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Legacy Performance Presentation - On aTrain, Off the Tracks
- 1. ON A TRAIN OFF THE TRACKS JUSTIN KUEHN CSCS GRADUATE ASSISTANT S&C COACH NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY – OLYMPIC SPORTS
- 2. WHO HELPED ME GET HERE Mom & Dad Scott Kuehn Betty Henson Cody Roberts & Ashley Renteria Mike Niklos, Ryan Goochey, Guillermo Blanco, Jeremy Niklos (aka the 12:30 Crew) Jason Miller & Adam Mead Every Coach and Athlete I’ve had a chance to work with/for Every person who has influenced my programming, coaching style, and the way I approach training athletes today.
- 4. ABOUT ME 2010–2014 Metea Valley High School •Basketball 2014–2018 Illinois State University •BSc Exercise Science 2018 University of Iowa S&C – Olympic Sports •Volunteer Intern 2018 Acceleration Naperville •Intern/Asst. S&C Coach for Summer College Group 2018-Present North Dakota State University S&C – Olympic Sports •Paid Intern •Graduate Assistant (Wrestling + Throwers)
- 5. TODAY AT A GLANCE
- 6. A LITTLE BIT OF CONTEXT • I was a total stranger • It was midway through their season and entering the most critical part of it • We had some success currently and in the past • Our biggest problems on the team had 2 things in common: • They were transfers • They were some of our best wrestlers • I knew absolutely nothing about Wrestling • Zero f**king clue
- 7. THE PROBLEM • Accountability • Communication • Being Coachable • Attitude/Mood Just to list a few…
- 8. WHAT NEEDED TO CHANGE? • Show up on time • Start behind the line, finish through the line • Fill out/Follow your cards • Communicate thoroughly • Intent is everything • Hold teammates accountable • Have fun with it • Perception of rest • How, not How Much • No Dickheads
- 10. HOW WE WENT ABOUT IT • I admitted my lack of experience with Wrestling in general, with the team as a whole, and with them as individuals. • Observe • Made new expectations clear, addressed them with the group and reiterated them throughout the process. • Held EVERYBODY accountable: Weigh-In, Devo, Walk-on, NCAA Qualifier, Transfer • If you treat your “Superstars” differently than you treat any other athlete on your team then you just have guidelines with far too much grey area • Reflect, Evaluate, Adapt, Persist
- 12. HOW DID IT GO? INSTAGRAM REALITY
- 13. MISTAKES WE MADE Physical Punishment Expecting too much too soon Trying to change too much given the situation Not giving the team more say in the change
- 14. ATHLETE FEEDBACK • Guys trust what we’re doing and they have a lot of fun training • All those “little things” we battled about early on but now do without thinking (Subconscious Purposeful) • Everyone seems to get along better now even off the mat • Appreciation that there’s a plan/progression to everything we do in the weight room • It’s cool to see their names/maxes on their training card. • Still hate how much we rest (can’t win ‘em all) • When things go wrong there isn’t a clear leader that we all look to
- 15. LESSONS LEARNED • Athletes create the culture; you provide the constraints for them to operate within. • Physical punishment, while massively popular, is counterproductive and doesn’t resonate well with today’s athlete. • Don’t have “Little Things” If it matters, it matters. • Cultural change is just as much bottom-up as it is top-down • Part of developing leaders means allowing them to have a say in decisions and carrying out those decisions. • Don’t rely on traditional stereotypes for Leaders (Best Athlete, Senior, etc.) • You Win with People
- 16. RESULTS • 1st Big 12 Champion in school history • 6 AQ’s to NCAAs (tied for most in school history) • Most ranked finishes at Conference (9 out of 10) • Finished the year Top 25 • 3 NWCA All-Americans • Top 10 NWCA All-Academic Team Standings • 4 Scholar All-Americans • Big 12 Wrestling Scholar-Athlete of the Year **Disclaimer: I’m not suggesting that these results are solely due to the changes we made. We also brought on 3 new coaches (2 assts + 1 volunteer) with a wealth of knowledge and experience and the value of technical/tactical development is paramount to success. However, as a staff we agreed that there was a significant change in the team’s approach to their day-to- day opportunities.**
