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Learning New Skills
When I start working with a new client , I ask them, how do you think I can help you? The answer is never what a coach would like to hear. I would like to hear some romantic, grandiose version of how awesome coaching can be and how it can change your life for good in ALL the aspects. But of course it’s never this. The standard answer is structure and accountability. Which usually translates to: tell me what to do and make me do it. My very first task is to reframe that idea for my athlete, more than providing structure and accountability what I do is create contexts in which they can find what works best for them, and what they want. I create contexts in which they thrive.
Can I have your attention, please?
If there is no product the product is you, they say. Nowadays, anyone priding themselves on being critical throws this phrase around when talking about "free" digital services --think Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter. I beg to differ. There is some truth to the idea behind it, but it is primarily a simplistic vilification. Fortunately, you...
Functional Fixedness
However, because we humans clearly cannot have nice things, the term has been bastardized, oversimplified, and not problematized enough. When Henrick laughs at my suggestion of doing curls, he is just repeating a learned behavior. It is common in the functional world to look at other forms of training and think they are poor, vain, or irrelevant. On the one side, this is how every culture is created, by creating an other to separate from. That’s how we define our existence as a thing. On the other hand, this attitude is the representation of a very bad case of functional fixedness (FF). Think of this as a bad habit of the mind, a way of thinking that hinders more than helps, and that in the case of Henrick will limit his performance and his movement capacity. The purpose of this post is to explain to you what FF is so that you can catch yourself in this trap, and do something about it.
- Close the Gap | Coaching | Fitness | Mindset
What I have learned from coaching ... so far
I arrived to coaching after teaching at the college level for fourteen years. I am a voracious learner. I loved (and still do love) universities, and I loved the idea of getting paid to create knowledge and help others learn. However, during all those years in academia, I always felt there was something missing. Despite being surrounded by amazing people, both good students and brilliant colleagues, I always felt lonely. Teaching in a university and academic research are solitary tasks. The whole building -the physical and the institution- is founded on medieval and early modern ideas. Books, authors, and teachers are the main players of the game, and everything revolves around them. It took me years of research to understand that universities by conception are not made for students, universities are made for authors. It was when I started coaching that I understood all this. It was really after spending thousands of hours within the walls of my garage teaching people the basics a human movement literacy that I saw what I felt was missing.
De-distorting your mind
Changing the beliefs takes work, hard and satisfying work. The task is to identify how and when those core beliefs act and debate them every time they operate. The cool thing is that because we are all in this together, Beck and one of his students, David Burns, have managed to identify what they call habits of mind. These are just general ways in which those core beliefs usually operate in all of us.
What is Cognitive Reframing and how to use in training
Our identities are made of narratives. We cannot escape that. But we get to chose. Tear down the unproductive ones. Create ones that keep you growing.
