Great Philosophy

Positive Coaching by Jim Thompson

Just a great book. I read it a couple years ago and one of the things that always stuck for me was his 3 point philosophy.

1) Have Fun
2) Work Hard
3) Be a good sport

The genius of this is the fact that it is easy to have fun when you don't work hard. You can play games, joke around avoiding doing that unfun but necessary work. I think alot of coaches see fun and hard work as a trade off, you can do one or the other. I am not one of those people who is going to say it is fun to work hard. What I will say is I think it is possible to do both with the environment you set. I explain what we need to do, why it is important, then I lean on the personalities of the track team the people who love joking around. I encourage this to happen in between reps.

Similarly, when you don't care about the results it is easy to be a good sport. You don't mind calling a penalty against yourself, you help up your opponants, wish them good luck. When you work hard and invest alot into a competition it is hard to be a good sport.

I love the simplicity of this philosophy (could summarize in 8 words (have fun, work hard, be a good sport) as well interesting dynamic between each of these on each other. All three are easy to do but the challenge is to do them at the same time.