- 17. BREAKING DOWN CULTURAL CHANGE Model for Change Define it Provide a framework Integrate into YOUR situation Allows you to plot where you are, where you want to get to, and the steps in between. The People You work with people who happen to be athletes, not athletes who happen to be people Common archetypes you’ll encounter One size doesn’t fit all Leadership How to be One How to Create One Pass the Ball
- 18. DEFINING CULTURE What you do How you do it Why you do it Simple Solution: • Recruit athletes and staff that embody these values prior to coming to your program. Simple isn’t Practical so…
- 19. Subconscious Purposeful Conscious Purposeful Conscious Non- Purposeful Subconscious Non- Purposeful CHARLIE WEINGROFF MOTOR SKILL ACQUISITION MODEL
- 20. KURT LEWIN’S CHANGE MODEL Determine what needs to change Ensure there is strong support from management Create the need for change Manage and understand the doubts and concerns Communicate OFTEN Dispel rumors Empower action Involve people in the process Anchor the changes into the culture Develop ways to sustain the change Provide support and training Celebrate successes! UNFREEZE CHANGE REFREEZE
- 21. Subconscious Purposeful Conscious Purposeful Conscious Non- Purposeful Subconsciou s Non- Purposeful UNFREEZE CHANGE REFREEZE
- 22. CULTURE KPI’S • Punctuality • Perception • Athlete • Supporting Staff • Yourself • Performance
- 23. THE PEOPLE • Most of us were raised to “treat others the way you want to be treated” • You’d be much better off treating people the way THEY want to be treated. • This is NOT the same as catering/coddling/being soft • People are dynamic and adaptable • Archetypes are fluid (but useful) concepts rather than concrete/absolute ones • The Right people and the Best people don’t always have as much overlap as we’d like. • You may get better short-term results from the Best people
- 24. THE SOLDIER Overview/Strengths - In it for the love of the process - High attention to detail and very good at following directions. - Not affected by current skill/ability Weaknesses - Forge ahead at all costs, even injury - Views rest as a weakness rather than a weapon How to Connect - Recognize and appreciate their drive - Provide clarity and understanding of the “mission” - Help them see the benefit of restoration on long-term goals - Don’t make the mistake of not watching/acknowledging them just because they do what they’re supposed to.
- 25. THE SPECIALIST Overview/Strengths - Only cares about their sport (identity) - Not interested in training if it isn’t their sport (weights, conditioning, etc.) - High passion on display during sport Weaknesses - Singular focus - May not have a multi-sport background How to Connect - Know the sport – tie it into discussion in and outside of the training environment - Simplify how it makes them better at their sport.
- 26. THE MOUTHPIECE Overview/Strengths - They can heighten the natural energy of the environment - Know what the audience wants to hear and how to say it Weaknesses - Struggles to focus - Appears to be narcissism but is truly insecurity - Trash Talker - Tends to act as if nothing bothers them How to Connect - Find balance between letting them do their thing and taking a step back - Acknowledge their influence on the group dynamic and give them a higher purpose.
- 27. THE SELF-SABOTAGER Overview/Strengths - Different types: - Sound work ethic, respect for progress, and hunger to get better - Highly-skilled but do not take training seriously enough, poor lifestyle choices, and reliance on innate ability - Care a great deal about their performance Weaknesses - Paralysis by Analysis - Self-doubt, anxiety, and frustration - Allow actions to become their identity How to Connect - Must continue to face situations that cause anxiety - Find areas they do well in to give them confidence - Trial by fire - Help them break down results
- 28. LEADERSHIP Be the Coach your Athletes need. Don’t be the Coach you wish you always had. THE PREREQUISITES: Be Authentic Be Passionate Be Humble Be Compassionate Be There
- 29. EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP Top Down vs Bottom Up My issue with “Buy-In” Where do we get stuck?
