[leadplayer_vid id=”511C672FD6F8B”]
Lacrosse Goalie Low Motivation and High Skill Quadrant Tips
Bullets and Timestamps:
[00:00:15] Coach Edwards introduces highly skilled, low motivated athlete
[00:01:09] First step to recovering from being highly skilled, low motivated is awareness
[00:01:15] Admit to yourself you’re lazy and change your direction.
[00:01:43] The higher the fun, the higher the motivation.
[00:02:10] Coach Edwards relates story about a man he met who almost made the Olympics but didn’t and the quote he will always remember.
[00:02:40] Coach Edwards elaborates on the “scale of life” and discipline vs. regret.
[00:04:00] Coach Edwards explains how when an athlete understands their opportunities they are more likely to be motivated and broaden their horizons.
[00:04:26] Giving a child or athlete examples and watching them grow when they eventually get the idea.
[00:04:38] Don’t give up on low motivation and high skill people, just keep encouraging them as they grow.
Content: Now we’re going to talk about the highly skilled, low motivation athlete. The one who’s here. And I will speak for all the coaches watching this, and all the coaches too, if you are this low motivation high skilled athlete, you drive us nuts. You do. Because inside of us, we see inside of you the athlete with so much potential. So much potential, and thoughts that kind of go through your head like, if you’d only get it! That kind of thing. If you’d only just turn it up a notch you’d be phenomenal.
If you are an athlete in the low motivation high skill quadrant, I think the first step to recovery is awareness. And if you just know that you are that athlete and you identify yourself as, “Hey, I’m lazy.” If you just identify that, what usually comes out of that is you go hey, I know I’m lazy, I know I’m low motivation, I shouldn’t be a distraction, I got that. But if I just worked a little bit, I’m going to have better results. Better results usually means more fun. And with more fun, that comes into high motivation, more fun loop. So the higher the fun, the higher the motivation.The higher the fun, the higher the motivation.
If you are an athlete and you are in that low motivation, high skill, you’ve really got to look hard inside and go, “Man.” And this is where us as coaches, no different than the low motivation low skill guy. We’re trying to get you to turn it on. And one of those things I want to share with those athletes is that years ago I met a guy who was an Olympic caliber swimmer. He never quite made it to the Olympics, but he made it to U.S. Olympic trials and finished just outside of making the team. But when I met him he was married, had a very successful business, beautiful wife, and he taught me this quote. And I don’t know where the quote came from originally but it goes like this if I can remember it correctly. “In the scale of life,” one of those old fashioned scales, “the pain of discipline far outweighs the pain of regret.”
So the amount of time and work and effort and that short term pain, when you look back on your life weighs ounces, and that pain of regret from having missed the opportunities because you didn’t work hard enough and you joked around or those types of things, weighs incredibly heavy as you look back on things. And I think at the end of the day when we are no longer on this earth, we look back on our experiences and go, did we put in the effort, did we put in the time, did we truly do the best with what we knew at the time? And from that you look back and go, “Man.”
What is the regret? Did you regret not trying harder in practice? Did you regret not getting it together?
But ultimately, I’ll give you this. An athlete who falls in the low motivation, high skill quadrant just didn’t really see the opportunity. And I think really when someone can really see the opportunity and really understand it, then the effort they put in is worth it. And so for me as a coach, when I have an athlete like this, I want to help them understand where they’re at. But the only time you can get through to an athlete like that is when they’re listening. And if they’re not listening there’s nothing you can do. I mean, you can only just keep giving them examples, giving them examples. As parents, we know this right? We just keep giving them examples, keep giving them examples, and eventually that small boy, girl, child grows up and starts doing some pretty cool things. But eventually it has to click for them.
We don’t give up on these athletes, we don’t give up on kids like this. Far from it. We just keep shining the light, hopefully they see the path and they make the most of it. I’ve seen some great kids turn around in the course of, in a matter of months when someone just kind of helps them, believes in them, and eventually that low motivation kid turns into a high motivation kid and great things happen. So if that’s you, I hope this helps, and lets move on to that highly skilled, highly motivated athlete and what we can do for them.
Recent Comments