Thrive On Challenge

Transform Your Culture

Working with Parents

How Sleep Deprivation is Hurting Athletes and Six Habits for Better Sleep

The Cost of Wakefulness

In 2003, researchers from Penn and Harvard Medical Schools wanted to see if people could avoid the “recommended” amount of sleep without suffering serious negative consequences.

Over a two-week period, the researchers studied four groups of people. Group 1 went three days without sleep. Groups 2, 3, and 4 received four, six, and eight hours sleep every night, respectively. All the groups were continuously monitored and tested for behavioral, physiological, and mental changes.

For people who like to avoid sleep, the results were not positive. The researchers saw significant deficiencies in all cognitive and physical tasks, with no noticeable difference between four-hour and six-hour groups. The most alarming result was that the four-hour and six-hour groups produced performance deficiencies equal to two nights of total sleep deprivation (as reflected after Nights 1 and 2 from Group 1’s results).

Essentially, sleeping just two hours less than the recommended eight hours for two consecutive nights led to the same negative consequences as back-to-back all-nighters.

The researchers also discovered another startling fact: People were unaware of the deficits. So often, people pride themselves on being able to go without sleep, but these people don’t realize how significantly the lack of sleep is hurting their performance.

The Benefits of Sleep

Research has shown that when people get a certain amount of sleep (e.g., 7+ hours for adults; 9+ hours for teens; 10+ hours for children), the health benefits are immense. As world-renowned sleep scientist Matthew Walker says, “Sleep is the single-most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body health. Sleep is a life-support system, and it is mother nature’s best effort at immortality.”

The truth is that, as parents and coaches, we don’t take these benefits seriously enough. Typically, our priorities are:

1. Exercise
2. Nutrition
3. Sleep

However, sleep is the most important, and it is the foundation for performance and a healthy life, as illustrated below:

As I have previously written about in coaching articles, not only do we ignore the importance of sleep in our own lives, but we also push our athletes and children to do more training and eat the right things, rather than prioritizing and supporting healthy sleep habits.
Just look at some of the important reasons to get 8+ hours of sleep a night:

• Sleep extends the time it takes to reach physical exhaustion by 30%.
• Sleep significantly improves information and memory retention.
• Sleep improves muscle strength and cardiovascular function.
• Your ability to cool the body, perspire, remove lactic acid, and achieve muscle recovery all depend on getting the proper amount of sleep.
• If you sleep less than 8 hours, 70% of your weight loss will be muscle mass, not body fat!

No training program or diet can boast those types of results! However, to achieve them, we must focus more of our energy on ensuring our children and athletes get the proper amount of sleep.

Six Commitments for Better Sleep

It’s harder than ever for kids to get the right amount of sleep. Phones and screen time have presented a new barrier on top of the increasing volume of training sessions and homework. Between the additional workload and the easy access to screen time, it seems impossible for kids to get the necessary amount of sleep in today’s world.
Here are six commitments to consider making as a family or as a team to help your children and athletes get the quality and quantity of sleep that they will need to perform at their best in all areas of their lives:

1. Keep the Room Dark, Quiet, and Cold: Research reveals these 3 conditions are most important for high quality sleep. So get blackout curtains and make sure the room is between 65 and 70 degrees.
2. Power-Down Ritual: A hot shower lowers your core body temperature. When followed by some light stretching, mindfulness activities, or reading, this can provide an ideal mental routine to help you sleep.
3. Leave Phone in Other Room: Get a traditional alarm clock or set your phone’s alarm volume to maximum and put it in the next room over. Not only will you stop wasting time looking at your phone before bed, but you will also be more likely to get up after the first alarm rings and not hit the snooze button.
4. Consistent Bedtime: Due to our internal clock system, researchers have proven a regular routine helps people fall asleep and wake up easier.
5. Avoid Caffeine: It stays in your system much longer than you realize, so avoid it at all costs in the afternoon and evening.
6. Beds Are for Sleeping: Researcher Matthew Walker believes great sleep habits need to be conditioned. By getting rid of the television in the bedroom and avoiding other activities (like homework) in bed we condition ourselves to associate the bed with sleep.

Expect Some Resistance

These simple strategies might face some resistance from wary teenagers. But the outcome can be undeniably beneficial!
For instance, the Texas Tech basketball team introduced their own smart phone policy for the NCAA tournament last year: No cell phones in the rooms on the night before the game! When asked about the policy, the players credited it for helping them reach the NCAA Championship game.

My recommendation is to work with your team and/or child to implement some small changes, which will give them some control while still stressing the benefits of cutting down on screen time.