- 30. LEADERS CREATE LEADERS IDENTIFY START YOUNG How do they interact with their teammates? How do they interact with coaches/support staff? Intangibles (Grades, attendance, effort, attitude) Do they represent the values your program wishes to uphold? EDUCATE A. Don’t push an athlete to be a leader before showing him/her what it means B. Books, articles, videos, etc. C. Small-scale opportunities D. Give them a voice for input E. Leadership Committee EMPOWER Pass the Ball It’s more than leading warm-ups and cool-downs Ask for their ideas/thoughts before providing your own Involve them in meetings with coaching staff Leadership Committee
- 32. FINAL THOUGHTS “Grant me… the serenity to Accept the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
- 33. THANK YOU! Cell: (630)-962-2445 Instagram: @j.c.kuehn Email: justin.kuehn@ndsu.edu Twitter: @JCKuehn
Editor's Notes
- My Name, Position, School My presentation today is going to dive into my experience stepping into a role with a team that faced some issues from a cultural standpoint, one where we struggled to do things most of us would consider reasonable, and one that challenged me to grow more than any other opportunity I’ve had. I by no means feel this makes me an expect in developing and maintaining culture, but if you were to ask me what experience taught me the most in my 2 years as a Strength Coach it would be this one
- Giving you these now because there’s plenty to take away from them that I won’t address and you absolutely should read about. Also because none of these ideas are my own, they’re simply my interpretation and application of the ideas of those much smarter than me as well with some of my own intuition. Conscious Coaching: Relationships, understanding people, learning HOW to communicate Leaders Eat Last: Putting the best interest of the group ahead of your best interests. Your decisions impact outcomes/results but they also impact people. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: What keeps a group from unifying and fully investing in each other and the direction they are headed (for most programs it’s vulnerability imo) Legacy: A lot of people talk about Culture, not many truly embody it. The All-Blacks do.
- What was the problem? The divide in the road we approached and the decision we made Where we’re at now How to apply it Within those steps we’ll talk about some areas I feel we went wrong in our approach, changes we made during the process, and we’ll discuss my framework towards change within your culture
- Being a Stranger Why should they trust you if you they have no clue who you are or what you’re about. You get a base amount of respect but the rest is for you to earn. Midway Through the Season Everything affects Everything. If culture changes go south, psychological impact can hurt performance and then I really lose credibility. We had Success Why change the direction of a ship that hasn’t crashed yet? Mostly individual but we had been competitive on a national level Biggest Problems I knew nothing about Wrestling Whether it matters or not, your knowledge of what they do impacts what they think of you. Image: 5 Levels of Leadership by John Maxwell
- Accountable – Could you do what was asked of you? Doing weights that were on the card, not pushing to failure, showing up on time Communication – Because “text me if you’re sick and won’t be at lift” was not a very clear statement Coachable – “That’s how you’ve always done it” is not a valid reason for your shitty technique or lack of discipline Attitude – It was quiet, lifeless, and monotonous Examples: Athlete left during a lift to go use the bathroom for 20min without telling a coach Athlete missing lift multiple times because he slept through his alarm but lives with two teammates who didn’t wake him up
- Big 3 No Dickheads Be On Time Communicate Gilbert Enoka (Mental Skills Coach – All-Blacks) – He says the point of the policy is to wean out inflated egos and make everything about the team, with his central belief being you can’t “be a positive person on the field and a prick off it”. “A dickhead makes everything about them,” he told Adidas’s Gameplan A. “They are people who put themselves ahead of the team, people who think they’re entitled to things, expect the rules to be different for them, people operating deceitfully in the dark, or being unnecessarily loud about their work.
