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New book published: ‘Coaches’ Corner’
7th November 2024
Essays to help sports coaches and P.E. teachers. My latest book, ‘Coaches’ Corner,’ is now available to buy on Amazon. It contains over 50 essays about athletic development, coaching, and physical education based on my work over the last ten years as Head Coach of Excelsior Athletic Development Club. How and what I’ve coached has […]
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Coaching the Millennials

Generation Y Me?

Coaching millenialsSometimes known as Generation Y, this group of people are the ones coming into the workplace since the Millennium.

A bit different from the Generation X “slackers”, the Millennials have been hot housed, nurtured and been led to believe that they can achieve anything.

Massively full of self confidence (or something) they have yet to fail at anything in their life. They expect to be able to run their social life through work or through their sport.

Well, welcome to sport. Failure is a part of it, as is hard work, as is realism.  If you are unaccustomed to failing and working at something to improve, then the first time you get a B-  or are unable to get it right straight away- it is a massive shock. 

Two things happen here- they quit, or someone else is to blame. The problem with super high self esteem is that in order to protect it, you can apportion blame elsewhere. This is a poor starting place for performance improvement.

how to coach millenialsThe other side is mixing the social life into work and sport- well it is alright being best friends with everyone in the squad, but you are competing for places with them.

The Millennials in team sports appear to be more worried about the social than the performance- and I am talking about funded players here. 

My 3 tips are:

  1. Be a bit more forgiving in attitude: introduce adversity training gradually. 
  2. Allow time for social engagement at the start and end of the session.
  3. Set guidelines on how to interact with each other: no phones in the session or at meal times!

However, this is still a work in progress!

Further reading:

Getting teenagers to take charge of their sporting preparation

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Client Testimonials

Georgina Rozario: England Scrum Half
I had the pleasure of having James as my first s&c coach when I was at University in Plymouth. I worked with him for 3 years and learnt everything I now know about training to the best of my ability. When I first saw James I was identified as a talented rugby player but had various injury and illness problems to contend with. By the end of my time with him I had become an athlete and later received my first international cap against the U.S.A.
 
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