why coaching is not easy.

Hi Team,

This is an entry from Coach Weiwei which I found quite meaningful.

It will be useful to try to think from your coach's angle sometimes. This will help you understand the full picture!

I just wanna share.

by Siow Wei Wei on Sunday, November 7, 2010 at 12:04am

I am not someone who expresses myself well face to face, but I have a lot of things that i wanna share after trying to coach all this while:

Coaching/routine planning is torturous. It's not a burden. It's just painful.

I'm often going through internal struggles during trainings because

1) I wish I can be part of the group to make the stunts happen when the success rate faces an all new low, but i can't because I have committed myself to coaching/planning and I do not want to upset the equilibrium by constantly changing players to try out the stunts.

2) I am always trying to figure out the easiest way to get the stunts mechanism across in order to cut short the learning curve.

3) If the stunts cannot be hit, I feel that I have let the team down by not being a good coach.

I am not you, i cannot be you to carry out the pitching as a base/full up as a flyer/catching as a mid-tier. But I have to coach you to do it. If you fail to do it, it's not your fault, it's mine.

It's not that i look down on any one of you. I wish I can help everyone succeed in doing the most amazing stunts, carrying out the most wonderful transition pyramids and gaining the most memorable experience in their cheer journey. But there's a limitation to the things I am able to do. Unless I am your mum, I am not able to constantly monitor your physical fitness, flexibility and strength training. I can only trust that you will do it yourselves during your non-training times.

What I mean is this: You have an old injury before, be more hardworking, go do physio and gain back your muscles. You have weak arm strength for mid-tiering, go do your standard push ups. You lack core muscles, go gym/run/do your sit-ups. There must be something, anything, that you can do to help yourself.

There's a routine which i wish you all can carry out, and I wish that you guys can constantly practise it to achieve consistency. No single team is able to perfect their nationals routine within 1 month of training. If they can, nationals will not be held only once a year. I hope none of you will give up when stunts fail. Because this will not be what cheer is about in the first place.

Having lousy players is not a reason for not being able to execute a good routine. Having a weak mentality is.