Confidence is like a pane of glass

Confidence is like a pane of glass

As a coach, I would describe myself as a "visual coach", what i mean by that is I like to explain things to students using pictures (of the mental kind, not paper and pen). I constantly make comparisons of arm positions to everyday items, my best yet, I think, being explaining the arm movement of a scooping throw technique to throwing a bucket of water along the floor (I'll try to put a picture up as unless you see it you'll think I'm talking broken biscuits).

As a coach, I find it easier to explain things this way, and most of the students at our club seem to "get it" when I explain things by relating them to other movements or shapes they know. I love analogies, like the postage stamp one in the first blog post, and this weekend something occurred to me which I wanted to share......using an analogy of course, that confidence is like a pane of glass.

We had a new student start at the club this week, really nice kid, quite quiet and maybe a little shy but a nice kid. I was talking to the mums before the lesson and our new starters mum made it quite clear that one of the big desires for her was to see her child grow in confidence, equally, one of our other students mums said she was really pleased that her son seems to have "come out of himself" since he's joined us, I was clearly made up with that!

The lesson went well, our new student clearly enjoyed it and hopefully we'll see them back next week, but the biggest thing for me was noticing the change in confidence from the start of the lesson to the end, it really struck me, and later on, I was thinking about confidence and the pane of glass analogy came to me.

Let me explain;

Glass comes in many forms, but it starts its life as thousands of tiny individual grains of natural sand, in a way, a students confidence is like this, there are lots of tiny individual things which the student will experience, lots of grains of confidence sand, which will eventually form the pane of glass - the students confidence.

As coaches, our job is to gather those gains, make sure they're the right ones, the right experiences, the right comments, the right critiques at the right times, so as to prevent a fault in the pane of glass, a false confidence.

As i said, today, glass comes in many different grades, strengths, treatments, colours etc - when you think about it confidence comes in many guises also. There are many elements to a persons confidence, just like there are many types of glass. Some examples I thought about;

Stained glass confidence - stained glass is very pretty, it looks great, but it's usually quite thin and can be brittle. Sometimes people develop a confidence like this, they appear outwardly confident, sometimes very confident but deep down, they're a little fragile.

As coaches, I think this type of confidence can develop when we're not honest with our students, when we give feedback that suggests its good, it's right, because we want students to feel good, even if they don't quite get it right....but at the same time we could potentially be putting that confidence glass under strain, for example, later on when the student realises, deep down, that the technique isn't right, that others are actually better. This is why I think it's important we are honest when we're coaching, honest and supportive working together to get it right. I believe our students confidence will grow and develop more if we, as coaches, help them to get it right, don't allow them to develop a false confidence. I also believe that by approaching coaching in this way, with honesty and support, students also benefit by developing tenacity and valuing effort to achieve goals.

Toughened Glass Confidence - Glass can be toughened, it's amazing that even a very thin sheet of glass can be engineered to be shatter proof and extremely strong, with special treatment it can withstand significant bangs and knocks. This is what we're aiming for, we want to develop our students ability and skill so they are able to withstand the odd knock to their confidence.

A word of caution here though, what we don't want, is unbreakable glass, this, I think, carries some danger. Confidence in your own ability is great, the ability to withstand a knock to your confidence and continue to perform is what I'm referring to when I refer to "toughened glass" think Johnny Wilkinson in the rugby World Cup final, he'd hit and missed a number of drop goals in the game, but it didn't affect his confidence, he still had the self confidence to hit THAT drop goal at THAT crucial moment on the stroke of full time and win the game and the rugby World Cup.

What we don't want, what we as coaches need to ensure doesn't develop is a self confidence which is false, which is built on a perceived ability, an ability which may not exist (think man after a few drinks who thinks he's a better fighter, better looking man etc), its a perceived self confidence, it's not real.

As coaches, specifically as martial arts instructors, we need to ensure our students do not develop a sense of confidence in their own ability which isn't accurate. The risks, well firstly safety, we can not allow students who believe their technical ability is greater than it actually is, to attempt techniques or training methods for which they are not yet ready.

Secondly, in the reality of a combat situation, we do not want our students to feel as though they have the ability to take on 3 people when they don't possess that capability. So how do we as coaches avoid this? It comes back to my earlier point about honesty. Be honest with the student, it doesn't need to be negative honesty, the key is to deliver the message positively I.e., "we're not quite there yet but let's work on x, y or z to get you there".

Hopefully, this is giving you some food for thought, in summary the key things;

Try using visual images and comparisons in your coaching
Be honest with your students, if they're not at the level they believe they are then you need  to give them the honest message in a constructive way to protect their confidence in future.

Finally, like all blog posts this is personal opinion, neither right or wrong just a view, I hope it provides some thought or content for further discussion.