Join the Club

by Ryan Krzykowski

I coach to help young people compete joyfully, guiding them on a journey toward becoming resilient, selfless encouragers who are known by their love for each other.

That’s why I do what I do as a coach.  That is my Coaching Purpose Statement.  Six key words/ideas: compete, joy, resilient, selfless, encouraging, love.  Sounds nice, doesn’t it?  All worthy goals.  Of course if those words aren’t front of mind then they’re simply words whose impact is likely to be minimal.  So…actually living into my stated purpose requires a certain level of commitment and mindfulness.  What does the goal of working to cultivate those qualities in young people actually look like?  No doubt it looks different for different people on different days.  But there is one idea we have implemented in our high school program that’s designed to move our young men in the right direction.  Weight room lifting club shirts.

This is definitely not an original idea of mine — we utilized something rather similar in the program I began my career with over 25 years ago.  So I’m not trying to take any undue credit.  But I have been thrilled at what we’ve seen from our kids in just the past couple months.  As coaches, we know the weight room is the foundation — the key to getting results on the field.  Prior to introducing lifting club shirts, our kids’ effort in the weight room was pretty good most of the time but it was nothing very special.  In an effort to motivate and get them to step up their level of buy-in, our staff developed ten strength/athleticism standards for each position group.  We’d actually adopted these standards in previous years and had shared them with the team, but they hadn’t been connected to anything tangible.  A player who reached a standard wasn’t recognized for it in any way.  That changed this summer.  Now a player who achieves 6 out of the 10 standards works out in a special white sleeveless t-shirt marked “Owl”.  (We are the Owls).  Meeting 7 standards makes someone a “Barred Owl”, and that shirt is navy blue.  Eight or more makes someone a “Great Horned Owl”, and gets him a black workout shirt.  Seeing our players enthusiastically huddle around the standards/record board before a workout, checking to see who’s earned what color, and if anyone is going to be “shirting up”…that’s a big change in our weight room.  Seeing some of our historically less engaged players battling through tough reps, knowing that successfully moving that weight gets him a higher level shirt…pretty satisfying.  And the results were there — after May testing we had 3 Great Horned Owls in the program (pictured above).  After testing last week (late July), we had 12.  There’s no way those gains won’t show up on the field this fall.

Tying all this back to my six key words:

Compete – a player pushing himself to achieve a standard, while at the same time raising the overall intensity level for our entire team

Joy – the satisfied look on his face when he gets to wear the next level shirt

Resilient – pushing through missed lifts or disappointing tests, knowing that there’s a chance to meet the standard next time if he keeps grinding

Selfless/Encouraging – the roar of teammates making noise for their teammate who’s about to attempt a new record/max (one of the best sounds in the entire world)

Love – what binds all this together.  It’s impossible to push oneself, experience joy, and be an encourager to others apart from love.

Let’s Coach With Purpose…