Deliberate Silence In Practice
For coaches I think we all want to jump in and help a player when they make a mistake during practice. It comes from the simple need to want to help players improve. This need from coaches is a good thing but I think that Deliberate Silence can be a powerful tool for coaches to use as well when they are in the act of coaching.
I define Deliberate Silence as the act of actively not speaking when things go wrong in practice. When coaches decide not to speak during practice and rather observe and remain deliberately quiet even when things go as planned for a player can be a powerful tool for coaches to use. Does that mean that we disregard all feedback for players? Absolutely not. Using Deliberate Silence as a coaching technique is most effective when used when a player tries to perform a movement or skill that you have worked on with them, and they have performed with little results.
For example, lets say that a player is working on double play feeds. During practice the player implements the strategy effectively. But then you move into some type of practice that has players move in a more game like setting.
The player may attempt to use the skill that they have obtained during practice but they might fail to execute it correctly. Now can jumping in to correct the potential issue is one way to attempt to correct this situation. But we don’t really know if this is a trend that we are observing or rather just a blip on the radar.
Jumping in may also make players cling to their old habit which is harder to shake than we might give it credit for. As long as the player is trying to explore the new movement or skill it can be to the coaches benefit to hang back and take note but not jump in immediately. Giving players some space to explore their own movements without the feeling of ‘The Coach is always watching me’ can be a freeing experience for the player.
The same can go for helping coaches. Helping a coach make adjustments to their own coaching practice takes time. If you have practiced a technique with a coach that can be implemented into their coaching practice, and the coach is making mistakes or errors when implementing these techniques Deliberate Silence may be helpful for a situation such as this. Ultimately you are seeing the attempt to make the changes but the coach may need some time to work through mistakes. As long as the player/coach is attempting to make changes that were worked on in a practice environment then Deliberate Silence is a tool that could be used.
If you had someone looking over your shoulder all day at every thing you did and jumping in whenever you made a mistake to fix it, you might feel constricted in your own job and life. This is analogous to that feeling. If a player feels like they can’t make mistakes freely they won’t necessarily feel as though they can display skills that may be ‘incorrect’ or ‘new’. They then cling to the old habits which they have formed because they have worked in the past and are ‘reliable’. Deliberate Silence isn’t a way to not give feedback but rather is a way for coaches to gain more information, and to allow the player space to work without fear of mistakes.
