A hot topic in coaching today centers around the concept of athlete ‘buy-in,’ but what is it? How do you know your players are doing it? How do you secure it?

Research and anecdotal evidence from coaches across various levels of sport suggest that buy-in means commitment. Athletes are committed to the sport, the team, each other, to themselves and to you.

As the coach, it is your job to teach, educate, value and inspire every athlete. It is your job to help athletes identify, achieve and exceed their potential. If you can do that, no doubt you will secure the athlete’s buy-in.

RELATED CONTENT: How to persuade your athletes to be leaders

There are a number of strategies you can integrate into your coaching to do exactly that:

1. Build high-quality coach-athlete relationships

Coaching has traditionally focused on enhancing athletes’ physical, technical and strategic skills. The coach–athlete relationship is now acknowledged as a critical feature of coaching and a major force in promoting the development of athletes’ psycho-social skills as well.

A coach-athlete relationship can be defined as the interconnection of interpersonal thoughts, feelings and behaviors. Some of the active ingredients needed for the relationship to flourish are communicating, interacting, disclosing, sharing, leading, following, listening, helping, guiding and nurturing. Perhaps the biggest two ingredients are trust and respect.

The coaches’ ability to create high-quality working relationships is paramount because the quality of your relationships can determine the quality of the athlete experience and the outcome.

RELATED CONTENT: The pre-preseason: The power of plyometrics

2. Find out what motivates your athlete

Why do athletes participate and compete? How is that important? Inevitably, different things motivate each player. External trophies and awards motivate some, others play for the challenge, others play because their friends are playing, and others play for their parents’ attention or because they are expected to play. Whatever the reason, establishing their reason ‘why’ is key. It helps you tailor how you do what you do to meet the various different needs that exist.

In an effort to figure out what motivates each of your athletes, ask them to think ahead to the end of their career or time in your program. What would things look like if everything went ideally for them? Their answers to this question provide you with tremendous insights on their motivation.

3. Engage and involve your athletes

Involve your athletes in creating the ground rules for the program and individual sessions. Use their insights and aspirations to co-create and establish team and individual goals.

Challenge athletes to provide input on drills, or let them design them and plan practice. Don’t be concerned about it being a ‘bad’ practice as oftentimes the practice is productive because the athletes are willing to work hard in the drills they choose.

By soliciting and valuing their input, you clearly show your athletes all of you are in this together. You provide them co-ownership of the team and they are more likely to buy-in to the program because it becomes ‘our’ program.

RELATED CONTENT: The pre-preseason: Turning fitness into a family affair

4. Make your practices challenging, fun and competitive whenever possible. 

Athletes often spend more time practicing than competing. Motivating athletes for a game typically is easy. Getting and staying sufficiently motivated for practices is much more difficult.

To combat this problem, make sure your practices are as exciting and challenging as possible. Invest the time to plan practices. Use drills to get your athletes’ juices flowing. Engage the athlete mentally through challenging drills. Perhaps integrate a peer-coaching philosophy and give them responsibility for supporting and guiding the development and success of others.

Integrate competition, stretch and challenge. Encourage failure. If failure is permissible, athletes will inevitably try harder. Foster a growth mindset, which is key when emphasizing learning and development over outcome.

5. Value and appreciate your athletes’ roles, especially your reserves 

Some say a person’s greatest need is the need to feel appreciated. This is especially true of athletes.

Your players need to feel like what they are doing has important value to the team. While your starters tend to get a lot of praise, you also need to acknowledge your reserves for the important little things they do for the team. Often, their important contributions are overlooked. Recognize the people who get less attention in the group because they’re not in the glamorous positions. Thank them publicly for their unselfishness and do it in front of their peers.

6. Be a role model of hard work and commitment

Your work ethic and commitment level as a coach sends an unmistakable message. Come to practice early. Conduct an organized, high-quality practice. Stay late. Be willing to go the extra mile. Be committed all of the time.

7. Show your athletes you care about them.

One of the best ways to secure athlete ‘buy-in’ is to show them you care about them. When people feel appreciated and cared for, they extend the same loyalty back to you. They understand you value them as people, as a person and not just as an athlete.

Having reviewed these various strategies, now consider which of these you do unbelievably well. Now identify where there is room for improvement. Jot down some key actions that you can integrate in order to secure athlete buy-in.

Sarah McQuade is an independent coach education consultant, owner and director of e.t.c coaching consultants and co-director with The Coach Learning Group. To learn more about accessing how-to coach skills workshops click the Coaching Skills button at www.etcoachingconsultants.com. 

To learn more, visit St. Vincent Sports Performance