How Coaches Can Better Support Athletes After Change

As a coach, helping athletes learn how to handle adversity is essential, both for their own growth and the success of the team.

And change is often equivalent to adversity, especially for young athletes.

Here, board-certified family physician and TrueSport Expert, Deborah Gilboa, MD, explains exactly how change impacts athletes and shares ways that coaches can help athletes navigate change.

Understand the Brain's Response to Change.

It's important to understand what's happening to an athlete's brain when confronted with any change, whether good or bad. "Our brains have thousands of functions but only one job," says Gilboa. "That job is to keep us alive. We are currently alive, so any kind of change is a threat to that. Picture a car's seatbelt: When you're driving and you hit the brakes, your seatbelt locks. It doesn't matter if you're avoiding a big accident or avoiding a plastic bag blowing in the road or reaching in the backseat to get something. It's not a decision. It's just a safety mechanism. Our brains are the same way."

Making a team or being promoted to team captain is typically considered a positive change, but because it is still a change, it's likely an athlete will experience stress. They may wonder if they're up to the challenge, if their teammates will be jealous, or if everyone really believes that they can rise to the occasion.

The adolescent brain is still developing and has less experience with change, so while a change may seem minor to you as the coach, your athletes may struggle with that same small shift in the competition schedule or starting lineup. And athletes don't just exist on the playing field: Changes in the rest of their lives can also have a major impact on their ability to perform.

But the good news is that a child reacting negatively to change is a positive thing. "All that means is that their brain is healthy," says Gilboa. "We just see these reactions more often in kids than adults because adults have mostly learned to navigate things on the inside."

Communicate Clearly.

Almost every facet of coaching can be improved by establishing clear lines of communication, and that’s especially true around change.

You can make change less traumatic by letting athletes (and parents) know exactly what's coming and how announcements will be made. For example, if you occasionally text the starting lineup, but sometimes email it or post it on the bulletin board, your mixed method of communication can cause athletes to feel anxiety before the lineup is even posted. Instead, your starting lineup should always come out at the same time in the same style.

Check in on Athletes Going through Change.

Whether an athlete is sidelined with an injury or you just promoted them to a leadership role on the team, it's important to check in. "As the coach, you don't need to present the change as positive or negative, or offer solutions," says Gilboa. "Start with simply saying, 'This is a big change. How are you doing?'"

Often, coaches shy away from these conversations because they don't want to deal with the potential emotions that might come up, or they just don't realize that a change is actually impacting the athlete. Especially when the change is positive—like a promotion to team captain—it's easy to assume that the athlete is thrilled and that there are no issues.

Remember that It's Not about You.

"As a society, we tend to buy into the narrative that if a kid is stressed, we are doing a bad job," says Gilboa. "And whether it's the athletes themselves or their parents who are pushing back against a change you've made, we tend to think that the pushback is a referendum on our leadership, or we see it as a referendum on our character.'"

But Gilboa explains that a negative response to change is not a referendum, it is a reflex. The problems begin when a coach takes a situation personally, rather than acknowledging that change is hard and trying to help athletes navigate it. If you find that you're getting pushback often, she recommends surveying your athletes to find out what's causing the issue. You may not be communicating with them as effectively as you thought, or there might be another way for you to share information.