Speak To The Child Within

Nicknamed ‘Le Professeur’, Arsène Wenger is credited with changing the trajectory of English football.

While technically not a professor, he is undoubtedly worldly and thoughtful, and was one of the few coaches of his time capable of translating outside ideas into football. He was an early advocate of nutrition, an early adopter of analytics, and a lifelong student of the psychology of human beings.

Wenger called these elements ‘invisible training’, and saw them as key to a player being able to progress in their development.

“I was focused on all of the things that contribute to performance besides training,” he writes in his autobiography. “Dietary regimes, massage, mental preparation, sleep, quality of life, the people the players had around them. The way a player lives, in a state of constant preparation. A player could do all his training, and then outside the club he might squander all the benefits.”

You might wonder what’s so revolutionary about nutrition and sleep and mental skills. It all sounds pretty modern and mainstream, right? Well, these quotes aren’t Wenger talking about himself while coaching Arsenal, they are him describing his time as head coach of Nancy, between 1984 and 1987.

The Ultimate Developer

Wenger’s teams were known for playing elegant football, but his coaching craft was equally as graceful.

He considered himself a developer of young men, and he has a long and distinguished history of helping players reach levels that others couldn’t foresee.

Patrick Vieira played for AC Milan just five times all season before Wenger brought him to Arsenal. Likewise, Dennis Bergkamp was playing so poorly at Inter Milan that a local newspaper awarded him “Donkey of the Week”. Thierry Henry was unsettled at Juventus and scored just three goals the season before reuniting with Wenger in London (It was Wenger who gave Henry his professional debut, at age 17, for Monaco). Robert Pires had so many on- and off-field issues at Marseille that he boycotted the club. Freddie Ljungberg was hidden away at Halmstad in Sweden, but played so well in an international against England that Wenger signed him without ever seeing him play live.

Arsenal’s Invincibles, the only team to go unbeaten in the Premier League, was choc-full of under-appreciated or under-performing players that Wenger was able to develop. And he did this in a holistic way.

Wenger describes it this way: “I always approached a player as a global human being. Everything interferes and is connected. If you want to know people you have to meet people and ask them questions. Or you just treat him like a machine — he must come in and produce immediately."

The Inner Child

One technique favoured by Wenger comes from deep psychology; the inner child.

Inner child work is used primarily to deal with trauma, but that is not its only utility. The inner child is a portal to the hopes and dreams of an individual, and offers insight into their frameworks for relationships with key people in their lives, and the formation of their worldview.

The inner child gives us a window into what has shaped someone into the person (and player) that sits in front of us. They may be scarred from a difficult family life, or they may be resilient from a difficult family life. They may come from privilege and be driven to carve out their own path, or they may come from privilege and be lazy. They may be responsive to coaching after working with a developer like Arsène Wenger, or skeptical to coaching after working with a tyrant.

And whether you like it or not, these childhood lessons all add up to affect your players’ ability to perform.

“The coach’s role is to make the player understand everything that serves the interests of the game,” Wenger says. “To do this, the coach must speak to the child within each player, to the adolescent he was and the adult he is now. Too often a coach tends to only speak to the adult, issuing commands for performance, victory, reflection, to the detriment of the child who is playing for pleasure, living in the present.”

If you want to know more about who your players really are — ask them questions about their childhood.

Speaking of childhood, this post is sponsored by Momentum Labs, who are bringing mental skills coaching to youth sports.

Mental skills coaching cannot remain exclusive to professional athletes, or families who cannot afford it. Momentum Labs is on a mission to democratize access to sport psychology so your kid can learn to handle failure, build confidence, and perform under whatever pressure they’re dealing with.

Click the banner to learn more.

The Kid In The Driveway

I’ll give you an example to help bring this inner child concept to life — it’s what I call ‘The Kid in the Driveway’.

I use the kid in the driveway as a coaching tool to help elite athletes who may be struggling to handle pressure situations.

The reason it’s called The Kid in the Driveway is because regardless of who you are, it’s a place any of us can immediately transport ourselves back to and vividly recall the games, the joy, and the feelings.

The Kid In The Driveway isn't just about finding joy or recalling the freedom of childhood. It's a way to mentally navigate situations that normally elicit fear. It's a way to frame competition. It's a way to remind players that they've been preparing for high-pressure situations for longer than they think.

Consider the in-game scenarios that The Kid In The Driveway conjures up:

• It's an elimination game (often the Final)

• The game is on the line

• They've got the ball as the clock winds down

• They take the game-winning shot

There's clues here that, to me, say a lot:

This says that players find joy in competing with a worthy opponent (they're not conjuring up landslide victories). It says they want to participate and be central to high-stakes situations. You’re saying you want the responsibility and risk of taking the game-deciding shot.

The Kid In The Driveway is not fearful.

The Kid In The Driveway is not thinking about the ramifications of missing the shot.

The Kid In The Driveway is not passively watching the game pass them by.

The Kid In The Driveway is not standing on the sidelines.

The fear, the anxiety, the thought, the perceived pressure, the worry, the imposter syndrome, the lack of confidence, the shame...that's all added later, in adulthood. The Kid In The Driveway wanted to take the game-defining shot, and if they missed, they bounced up and went again.

The Kid In The Driveway is more than just about joy or freedom.

It's a reminder that we actually want to do hard things.

It's a reminder that joy comes from competing against the best.

It's a reminder that we're inherently bold, even in the face of pressure.

We talk a lot about how childhoods shape us (the traditional focus on trauma, for instance) but it can also be the other way around.

When we're learning to frame the world, who were we? The Child In The Driveway shows us that we were brave and took risks and lead with actions.

So, when our players get into pressure-packed situations as adults, we can take them back to a place where they've already embodied the traits that they would be helpful for them to thrive.

They've been preparing for this their whole lives.

Out on the driveway.

Cody’s Notes

• Don’t forget to speak to the inner child of your players, remembering that it houses a lot of their hopes, dreams, aspirations, and belief.

• An easy way to start is to ask your players why they started playing their sport, which family members would come and watch them play, and who fostered their love of the sport the most.

• You can also speak to your own inner child to look for cues about your leadership style, how you think about the world and the people in it, and your own aspirations.

• Don’t forget to check out Momentum Labs.