“Those who chase two rabbits, will catch neither” Confucius
And what does this have to do with coaching you may ask? Well how often do we provide instructions or pieces of feedback, where our players don’t take it on? This could be at practices, pre-match, half-times... You know how it goes…
“Alright, we just have to kick the ball into the corners, get our first arriver over the ball, bring our line-speed up. And no 50/50’s, be patient, go to ground, build phases, make our tackle - low and chop…”
And then we wonder why they can't execute on all those wonderful ideas. It’s quite possible that we have given them too much to think about and they don’t know where to start? Imagine trying to catch a rabbit and five popped up out of the ground and ran in different directions. You’d see them all run off, and you’d be stuck frozen and confused, wondering which one to chase. It’s the same if you have too much to think about.
So the key is to keep things simple for players to focus on nailing one thing. And if you’re a coach who uses a questioning approach, you’ll still notice that the players will come up with 3, 4 or 5 ideas / things to improve on. The key is then to tighten things and encourage players to land on one key idea to execute. So let’s just chase the one rabbit!