- Be transparent, be Vulnerable (5 Dysfunctions of a Team). I don’t know the nuances of the sport, I don’t know their team dynamic, and I don’t know what makes them tick as individuals. Step 1 was learning all 36 guys names. Seek to understand first before you change Directly address the team on changes you’d like to see prior to each session and discuss what you saw following the session. I know superstar treatment is prevalent throughout sports – that doesn’t make it right. Constantly update your thought process, what’s working, what isn’t working, and what’s keeping you from getting to where you want to be.
- This is how I know your culture matters to you. We hate seeing politicians, celebrities, athletes who are above the law when they break it but I promise you that wasn’t the first time they were let off the hook.
- It’d be nice to say that things got all better just like that but that wasn’t reality. There was a lot of push-back initially even from the athletes who soon became some of our biggest allies Some really had a poor ability to tolerate being held accountable to doing something the right way. Nobody likes change at least initially I made mistakes along the way It became quite clear that there were some issues within the team that everyone saw but no one wanted to say anything.
- Physical Punishment – I don’t view it as constructive discipline and it’s ultimately another training stressor that IS going to take away from your desired goals. It also wastes more of MY time. Preferred method now is cleaning, saves me time on the back end from things I have to do. No matter how hard you try, it takes 9 months to have a baby – Keir. That was said addressing adaptations to training but same rule applies here only with less objectivity as to when the changes will occur Progress terribly at several things or immensely at a select few No one feels responsibility for something they don’t own/are a part of. Athletes are still athletes without a coach, Coaches aren’t coaches without athletes. No one knows and understands the athlete to athlete relationship that the athletes themselves, ask them what they need/want, figure out how to integrate into your needs
- This was some feedback I got subjectively from athletes at various points throughout this most recent season. None of it is verbatim but general concepts of their perception. As we’ll talk about later, there are very few quantitative KPI’s for Culture; athlete perception is extremely important in whether or not progress is being made.
- Conformity to an absolute results in a loss of authenticity Not relying on traditional stereotypes was something I was recently told by Brad Ruhanen over at Missouri “You Win with People” – Woody Hayes
- Team Ranking: Pre-Season #40; ranked as high as 16 during the year +7 Dual Win Streak NWCA All-Academic Team: We did not make the Top 30 list announced the previous year Subjectively: We had 4 first time NCAA qualifiers including 2 Freshman who both noted that they felt that the guys who bought into the changes the quickest were the ones who found success. 90.5pts at conference, 53.5 the year before, 57 before that
- There’s loads of definitions out there for culture that all have validity in their own respect. I enjoy these two definitions because one is complex and the other is quite simple It’s the What, How, and Why of what you do If you don’t want to worry about it bring in high quality people, but that isn’t how life works unfortunately
- Is this the best and most in-depth model? No. But it is simple, provides you with a framework to operate within, and allows you to monitor and assess where you are at. Unfreeze: I would go so far as to say that “Management” includes your athletes (or at least some of the leaders/most visible athletes) If there’s no need for change (or at least not a perceived need for it), resistance will be far greater Change: Make it clear, make it known, make it yours. Culture change happens at all levels, it’s in your best interest to involve people from all levels. THIS WAS MY BIGGEST CHANGE Refreeze: How to anchor? When athletes start to hold each other accountable. Acknowledge the improvement (Rome wasn’t built in a day cliché)
- As a whole, these tend to be more qualitative than quantitative and that’s okay. “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” – Jeff Moyer Punctuality – Are they on-time and ready when you ask them to be? How many unexcused missed practices, lifts, events? We can’t even begin to focus on anything else if I can’t count on you being where I need you to be and when I need you to be there. Athlete Perception – If it isn’t clear to you by now that your athlete’s opinions matter than let me remind you; what you see and what they feel don’t always have as much overlap as we’d like initially Coach Perception – What do those around you that are part of the student-athlete support system see? Depending on your level this could be assistants, sport coaches, strength coaches, athletic trainers, academic advisors, teachers (HS level) - For us, this one our AT noting that guys have been really good about showing up for rehab and doing their checklists. Yourself – Is this what you envisioned? Performance – In part wins/losses; but more importantly level of competitiveness as individuals and as a team. 99.99% of the time you are not going to have some movie moment where you go for 1-10 to 11-0 and win the state championship. In all honesty your record may remain unchanged for the first year or two, but are you improving in the areas you’ve identified as important?
