If you ever find you or your squad struggling with motivation or progress, the “What gets measured gets improved” concept from management quru Peter Drucker can help immensely. Here are a few ways I used it when I coached KU:
- When you’re at open gym, rather than just throwing skills whenever you feel like it, have a purpose. Pick a skill you’re working on and say, for example, “I’m going to attempt 50 full-ups at open gym tonight,” then count them as you go. Do this every open gym and I guarantee you’ll make more progress faster.
- I made an “IronHawk” program where my guys would earn their IronHawk t-shirt only if they could hit my targets of a 3.0 GPA, wood-floor standing tuck, mat pass full, rewinds with at least 3 girls on the team, squat 315, clean 225, and dumbbell overhead press 85’s. This clearly showed them what I wanted them working toward, and motivated them to get it by giving them easily measurable numbers.
- When coaching basketball games, I got tired of telling them to start more chants or do more random stunts or tumbling, so I created a printout where I’d tally their chants, skills, drops, etc., and I set a goal for each. Then at halftime, I could give them good feedback on how they were doing. It made us way more consistent, and they liked beating their previous chant scores (I think the record was like 220 chants started in a game (which is nuts), led by Zach Procak.) Email me at corey@cheermoji.com if you want a copy of my Word doc.
- Something I didn’t do but thought would help, is to tally people’s drops during routine practices, which I thought would help people focus on hitting (and help me figure out if I should pull a stunt group or not!). That might sound harsh, but I think seeing those drop numbers would help everyone.
If you want to improve something, you have to measure it. Share on XHow else could this concept help you or your team? Comment below!
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