Sources
Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker

The Five Conversations I Want to Have with Parents

It’s Not About the Shark

In 1974, the young film director, Steven Spielberg, faced a costly, growing problem. He was trying to make a movie about a shark, but he didn’t have a working shark. The mechanical sharks they had built for the movie Jaws wouldn’t stop malfunctioning, and it led to serious delays, causing the film to go seriously over-schedule and overbudget.

When reflecting on his situation, Spielberg, who was an unproven director at the time, said, “I thought my career as a filmmaker was over.”

So, out of necessity, he improvised and ended up filming the movie with very limited scenes in which viewers saw the shark. While many people might have initially seen this as a problem, it ended up being the very reason Jaws would become the most successful film of all time. Not seeing the actual shark until it surfaces late in the film creates a great deal more suspense for the viewer.

As David Niven discusses in his book, It’s Not About the Shark, Spielberg’s problem wasn’t a failing mechanical shark. It was the way he was looking at his problems. And this is so often the case in life. What we see as problems are actually the solutions to our real problems.

When it comes to building a great team culture, the #1 problem cited by coaches is parents. We see parents as our biggest obstacle to getting players to buy into our values of selflessness and personal sacrifice. Now, what if I told you parents weren’t your biggest obstacle, but your greatest asset?

A New Approach: Working with Parents

Coaches can absolutely have a great impact on the lives of the people they coach. But when people are asked who the biggest influence on their life was, the overwhelming majority point to their parents, not a teacher or coach.

This is important for us to remember because we often forget that we are just an extension of the character development that goes on at home. While many coaches have success stories of how we have helped a kid out of a really bad home situation, this is the minority (not the majority!) of kids we will work with.

So, if we are only an extension of the formation going on in the home, then we have a responsibility to work with the parents. In the majority of cases, our message will fall short if it is not being reinforced at home. So, we need parents (not just players!) who are bought into the program’s values.

Another reason I advocate a work-with-parents approach is that poor communication is at the root of many problems within a team. Parents often get a very unfiltered view of their child’s emotions, feelings, and struggles. Building a bridge (not a wall!) between parents and coaches is essential to serve the athletes’ needs, development, and experience.

The New List

My past approach (like that of many other coaches) was to share with my players a list of things I won’t talk with their parents about:

  1. I won’t talk about strategy.
  2. I won’t talk about playing time.
  3. I won’t talk about another person’s child.

What if, instead of giving parents a list of things to NEVER contact you about, you gave them a list of things you WANT them to contact you about? Many of the programs I work with on the college-and-high-school levels have taken this approach with great results.

Is it easy? No. Does it lead to hard conversations? Yes. But most of those conversations meet problems head-on before they snowball, and they help parents and coaches focus on how to best serve the needs of the athlete.

The Conversations I Want to Have

I’ve gone weeks, months, and even entire seasons without realizing a player’s parents were getting divorced, one parent lost their job, their father was in jail, or a close family member was diagnosed with a terminal illness. To prevent us from being the “last one to know” about an athlete’s struggles, opening the lines of communication with parents is important in the following situations:

  1. When something is “up” with your child.You have an unfiltered view of the emotional and mental challenges your child is facing that nobody on the team can see. An email, text, or quick phone call just to inform the coach when you observe something negative (or positive!) can only be helpful.
  2. When something is “up” at home.Home life is challenging. In the past, my players have experienced it all: divorce; the incarceration of a family member; the terminal illness of a family member; even financial struggles. While the coach doesn’t need every detail, we do appreciate being aware of our athletes’ personal challenges, so we can show our support and care.
  3. When you have a serious issue with the coach’s attitude, language, or behaviors.We all screw up! Coaches don’t need to be called out on every mistake, but if it is consistent enough that your opinion of us as a person has changed, then we want to know about it! We want our values to be very clear; not just in what we say at the start of the season, but in everything we do throughout the season.
  4. When something is bothering you for an extended period.We all have things that bother us, and sometimes, we just need some time and space to regain perspective. But if something has been bothering you for an extended period, and the coach may be able to help you gain some clarity and relieve that frustration, then we can make time for you.
  5. You don’t understand why your child is not playing. Most coaches think it’s okay if you don’t agree with their decisions on playing time, but we still want how we determine playing time to be clear to everyone in the program.

Encouraging These Parent Conversations

I encourage coaches on every team we work with to share something similar with their parents. It could be an email, a PowerPoint slide, or just a conversation in pre-season meetings.

It’s helpful to communicate exactly how and when parents should reach out to you. In most situations, it’s important to clarify the medium with which you want them to communicate (phone call, text, or email).

