REFLEXION 2

Reading Joel Filliol and Paulo Sousa’s blogs and thinking.

Reminders for a coach: 

1. SHARE and TAKE RESPONSABILITY
As a coach, part of your job is to be ON THE ATHLETE'S SIDE! Many coaches are great at accepting accolades when things go well, but quickly try to shed their responsibility when things go wrong. They blame the athlete for the options they make. Guess what Mr. when an athlete decides something, it's your decision too!
If you're not comfortable with the decision, you only have two options. Either convinces the athlete of his mistake or goes with it and assumes full responsibility for the consequences. Shrugging your shoulders is not acceptable. There is no in-between, no sitting on the fence. An athlete makes a mistake, you make a mistake. (Souza)

2. DO YOUR JOB. Keep yourself away from mediocrity. Mediocrity sucks!

It's very easy to try to blame others, and hard to assume responsibility for failure. But when in doubt, always remember to do your job. (Souza)

Reminders for athletes­:

1. If you're not winning, what do you have to LOSE?

A successful athlete making a change to keep progressing is interesting and noteworthy and shows no complacency - interestingly in my experience many of the top athletes in triathlon are surprisingly complacent. Many are happy to be around the best in their countries even if they are not winning or close to the podium. Despite not achieving at the very highest levels - every athletes dreams of standing on the top of the podium - too few are willing to change in order to reach the top. So they stay stuck where they are, in some ways settling, as change is hard, risk, and unknown. (Filliol)

2. Am I settling?

A lot of times in my work as a coach, I see athletes, both those that I coach and others that I observe, just settling. Just going with the safe, comfortable option. This translates into the decisions they make. It might be in the big decisions, like what races to race, where to live or who to pick as a coach. But also in the small decisions, like cramming workouts to free up an afternoon, changing the training schedule on the fly or what food to eat. (Souza)

3. THE SONG OF SETTLING

Can you hear the sound of settling? It's just a very low noise, a whisper. It's so low that athletes often have trouble hearing it. This is particularly true to those that speak loudly about how right the approach they're currently using is. When you're shouting, it's hard to hear anything else than your own voice. (Souza)

Reminders for coaches and athletes: 

1.Never SETTLE. Keep LEARNING

Achieving success, both daily but also long-term, means you can never settle. Means you need to always strive to be better. Means you need to break free from the comfort zone. Means constantly asking the question:
Am I settling? (Souza)

2. Thinking, thinking and thinking again.

Even if you are winning, continuing to do the same thing for too long is a sure way to let the competition catch up to you. (Filliol)