How to be a Two-Percenter Part One: Being a Brilliant Coach

Andy Cope, is one author of The Art of Being Brilliant (Cope & Whittaker, 2012), the other author being Andy Whittaker. I first met Andy Cope around three years ago and was inspired by his enthusiasm for life. I was left contemplating my own approach to many aspects of my life including work, training, relationships and coaching. Everything that Cope and Whittaker (2012) discuss in The Art of Being Brilliant (TOABB) is fairly common sense, although it is not that common. In this article, I want to give an overview of the two-percenter ideology and reflect on how positive psychology can improve the everyday practice of a strength and conditioning coach working in Soccer.

So, what is a two-percenter? In general, the population of the United Kingdom are unlikely to win the happiness world cup! Brits are often fed negative messages by the media about falling stock markets and adverse weather warnings (even when it’s hot outside) which spreads in to our psyche, in to our work and family life. In short, we can be pretty good at being unhappy. However, there are some of us out there that are consistently happy and these people aren’t satisfied by material interests and wealth but instead they are content with the challenges they are set in life and they endeavour to spread happiness to those around them. If you imagine the happiness of the population on a scale, the top two percent are consistently happy and as a result they are productive and successful. The bottom two percent are inherently unhappy and never satisfied in life, Cope and Whittaker (2012) call these ‘mood hoovers’. The other ninety-six percent of the population are somewhere in the middle and there are steps that can be taken to propel ourselves upward on the scale of happiness. This picture of the wider population is reflected in soccer. Negative outlooks can be detrimental to training and performance so as effective practitioners we must look to give out positive energy so to achieve success with our interventions.

The reason that only a small amount of us fit in to the two-percenter category is that it’s too easy to be negative. In our soccer clubs, it can be far easier to blame the circumstances around us than it is to find a strategy to overcome problems. It’s also are easier to be a problem finder than a problem solver. Cope and Whittaker (2012) spell this out clearly in TOABB and they encourage the reader to become a believer in positive psychology while adopting some of the principles that are fundamental to the two-percenter lifestyle.

Focus on what you are good at

Most strength and conditioning coaches will intend to take a positive approach to their work in soccer and we are aware of many words banded around by psychologists that evoke a positive mind-set to what we do. If we want to improve ourselves and those around us we must change our focus from the negative and weak points of our capabilities to what we excel at instead. Too often we critique ourselves and find a strategy to improve what we are bad at as opposed to what we can do well. A lot of energy is devoted to improving things that may have little effect on our performances instead of things that will take us to the next level. Cope and Whittaker (2012) use the example of the workplace appraisal; an employee may score excellent on nine out of ten appraisal categories but the tenth category is technology skills. Time and money is invested in improving the employee’s computer skills looking beyond the fact that their people skills or customer service is what makes them so productive. The focus should be to keep improving what they’re good at and increase productivity further. This is sometimes reflected in the realms of strength and conditioning and soccer. A player can have many attributes that make them excel and be effective but one insignificant negative could be an area in which a lot of training is done to improve it. This does not mean that weaknesses should be ignored and not dealt with, it means that if we want to develop ourselves and those around us then we cannot get stuck on one issue that may not develop ourselves.

The 90-10 principle

In TOABB, Cope and Whittaker (2012) describe a principle called the 90-10 principle which is a philosophical and strategic approach that can be used by strength and conditioning coaches. This principle states that ten-percent of life is made up of exactly what happens to us, ninety-percent is decided by how we react to the other ten-percent. What this means is that we don’t always have control over what happens to us in coaching. For example, at some point one of our players will sustain a serious injury. A team will concede a goal in injury time. There will be confrontation among coaching and support members within this ten-percent. However, within the ninety-percent we can control how we feel about certain situations. Think of what happens if a team reacts negatively to a last-minute loss; players argue, blame is passed, confidence within the team decreases, as a result the team enter a cycle of negativity causing detriment to all involved (okay… it doesn’t always happen like this). However, if the team lose admitting their disappointment, reflect upon the things that they did well, they construct a plan on how to improve for the next game they then have unity within the team and a much better chance at bouncing back for the next performance. We are going to face adverse situations in our performances as coaches, so we need to know how we are going to deal with them so to maintain progress. When you next have a problem to deal with in the context of strength and conditioning, how you react will be crucial to the outcome.

Filtering information

As human beings, we are faced with thousands of stimuli at any moment and our brains are filtering these in order to work out which are important and how to process the information. Filtering underpins the above principles of how we approach our strength and conditioning practice. The first filter that we use is deletion by which we chose to ignore the things that we perceive as irrelevant. In an example relevant to soccer, we may filter out the things that are important and valuable in the people that we work with. If we turn up to coach our players expecting some controversy or negativity then we might delete all of the good things going on around them. That then puts us in a position where it feels as though what we have to work with isn’t really worth it. The second filter that we use is distortion, and this is where we adjust the information to fit our view of the world. Sticking with the example of a training session, we may use distortion to accept bad standards and dress it up as okay so that the view of our own practice is satisfied. The final filter is generalization in which we apply one view of information to all other similar pieces of information. Generalisation is understandable in some situations for example, when we get on a bicycle we expect it to be ridden in a certain way. However, when we have different abilities within a training session generalization will not work. Any bunch of fifteen year olds may be of the same age but they have different experiences and physical capabilities and therefore cannot be treated in the same way.

We filter information that we deem important, shape them to our world view and then apply them to other things that our similar. Having an understanding of these filters allows us to be positive and open in our approach to those that we work with in strength and conditioning.

The intention of this article has been to encourage the everyday strength and conditioning coach reading it to reflect on the principles of positive psychology in context of their performance. These principles offer strength and conditioning coaches platforms to reflect on their practice. Positivity impacts everyday life and it’s not always about being a great strength and conditioning coach but instead brilliant person. In the next article, I am going to write about how being a positive person is fundamental to being a great and successful coach.

References

Cope, A., & Whittaker, A. (2012). The art of being brilliant. Chichester, West Sussex: Capstone Publishing LTD.