Once parents start reaching out to you and communicating with you, you will have to equip yourself with some strategies to have beneficial conversations. Here are some other articles that could be helpful:

Here’s a fact I know is true for all teams, from youth to professional: Parents and family are a part of our culture—whether we want them to be or not! So, everyone is better served by working together.

Notes

Traumatic or Just Stressful: How to Know When to Pull Your Kid Off the Team

Rats and Depression

In 1967, Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, started some unique research on depression. Seligman and his colleagues created an experiment in which two rats were housed in bordering cages.

In Cage One, when the rat pressed a lever for food, it was given an electric shock first. The rat in Cage Two got food by pressing the bar just like the rat in the first cage; however, the rat in Cage Two got shocked only when the rat in Cage One pressed the lever.

The rat in Cage One experienced stress, but over time, it became tolerant as it recognized that it still got food after the shock. Knowing the shock was coming when it pressed the lever allowed the rat in Cage One to still hold onto some level of control.

The rat in Cage Two experienced stress but had no control over or idea of when it would be shocked. The rat in Cage Two became sensitized to the stress, not tolerant of it.

After running these tests, they found that the rat in Cage One actually experienced some health benefits, while the rat in Cage Two experienced a weakened immune system, weight loss, and was nearly three times more susceptible to cancer.

Seligman and his team tried to reverse the changes by giving the rat in Cage Two its control back, but it was too late; it was too afraid to learn how to help itself.

The Theory of Learned Helplessness

Similar depression and submission to stress and pain can also be found in people. Seligman used his observations on the rats in his study to form links between depression and uncontrollable stressful events that we experience as children. This became the foundation of his groundbreaking Theory of Learned Helplessness.

The theory is based on the idea that we can predict and have some element of control over stress in our life, our stress decreases, and our tolerance increases. But when we experience pain and stress and feel that there is no way to escape it, we feel helpless, and our stress becomes trauma.

I’ve heard the distinction between stress and trauma best explained by Dr. Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz in their book, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog:

“Resilient children are made, not born. The developing brain is most malleable and most sensitive to experience—both good and bad—early in life. Children become resilient as a result of the patterns of stress and of nurturing that they experience early on in life. Consequently, we are also rapidly and easily transformed by trauma when we are young. Though its effects may not always be visible to the untrained eye, when you know what trauma can do to children, sadly, you begin to see its aftermath everywhere.”

Stress or Trauma

As a high-school athlete, I struggled through four years of being coached by a man whose treatment of some players was emotionally abusive. He had good intentions, but multiple players sought psychological counseling for similar issues related to their experience with him. While some athletes did okay in that environment, I struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. Our coach created stress that I wasn’t ready to handle. I’ve since come out the other side and believe I am stronger for it, so it’s debatable whether my parents should have pulled me from the team.

Now, whether it’s bad coaching, bullying teammates, or toxic team culture, nearly every parent is tempted at some stage to pull their kid off the team. As parents, it can be hard for us to see them struggle with the many challenges that sports present. We know the stress that these struggles create can be healthy and build character. But at some stage, these struggles can become unhealthy and harmful, with long-term negative consequences. So, how do we know when enough is enough?

Child-and-Age-Appropriate Stress

As Seligman and others have shown, we can train our brains to deal with stress from an early age. However, not every athlete develops similar strength, speed, or skills in their sport; likewise, not every athlete develops similar tolerance for stress. What is traumatic for one child may only be stressful for another. If you’ve got more than one kid, you definitely know this to be true from an early age!

So, not only should their “struggle be age-appropriate,” as Heath Eslinger says on the Coaching Culture Podcast Episode 90, but their struggle should also be child-appropriate.

This is why a parent is most likely the best person to decide what is appropriate and manageable stress for their child. It can be valuable to seek the opinion of others, but only you know your child best.

4 Questions to Guide Your Decision

The challenges and struggles that athletes face in sports are so wide, and every person and their circumstance is unique. So, the best I can do is give you four questions to ask yourself as you decide whether or not to pull your child from the team.

1. What’s really going on?

Often, our children are unable or afraid to communicate what’s really going on. In my own athletic experience, I never spoke to my parents about what was really going on in closed practices and locker-room talks. Do some fact-finding before you make your decision.

2. What are my child’s options, and do they know they have them?

Remember the critical difference between the two cages of rats: One group had a choice; the other didn’t. Often, kids feel like they don’t have a choice. As an athlete, I played basketball all my life; I didn’t want to give up on my dream, so I didn’t feel like I had any other option than to just keep playing.

