Young Coach, Old-School Mindset

Explore why young coaches default to the old-school methods they grew up with and how to bridge the gap with today's athletes.

By Scott K. Wilder · For Coaches

If you're in your 30s or 40s, you may be coaching the way you were coached. Today's athletes are asking for something different.

Picture a coach in their mid-30s. Played in college. Maybe captained a team. Loves the game.

Then practice starts. One player drops their head after a miss. Another is checking a phone at the water break. A third says their knee hurts, and not in a "tough it out" way.

And the old script starts rising. Pick your head up. Phones away. Push through it.

Except it doesn't land the way it landed on them.

And the coach, who is good at the job, is left wondering what changed. Is it me? Is it them? Usually it's neither. It's the gap between two mindsets.

I know this spot. I grew up in the old playbook, and I captained teams in high school and again in college. That playbook built real toughness. I'm not here to knock it.

But here's what I don't hear said out loud. These coaches aren't out of touch because they're old. They're young. Young enough to remember playing. And still, the mindset they inherited is a generation behind the athletes in front of them.

Why you coach the way you were coached

Most coaches never get taught how to coach. They get taught how to play. And they absorb how their own coaches acted.

Researchers at Georgia Southern University asked 15 novice coaches to recall how their own coaches had treated them. Some had learned controlling methods from those coaches, and felt those methods were sometimes the only option. Most didn't know the terms "autonomy support" or "control," and couldn't reliably sort what they remembered.

A follow-up case study of three novice coaches found that what they had learned, formally and informally, shaped their coaching philosophy. Sometimes their behavior even undercut the philosophy they said they believed in.

A caution. These are small studies, and the first was a conference presentation, not a journal article. But it rings true.

Then there's the blind spot. Researchers writing in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living note that coaches often have limited self-awareness. They cite evidence that athletes' ratings of coaching matched what observers saw better than coaches' own ratings did.

Translation: you may think you're being firm. They may be hearing something else.

What today's athletes are asking for

Let's be fair. "Kids these days" is as old as sports. So take this with a grain of salt.

In 2019, researchers at Michigan State University led by Dan Gould published one of the first studies on Gen Z athletes, based on what coaches and sport science providers told them. They described these athletes as compassionate, accepting of diversity, and strong visual learners. They also reported short attention spans, heavy phone use, and difficulty with adversity. Their advice: set clear expectations, explain the purpose of drills, ask open-ended questions, give athletes choices and responsibilities, and hold them accountable.

A separate small study interviewed Gen Z soccer players. They valued coaches who stay calm instead of yelling, who care, who know the sport, and who involve the team in decisions.

Notice what's missing from both lists. Nobody asked for lower standards.

That's the part I'd underline. Explaining the why isn't giving in. It's the difference between an athlete who complies and an athlete who commits. That's my take, not a finding, but I think it's worth testing in your own practices.

Why this is more than a feelings issue

A 2025 study in the journal Motivation and Emotion followed 72 student-athletes in Montreal using daily diaries and heart rate variability. Controlling tactics, like public criticism and arbitrary punishments, increased acute stress and wore down long-term wellbeing. Coaches who encouraged choice and collaboration built resilience and helped protect athletes against burnout. (I'm relying on the university's summary here, not the full paper.)

The world your athletes live in has changed too. In one study of college athletes, 61% said they had played through pain, and 36% of those got hurt even more. Among 2,011 youth athletes, highly specialized ones were 1.45 times more likely to report an overuse injury. And in a controlled study of 20 soccer players, 30 minutes or more on phone apps led to worse passing decisions. All small or early. All worth noticing.

Don't throw out the playbook. Translate it.

These are my suggestions, drawn from the research. They aren't findings themselves.

"Because I said so" becomes "Here's why." One sentence of purpose. The standard stays exactly the same.

Public call-outs become private corrections. Praise out loud. Correct quietly.

"Push through it" becomes "Tell me what kind of hurt." Teach the difference between effort discomfort and injury pain, and make it safe to say which one it is.

Phone rants become phone rules. Simple, shared, and the same for everyone.

Silence or yelling after a mistake becomes a reset. At Game Ready Mindset we teach three steps: Acknowledge, Release, Concentrate. A few seconds that turn one mistake back into one play.

A self-check you can do this week

Film ten minutes of practice. Count your commands, your questions, and your praise.

Ask your athletes: "What's one thing I do that helps you play your best? What's one thing that gets in the way?"

Write down three things you do as a coach that you inherited. Keep one. Change one. Drop one.

You're not behind. You're in the middle.

You can still demand a lot. You can still win the 50/50 ball. You can still hold the line.

None of this is easy. Changing a habit you picked up at fifteen takes more than a new playbook. It takes noticing.

The shift is in how you get there. Explain more. Control less. Notice what's under the behavior.

Keep the grit. Update the approach. That's what I mean by a Game Ready Mindset.

Where do you feel the pull between old and new? I'd like to hear.

Sources

Drawing Upon Previous Experience: Autonomy Support and Control in Novice Coaches (Langdon, Culp and Benish, 2019 conference presentation)

Previous experiences of novice coaches and their coach-created motivational climate (Benish, Langdon and Culp, 2021)

Re-visiting systematic observation: A pedagogical tool to support coach learning and development (Cope et al., 2022)

How can you coach Gen Z athletes? (Michigan State University)

Preferred Coaching Styles in Youth Sports: A Qualitative Inquiry of Soccer Players from Generation Z (Georgia Southern thesis)

Controlling coaching tactics shatter athletes' wellbeing, says new study (University of Surrey, 2025)

Why College Athletes Play Through Pain During Competition (Waldron and White)

Specialization, participation volume contribute to youth athlete injury risk (Post et al., 2016)

Effect of exposure time to smartphone apps on passing decision-making in male soccer athletes

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), a Master's in Business Administration 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 and the forthcoming book Compete in Any Weather.