Top Five Tips for Integrating a New Athlete in Your Squad
Written by Rohan Short
Sooner or later as your coaching experience grows – you may be asked to take on a new athlete. But how do you go about building this new relationship and integrating the athlete into an existing squad? It is completely normal for a new squad member to feel anxious about joining your athletics squad because they may not know exactly what to expect. Even the fear of placing your training gear in the right place or making sure you stay out of the way of other athletes is very real.
As the coach you have only one first impression to make sure that you get a new squad member plugged in and excited about the decision to join your training environment. Making sure you start off on the right foot, not only ensures that your new training squad member keeps coming back – but also helps to create positive word-of-mouth advertising around your program.
Check the Dynamic
Prior to entering into an agreement to welcome a new member on board it is important to assess that this new relationship is a good fit for the athlete, coach and training environment. So, what makes a good fit? A good place to start is to clearly understand the qualities that you are looking for in a prospective squad athlete. It is a very real possibility that you will have potential new recruits who won’t necessarily meet all of your expectations.
“Competition within your squad can always be healthy...but without open and honest dialogue...it can be a path to a destructive squad culture”
Determining how “developable” someone’s motivation or commitment is to the sport is very important to establish how much work will need to be invested (from both sides!) to make this coach-athlete relationship function. Just because you and the new recruit get on like a house on fire doesn’t necessarily mean that the athlete will gel with the rest of the training squad either.
To get a better idea of how they may integrate into this new environment, invite the individual down to observe one of your training sessions to speak to a few other squad members and observe how they interact with them. Having a potential new athlete down for two or three trial sessions is a great to test the dynamic of the group, without locking all parties into a relationship that may not be beneficial for everyone.
2. Don’t Keep it a Secret
A key consideration is how you balance the needs of your existing squad members when a coach considers the opportunity to grow their squad. Adding new members of course means that some of the personal one on one time you could once afford with your current group of athletes – may now be shared with someone completely new or in fact with someone who has the potential to outperform the others!
There is no doubt that a level of competition within your squad can always be healthy. But equally – without the coach maintaining an open and honest dialogue about how their time may be shared, it can be a path to a destructive squad culture longer term that can bring you unstuck.
It is also equally important that the athlete looking to join your group has an open dialogue with other coaches they may have (even school sport teachers) to discuss the benefits, impacts or demands. These may be difficult conversations for some athletes to have – especially those who are looking to make a switch completely away from their current coach.
Encourage athletes to have the conversation with others and reinforce the importance of honesty to build trust. Making sure the athlete has the right people around them to guide these discussions should always be considered. When the conversation is aired – only then will you be able to decide if it is appropriate for you to connect with a current coach to assess the motivations of the athlete in making the switch to your squad.
3. Share Expectations
You only get one real chance to set expectations and “walk the talk”. To make expectations clear from the outset – both athlete and personal coach need to be clear exactly what these expectations are. As a positive first step encourage a new squad athlete to share their expectations of you! This will be the first step in building trust and mutual respect – but will only be realised if the coach is prepared to actively listen! Very few coaches devote the time to write their expectations down together with why they are important. Being able to answer the “why” will help you explain with purpose, confidence and clarity to the athlete what is valued most in the coach-athlete relationship. To gain the commitment and support to effectively implement these expectations – make sure wherever possible you check in with the athlete to get their input and feedback.
Remember – this is a consultative process and not a process of ‘management by committee’! Ultimately as the coach you must decide how the final set of expectations will be applied across the entire squad.
4. Prepare Ahead of Time
To minimise any disruption when adding a new athlete into their first training session – the very least the coach can do is confirm ahead of time that the athlete knows where they need to be, by what time, what they need to bring and wear. It sounds so simple – but often these are the things that a new athlete is always the most anxious about. Ahead of time make sure your all your current athletes are aware that a new face will be joining the group. Upon arrival, introduce the new athlete to others you see around the training environment – including other training squads that may use shared spaces at the same time.
It may be appropriate to give another athlete the responsibility to ‘buddy up’ with the new squad member – but certainly the need for this is all about helping to facilitate social connections. Above all the most important thing is to make sure that you keep things fun. Whilst it might be tempting to off load your years of coaching wisdom in one session to reaffirm that the athlete has made the right choice – use your first opportunity to make sure the athlete enjoys the experience and leaves feeling confident about the next planned session.
“You have a responsibility to recognise and reinforce the performance behaviours that you value the most”
5. Check-In
Building a new athlete-coach relationship is more than delivering a session, collecting fee’s and a providing free training t shirt. As the coach you always have a responsibility to recognise and reinforce the performance behaviours that you value the most. Every new athlete will want to know how they are doing and may expect to see improvements overnight. This is only natural whenever someone takes on a new challenge or experience. The role of the coach is to revisit those prior conversations about what was agreed as a realistic expectation. With so much new information coming at them – some athletes may feel lost, whilst others may race ahead of themselves and forget about the processes that you value. In the beginning of your new coach-athlete relationship you may need to take some extra time to check in more frequently with the athlete. Provide them with some feedback (not all of the bad bits) about what you see, but more importantly seek their feedback to see how the transition is working. The best form of this feedback is often the informal feedback almost every day. Through checking in coaches play a critical role in the athlete’s continued success and motivation to meet performance expectations.
Closing Note
There is often a temptation is to highlight to your new athlete all your own perceived ‘bad habits’ they may have collected during previous experiences. Avoid being too quick to impart your part to a problem on someone else whose background may be different. Instead of these being framed as failures or poor choices – it is important to use them as learning experiences. Never be too quick to judge the work of a former coach by blowing their candle out to make yours shine brighter! All this does is cast a shadow over the learning process and the relationships the athlete may need to be successful moving forward. Rather seek further understanding by asking questions of you athlete – “why have you done it that way in the past? Do you feel it helps you? Are you open to trying it another way to see if it makes a positive difference?”. Work out where the common ground exists. There are a lot of different ways to be successful in coaching – maybe this new athlete can help you learn something you may have never ever considered.
What experiences have you had welcoming a new athlete in your club or squad? Share your advice or lessons with other coaches in the comments below.