awesomeness so I mean that that display for me just said it all and and how do you know when to pull the right levers and how to apply this all this just an emotional
Intelligence that you’ve developed and cultivated through lifelong learning and continual investment in yourself and in your team and then your team always changes so there’s so much to it I guess how are you so good at knowing what to do and what to say at the right times
Especially later on in your career when you were just yet at roll-up I feel that authenticity in the relationship that you have that I chose to develop with each athlete was the base for a lot of the success that we had and as I said
Earlier it takes a long a lot longer to motivate an athlete than it does to dictate to an athlete and that person that you talked about is Tyler Ross who was an Olympic gold medalist and she was on an off day and I remember what you’re talking about so clearly her coming up
To me with just this thing miss Val miss not feeling it today well I don’t believe in it I don’t believe that you’re just it like your talent left you it’s gone today you know I and so it’s just it we had a conversation an honest conversation on a competition floor are
You do you feel ill are you okay no I’m fine okay are you just kind of like feeling a little down yeah I’m fine I said well you know it kind of let’s let’s just see how the meet goes and you certainly have the numbers underneath
You I was talked to the girls about just go to your bank like if you’re not doing well she fell on well then she went to bars the next night you fell on bar bars I was like you don’t have to go in to get more training go to your bank you’ve
Banked thousands of these skills just go pluck one out and if I’m gonna have you on beam just go pluck out on beam routine and I want you to know Kyla if if I ask you to go it’s because I have faith not that you’re going to hit a
Perfect routine but I have full faith that your intention will be honorable to yourself in your team so that’s all I ask and to be a have that honest of a conversation with someone and get an honest response in the heat of the battle think about that that didn’t happen in that moment
Months of variation of trust mm-hmm well so to to speak to your your coaching ambition for coaching football perhaps we do have a question about what you would consider the biggest difference in motivating coaching girls and boys and where’s the overlap so it’s you know it’s not too audacious a question just
You know maybe we’re priming your candidacy for you know eventually coaching UCLA or elsewhere okay thank you I appreciate this uh-huh I do feel that there is a difference between coaching boys and girls I’ve heard from every single coach that his coach both say the exact same thing yet you know
And you tell a girl you tell a guy get in the weight room make your legs stronger so you can be faster he goes okay coach you tell the girl get in the weight room kitchen league’s best the stronger see could be faster and she walks away crying saying my coach said
I’m fat so I heard that story so many times from coaches oh but but I think that we are not I feel that we are doing a disservice to our mail coaches by not addressing the human components of them not just this badass warrior component they grow up wanting to beat the crap
Out of a tree but they are human beings and the fact that they have struggles and and they are not as emotionally strong as they look physically all the time obviously sometimes they are but and I say that because during my tenure at UCLA there were so many times that a male athlete
Would just stop by my office but he’ll pop in it oh she someone that knew one of my girls and that was struggling and that girls would say why don’t you go talk to me spell and so whenever they showed up at my office just to pop in
I knew something was on their mind and every single time I just shut the door and I talked them about everything except their sport and the tears would come and I would say I’m talking like probably at least 10 male athletes over the course of the last 10 years stop by
On their own different sports and I’d say who do you have in your staff that you can do the pop in like this and share this with every one of them said no one and I said why and they said because I’m afraid to show signs of
Weakness and so a they’re taught that their emotions are weakness they’re taught that with when they’re showing vulnerability it’s being weak versus the exact opposite it’s showing you and this is something we started talking about the course that I taught it was the Graduate School course UCLA and there
Were only ten kids on the court students in the course and every one of them was either a fifth year student or a football graduate assistant coach and the underlying book that we read throughout the course was Bernie Browns dear to leave that is if your coach you
Got to read dear to lead and every one of these guys especially in this class was like I never thought of vulnerability as a strength and how me showing vulnerability to my my players could actually get them to buy in more than to support me more and when a
Champion me more then dictating barking orders and pretending as a coach that you know it all there is no coach that knows it all there’s that I think I’m a lot of the success you’re seeing from younger coaches like Shawn McVeigh there in Los Angeles or Brad Stevens with the
Celtics even Dabo Swinney at Clemson I think you’re seeing more vulnerable beside a bus weenie getting a wet willy after he won a national championship on the stage if you’ve got that type of relationship with your players I mean it’s a tough balance to negotiate but that that certainly you’ve developed
That trust another comment here from from Brian he says he loves the warmth and the co-creation that you have with your athletes and everything that you embody and that you practice he was wondering if you had any tips when it came to getting to know your athletes
And you know maybe when you know when to give them a nudge or how to and you talked about investing in your athletes and getting to know them but one of the best ways to do that to then be able to to coach them most effectively
Well I that question being so true to me because I’ve always said one of the biggest things that helped me in my career one of biggest gifts that I had was I didn’t know anything I didn’t know about gymnastics but more importantly I did not know how to develop a team
Culture I didn’t grow up with that so everything was new to me and I say it’s a gift because I had to ask a hundred questions a day and that became my standard of how I coached and so if I have an athlete that’s up on being and
