Coaching Thoughts From Down Under

This was sent to me today by Dean Benton, friend of mine who the Director of Conditioning for the Brisbane Broncos, Rugby League team in Australia. Some of these are old coaching clichés, but there are also some great thoughts here. Enjoy it!

Don’t ever let anyone out work you.

Make sure you have finished speaking before your audience has finished listening.

Stand up so you will be seen. Speak up so you will be heard. Then sit down so you will be appreciated.

In coaching you will have thousands of opportunities to keep your mouth shut. Take advantage of all of them.

Nothing fails like success, we don’t learn from it. We learn only from failure.

Coaches who know all the answers usually don’t understand all the questions.

Habit is persistence in practice.

Rules are for when thinking stops.

You can tell when you are on the right track- it is normally uphill.

No sport can progress and grow without good coaching. In the final analysis coaching is the only real advantage one organisation has over another in a competitive society.

Smart coaches learn from their mistakes. Smarter coaches learn from the mistakes of others.

One of the most important things I ever learned came later in life- it was how to say I don’t know.

Never ask a question you don’t want to hear the answer to.

The most important skill to acquire now is learning how to learn.

You will never leave where you are until you decide where you would rather be.

Coaching is a progressive course, not an end to be reached.

Coaching cannot really be taught, it can only be learned.

It’s never too late to be what you might have been.

It’s easy to find fault, that’s why so many people do it.

Never argue with an angry person.

Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and you have peace of mind.

The best test of whether someone is a qualified coach is to find out whether anyone is following him.

You don’t have to be brilliant to be a good coach, but you do have to understand other people- how they feel, what makes them tick, the best way to influence them.

Coaching is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

Good coaches make their players think they have more ability than they have, so they consistently do better work than they thought they could.

There always free cheese in the mousetrap.

You already possess everything necessary to become great.

Show me and I may not remember. Involve me and I will understand.

To the unwilling nothing is easy.

We are all self made, but only the rich ever admit it.

When all else is lost the future still remains.

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you will part of someone else’s.

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

Agreeing to something in principle only means that you have no intention at all of carrying it out.

Make yourself necessary to someone.

Our lives would run a lot more smoothly if second thoughts came first.

Be yourself- no one else is qualified.

No one drowned in sweat.

If you wouldn’t write it and sign it don’t say it.

Fifty years ago people finished a day’s work and needed rest- today they need exercise.

Without discipline there’s no life at all.

A conference is a meeting at which people talk about things they should be doing.

If your mind goes blank, don’t forget to turn off the volume.

Solving problems is sometimes easier than living with the solutions.

Short speeches are not always the best, but the best speeches it seems are always short.

The three secrets of success in public speaking are – be sincere, be brief, be seated.

When I am dead I’d rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.

The problem with most people is they would rather pray for forgiveness than fight temptation.

Don’t waste time learning the tricks of the trades. Instead learn the trade.

Diligence is more important than intelligence.

Most people will agree with you- if you will just keep quiet.

A committee is a group of people who keep minutes but waste hours.

It takes a lot of things to prove your smart but it only takes one to prove you’re dumb.

The rooster crows but the hen delivers the goods.

Hospitality is making your guests feel at home even though you wish they were.

The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight but no vision.

Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, by doing nothing and by being nothing.

Progress was alright once but it went too far.

I really don’t deserve this, but I have arthritis in my back and I don’t deserve that either.

Explanation, demonstration, Imitation, Repetition, Repetition Repetition Repetition.

Coaches are divided into two groups, those who love to talk and those who hate to listen.

Coaching is teaching.

Get your players to think in twos. Two tackles or be prepared to do two runs together. If you could get your players to do things in threes no one would ever beat you.

I never learned anything while I was talking.

Players have one thing in common they are all different.