Coaching Through Form Loss and Team Slumps
How coaches can lead high school and college teams through a slump without compromising their culture or system.
Ask GRM
GAME READY MINDSET® | GAME READY MINDSET® | FOR COACHES | High School and College Soccer
COACHING THROUGH FORM LOSS AND TEAM SLUMPS
How to Lead Your Team Through Poor Results Without Losing the Culture You've Built
High School and College Baseball
Game Ready Mindset® is a sports mental performance company that provides consulting, coaching and products for high school and college baseball athletes and teams. Our approach combines the mental, physical and emotional sides of performance — built on decades of experience working with elite athletes, teams and some of the world’s largest companies.
Every program goes through a run of poor results. The difference between programs that recover quickly and those that spiral is not talent. It is the cultural and mental infrastructure the coach has built before the run starts. Poor results test culture. They do not create it. If the culture is strong, the poor run is temporary. If the culture is not built, the poor run exposes it.
WHAT TO DO WHEN RESULTS TURN
STEP
WHY IT MATTERS
1
Separate results from effort and process
The first error coaches make during a poor run is treating all three as the same problem. They are not. Results are often influenced by factors outside the team's control. Effort and process are always within the team's control. Address those. Results follow.
2
Run a team Weather Check
Before you address tactics or results, find out where your team actually is. A team-wide Stormy state cannot receive tactical information effectively. Name the collective state first. Then address the content.
3
Do not abandon the system
The temptation during poor results is to change everything. Resist it. A poor run is not evidence that the system does not work. It is a test of whether the culture will hold under pressure. The teams that stay with their process during adversity are the ones that emerge from it with a stronger culture than they entered with.
4
Identify what is within control and focus there
In a team meeting after a poor result: what did we control? Pressing intensity. Body language. Set piece organization. Reset speed after mistakes. Track those. Win those. The result will follow when the process is right.
5
Use the Hook Exercise collectively
Reconnect the team to their shared why. Not the scoreline. Not the league position. The reason this group plays together and what they are building this season. This is not motivation. It is re-alignment.
THE BODY LANGUAGE SIGNAL DURING A POOR RUN
The most visible sign that a team slump is becoming a cultural crisis is body language contagion. One player's collapsed posture becomes the team's energy within seconds. Coaches who catch this early and name it — “Energy check — what do we have?” — interrupt the spread before it becomes a team-wide state.
During poor runs, enforce body language standards with the same rigor as tactical standards. A player who walks instead of pressing, whose head drops after a conceded goal, is making a cultural choice as much as a tactical one. Name it. Reset it. Continue.
Game Ready Mindset™ | Scott K. Wilder | Text/Call: 415-205-6060
Scott@Coachwilder.com | gamereadymindset.co
About the author
Scott K. Wilder is the founder of Game Ready Mindset™, a program and platform for teams and athletic programs, working with players, position groups, and teams in baseball, soccer, softball, and volleyball. He holds a Master’s from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (now Sofia University), an MBA from New York University, and a Master’s in International Studies and Conflict Resolution from The Johns Hopkins University, with coaching credentials from Georgetown University, Brian Cain’s MPM Program, the National Federation of High Schools, and FC Barcelona Football Club. He is the author of Millennial Leaders, Find What Energizes You (just published), and Compete in Any Weather.