She’s she did a beautiful boomer team instead of just giving her a high five and moving off I go okay high five come here educate me and you can’t you educate me what were you thinking before you went what was your mindset what was your mental choreography you
Were telling yourself how can I help you get that back when we wouldn’t want to recall that and if they and if they fall they make a mistake so like old-school coaching is demeaning and degrading which teaches the athlete that they have to formulate a judgment on themselves
When they do poorly and that’s just total BS that needs to go away and never come back in air our leadership of children because when an athlete makes a mistake all you need to do is is say are you okay you know did you get hurt no
Okay so what were you telling yourself before you went okay well I think you needed to tell yourself this instead and it’s a it’s a teaching moment right and so the athletes that I coached never fear of failure they never worried that they’re gonna get berated in a meet if they felt in
Fact if they did get down on themselves that one that’s when I got pissed that’s when I was like oh get over yourself you know really seriously you think you’re God you’ve never to make mistake get over yourself cuz right now you have your little pity party is not doing anything for your
Team get over it but when they would make a mistake and it would be like kind of like I’d be like okay I got it you’re upset got it that’s what makes you such a great competitor let’s talk about what we could do next time to have a different result
So never assigning a judgement to and making it personal got a final question here revolving around coaching you know what do you think they need to do in the sport of gymnastics to grow more coaches what are you doing specifically to to grow coaches in the sport this is
Obviously something for this count this webinar and then you know how were you training your assistant coaches so I guess what was your process and then what do you think needs to be done by others to continue to grow the sport to be emotionally intelligent and empathetic and the type of leaders that
You would want to be led by yeah well great education education education change does not come when there is no growth and growth comes from educating like he said I look like someone who has a growth mindset I do I’m a voracious reader i watch youtube stuff on coaches
I glean the good and the bad the ugly from them but we are at a time now where we cannot ignore the psychological and emotional impact that we have as coaches we can’t there’s two there’s and this is my like why I’m out there so much there is more reports a depression anxiety
Stress and suicide amongst our youth than ever or suicide rates are at 53% amongst our youth that’s on us that’s on us coaches on us parents on feeders anybody who sees oversees the development of a young person is someone in high school in college that is on us and so the best
Way to be able to be a hard-ass strategist that is also empathetic and altruistic and really cares about the whole person that you’re coaching and not just this little sliver that’s the athlete is to educate yourself on leadership books and what strong leaders look like because if you look if you
Pick up any leadership book outside of sport they’re all going to tell you the same thing they all talk about the importance of quote unquote soft skills the importance of learning how to listen tier athletes even if you don’t like what they’re saying to shut up and
Listen to them and this is the cool part about this little segment right here when you rearrange the letters that spell listen is spell silent so in order to truly listen you have to silence your mind and listening is one of the best ways you can respect show respect for
Someone and so I believe the greatest coaches are brilliant strategists who love the game love the chess the chess match at the game but also see their players not as pawns but as whole human beings and when you fortify your athlete is a whole human being that’s when the magic happens
That’s when not just their athleticism kicks in but that’s when they’re able to go into a competition make a mistake recover and not get Debbie Downer and be able to finish brilliantly that’s what happened with Caitlyn Ohashi I think all of our listeners have now been Miss Val
I think that you know you just got a knowledge bond there delivered as only you can deliver it so I I can’t thank you enough for joining us today and helping to grow the sport you know we we do that through fundraising we also try and offer professional development resources and personal development
Resources through something that we call the leading-edge where we talk with group leaders and just have them share their best practices so you’ve been terrific today and I can’t thank you enough and I’d like to give you a last word of sorts here anything that you you
Want to close with because there’s a seeming seemingly infinite amount of wisdom that is stored in the cranium there that you possess thank you I just want to leave all of you coaches parents any even leaders leaders of your athletics of your assistant coaches the fact that coaching teaching is a massive
Responsibility it is a daunting daunting responsibility that we all know athletes are will listen to their coaches usually usually not always but more than their parents we have more influence over the athletes whom we coach that a lot of people in their families and because of that every single thing you say
Everything is seen you don’t say or do or don’t do they will translate how how they translate it and the more you can communicate yourself to them the less they’ll make up because what people don’t know about you they will make up and the last thing I want is where my
Student-athletes making up my truth which is why I communicated so much to them so I want to commend all of you for taking on this challenge of coaching I want you to wake up and hit that refresh button all day long on the massive responsibility it is and don’t be feel
That is something that is heavy but that is a gift that you have been chosen to help these young people develop into superheroes they’re going to go out and make the world a better place one of the best to ever do it myself thank you so much for joining us today and sharing
For sharing your knowledge and your insight and your experience with with our group leaders and and our attendees today can’t thank you enough thank you everybody go out and have a great day there you go thank you very much be well
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