3. What previous struggles have they experienced that will prepare them for this one?

We want to prepare them for the road, not the other way around. But have we allowed them to experience other struggles before this? And if so, how have they responded to them?

4. How can I support them through their struggle?

If you decide your child should remain on the team, you’ll need to determine what type of support is both appropriate and healthy. If your child leaves the sport, you’ll need to help them find new areas of life that will challenge them.

I’d love to hear more about your challenge. Shoot me an email at jpnerbun@thriveonchallenge.com

Also, if you are interested in bringing our Healthy Sports Parenting Workshop or Coaching Culture Workshop to your organization, you can learn more here!

Notes

  • Seligman, Martin. Learned Optimism.
  • Perry, Bruce D. The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog.

How to Work with Parents Complaining About Playing Time

We are just getting into the middle of basketball, hockey, and wrestling season in America. Over the last few weeks, nearly every high school and college coach in my mentorship program has faced texts or emails from parents, complaining about their child’s playing time.

Every coach has gotten one of these messages. Sometimes, they are vicious personal attacks. Other times, they start as passive aggressive comments, like:

  • “I am never the type of parent to complain…”
  • “I really appreciate all you do for the boys, but…”
  • “I know I shouldn’t be worried about playing time, but I’m really worried about my daughter…”

In the last year, I’ve worked personally with dozens of coaches and athletic directors, and I’ve realized two things:

  1. It does not matter how much you win, how long you’ve been coaching, or the level you are coaching in; parents will always complain about playing time.
  2. Often, there is a serious disconnect between the player and the parent; they do not share the same perspective or feelings on the matter. It usually takes parents longer than the player to accept their role.

Regardless of the context, in my conversations with these coaches, we keep coming back to our mission and purpose as transformational coaches: We are here for these kids!

If we want to maximize our influence, we have to bite the bullet and find ways to work with parents. While the steps below should be applied loosely, they have been fairly helpful for many coaches this season.

3 Steps to Work with Parents on Playing Time

1. Ask and Listen

Ask the parent, “What am I missing? I get that you don’t agree with my decisions about playing time, and that’s okay!, But what don’t you understand?” Hopefully, you already communicated how you determine playing time at the start of the season and have included a few reminders in your communications with parents throughout the season. (I highly suggest a weekly email—even at the collegiate level!)

Now, when you ask this question, you will often just need listen to them argue why their child should be playing more. I encourage all coaches to thank parents for being willing to share their perspective.

2. Share Your Perspective

You would think winning over 20 Division 1 National Championships would shield you from parent criticism, but not in the case of North Carolina Soccer Coach Anson Dorrance! As early as 2005, he realized the importance of sharing more information with parents, including stats and fitness information from his competitive cauldron (more on that here).

Sharing with parents provides you with the opportunity to:

  • Reinforce how you determine playing time. You should be able to communicate with staff, players, and parents what factors into your playing time decision (e.g., Competitive Cauldron, Commitment, Stats, etc.).
  • Share the truth about their child. Give them the cold, hard facts on where their child falls in these areas.
  • Take steps to move forward. Let them know you have communicated all this to their child (because you have, right?). For example, you can say, “I reminded your son we determine playing time in these categories, and this is where they are right now. Moving forward, three things they could do to increase their chances of more playing time would be: Staying after practice and working for a certain amount of time on a certain skill, getting eight hours of sleep every night to help their energy level during practice, and showing up 15 minutes early to do an additional warm-up and five-minute mental routine.

It’s important to give specifics in all areas—especially the “steps forward”. Often, we suggest athletes should improve their “shooting” or work on their “defense”, but you can up the level of your support by helping them define specific, measurable commitments they can take to improve their play.

3. Ask, “How Can We Support Your Child Together?”

In Episode 65 of the “Coaching Culture Podcast”, conflict management expert Nadia Kyba discusses the importance of moving towards action to resolve conflict. There are five ways people handle conflict:

  1. Avoid
  2. Give In
  3. Stand Your Ground
  4. Compromise
  5. Collaborate

In the case of playing time, Options 1-3 are not healthy. We don’t need to compromise our values just because parents complain!

These three steps aim to shift the focus away from the disagreement and start to collaborate. So, the final piece is to ask, “How can we [both parent and coach] support your son or daughter through this challenge moving forward?”

When we do this, we are taking an athlete-centered approach. Maybe, as a coach, we need to be more transparent, have more one-on-one conversations, change the way we are giving players feedback—or even start giving feedback!

Additionally, an athlete-centered approach encourages and calls parents up, so they can support their child as they accept their role and keep fighting (more on that here).