- To my last point, how many times in collegiate/professional sports have we seen athletes who not reach their full potential in one system, change environments, and then succeed/achieve at high level? Joe Burrow, Lonzo Ball, Jake Arrieta, Dennis Rodman, Drew Brees All the Unranked, 2/3 star recruits that became elite level athletes Your ability to control this depends on the level you are at
- TJ Pottinger
- Personality-wise this athlete exists across a wide spectrum Jaden Van Maanen
- Luke Weber
- This archetype manifested itself in two ways this season: Freshman athlete who was in and out of line-up all year wins a spot on the conference team through a wrestle-off, loses his first match at big 12’s then proceeds to take out 3 Top 25 athletes in a row and was one takedown short of being a top 10 for 3rd at Big 12s. Still qualified for NCAAs as a freshman 5th Year Senior (transfer) that was a top 25 guy coming off a 25-11 season. Made poor choices in the off-season, eventually was kicked out of the starting line-up.
- Be Authentic: Kids are really good at smelling out a bullshit artist; if you aren’t a hype guy, don’t try to be a hype guy. If you don’t know an answer, say you don’t know. Athletes have to buy into YOU before they buy into what you do Be Passionate: Why the hell would you expect them to give their best effort if you don’t? It’s simple but it’s easy to fuck up Be Humble: I promise you that you nor I nor any other Coach is solely responsible for any athlete achieving the success they do. For every kid that has succeeded in your system there are several others that have failed. Absolutely praise kids for their successes in person, social media, etc. but let their success be theirs. It’s not about you. Be Compassionate: I said it earlier but we work with people that happen to be athletes not athletes that happen to be people. If you’re going to tell a kid to leave his problems at the door, you better be waiting at the door as soon as their done to help them deal with them. Be There: Not when you’re expected/supposed to; but when you aren’t asked. When they say you don’t need to show up but you do. For me, that’s going to our non-travel guys Opens that are in the region.
- Top Down vs Bottom Up Many great teams win in-spite of internal drama, poor trust, commitment, etc. (if you watched the Bulls documentary this is painfully true). More recent example is GSW with Durant Natural assumption is that if you’re obtaining results what you do is working and therefore doesn’t need to be changed. It takes time to work your way through these levels; that’s not always a luxury coaches have (or at least feel they have) Buy-In We conflate athletes working hard with being “bought in” We assume that because athletes are “bought in”, our process is working. Where We Get Stuck? Most programs is Level 1 or 2; not just amongst athletes but amongst staff members. How many of us speak freely without fear or retribution/alienation These levels ask us to be very uncomfortable
- Identify: Start young – this shit takes time Don’t choose the best kids, choose the right kids Collaborate with all coaches in this process, talk with veteran players (if applicable) Educate: Provide resources to help the athletes learn about leadership, about culture, about being a teammate. This is where leading warm-ups/cool-downs is a good idea; minimal impact if it goes wrong, usually a easy-going environment Empower: There’s a difference between being a Leader by title and being a Leader by action. Ask your athletes what they feel they need/the group needs.
- This is what leadership is. This is Passing the Ball. This is the result of bringing in the Right People, not the Best People. What Sticks Out: This is Game 2 of the NBA Finals Parker making sure him and Pop are on the same page EVERY SINGLE TEAMMATE HUDDLING AROUND TONY AND LOOKING AT HIM WHEN HE SPEAKS
- Change takes time and time isn’t a luxury you’ll have with all athletes. You never give up on an athlete but you must recognize that you cannot rewire years of someone operating one way. If you force it upon them you may get an athlete that is compliant but not bought in.