Related Articles

Also, if you are looking for more strategies like these, my book, Calling Up: Discovering Your Journey to Transformational Leadership, is packed full of strategies, with clear examples of what they look like in action!

3 Reasons Coaches Should Listen to Parents’ Concerns

Even About Things Parents Shouldn’t Be Concerned About

5 Minute Read or Listen on iTunes

“I would like to meet with you to discuss my child.”

Oh, the dreaded text a coach gets the evening after a hard practice or game! This text or email can lead to a few sleepless nights, and can even cause us to dread our job. We avoid these meetings like the plague, and try to insulate ourselves from parent attacks by creating rules about things we will not discuss with them.

In a perfect world, parents would respect our rules to not discuss certain subjects. Amy Carney has written a great list of these subjects in her blog, Why Coaches Hate Over Involved Parents. According to Carney, here are the 6 things parents should not debate with their child’s coach:

1. Playing Time

2. Positioning

3. Winning

4. All-Star Teams

5. Teammates

6. Team Strategy

However, as we all know, the sporting world is far from perfect. So, what do we do when a parent breaks the rules and brings up one of the taboo subjects above?

Educate and Establish Boundaries

Parents should not bring up any of these concerns with their child’s coach, but the only way to prevent these awkward conversations is to establish some boundaries and promote healthy sports parenting early in the relationship. In the past, I have shared ways to work with parents from day one, and then continue a good working relationship throughout the season. Here are some: 5 Commitments Coach Can Make to Work with Parents 

If we make the effort, step up, and engage with parents in a beneficial manner by educating them on what is really important, then we will find that they will want to have conversations about these taboo topics less and less.

Another beneficial tactic is to suggest — not mandate — that parents sit down with their children to advocate and encourage them to meet with the coach about these issues first.

So, what do you do if, even after all avenues have been explored, they still think their child deserves more playing time or a larger role, or they have ideas of their own about the strategy you should take?

Should we stand back and let these parents infect our team culture as they run their mouth to their child or other parents on the team?

We must remember that, oftentimes, their point of view is not in line with the thoughts and wishes of their children. Therefore, we cannot punish the child, but we can’t let overbearing parents continue to infect our team culture, either.

So, what’s the solution?

Listen

“Many a man would rather you heard his story than granted his request.” –Philip Stanhope, the Fourth Earl of Chesterfield

Sometimes, the best and easiest option is to simply stand back and listen, or better yet, solicit their suggestions outright by asking, “What do you think?”

We may question whether we are stupid or weak for allowing the very thing that we have tried so hard to avoid, but there are many benefits to keeping an open mind.

Here are three reasons why we should be willing to listen:

1. We Care for the Child

When we listen, we are able to understand more and more about the challenges that the child is facing in their home environment. While you may start by listening to their complaints about playing time, player roles, and strategy, these conversations can often lead to significantly more important things.

Parents have gone on to share with me that they are going through a separation, they have lost their jobs, or have even had their spouse incarcerated. I think this was pretty valuable information to learn when it came to coaching their child! The truth is that parents really have a positive or negative impact on the experience and development of their child. By listening to them, we show we care, and they are more likely to work with us than against us.

2. We Want a Healthy Culture

Remember that if the parents don’t share their thoughts with you, then they will be sharing it with somebody else. This could be their child, other parents on the team, or even school administrators. Whether we like it or not, parents are now part of our team culture, and we are better served if they understand the strategy, player roles, and playing time just as well as our players do.

3. We Want to Educate Them

Simply put, they don’t know what they don’t know! Anytime parents come to us, we have an opportunity to help educate them on what really matters! Yes, they sometimes complain about things we don’t want to discuss. However, we don’t have to actually discuss it at that time. We can simply thank them for sharing their concerns.

After they have finished getting it off their chests, ask them this: “What are you most concerned about for your child and their future?” Shift the discussion to a conversation about their child the person, not their child the athlete.

Why is this so important to our culture and the lives of the athletes?

Well, when I reflect on my own life and role as a coach versus my role as a father, I know one thing to be true: The father I am to my children is more significant than the coach I am to my players.

Yes, we can have a significant impact on the lives of young people as coaches, but we have far greater power and responsibility as parents.

Character formation starts in the home, NOT on the field or the court. So, if we have an opportunity to serve parents, then we have a responsibility to engage with them, regardless of how uncomfortable it may be!

Call to Action

“People crave two things above all else. They seek appreciation and they want someone to listen to them.” –Andrew Sobel

Appreciate parents for the positive things they do in their child’s life. Remember that we get more of what we focus on. Listen to their concerns. Then, help them to shift their focus onto more important topics for their child.

-J.P. Nerbun