Welcome to the Coaching Chronicles, a little series I’ll do whenever I learn something — or think I’ve learned something and might actually be totally wrong about! — as a beach volleyball coach.
I understand the irony of the headline above. Here is a story focused on the perils of the word don’t, and why I as a coach and parent do my best — and all too often fail — not to use it with my athletes and children, and that very word is used twice in the headline.
To lean on the word “don’t,” to steer – or attempt to steer, really – your athletes or children, if you’re a parent, away from a behavior you’d prefer not to see is perhaps the most natural instinct amongst coaches and parents, in my brief experience as both a coach and a parent.
We see a player getting their hands together early before they pass, and we say “don’t get your hands together early!” – and then, on the very next rep, they get their hands together early.
We see a blocker poke an overpass directly into the awaiting platform of a covering player, and we say “don’t poke the overpass” – and then, on the next opportunity, they poke the daggum overpass.
We line up our drive on a par-4 with water down the left side and we think, “don’t miss left!” – and then, plunk, splash, and suddenly we’re dropping two, hitting three, and all but guaranteed a bogey.
I could go on and on. You get the point.
This phenomenon baffles us as coaches. It’s maddening, frustrating, bewildering. Are the athletes stubborn? Not listening? Ignoring us? Are they uncoachable and intentionally doing what we specifically told them not to do?
While they might be stubborn or not listening well in that particular moment — they’re athletes, after all — they are not uncoachable.
In reality, it is us, the coaches, who are the problem in that instance. Or, at least, that’s what I think.
We’re using the wrong messaging.
James Clear put it well when he described his process when making major life decisions, writing: “It generally feels better to run toward something than to run away from something. Focus on what is pulling you in, not what you’re trying to avoid.”
In other words: Don’t use don’t.
It was my first instinct when I began coaching beach volleyball at Florida State in the fall of 2024. I’d see something I didn’t like, or a behavior I’d prefer to remove, and I’d immediately respond, without a second thought, believing to my core I was doing the right thing, to reply: “Don’t do that.”
I thought I was being a good coach.
I was not.
Why is this?
Dr. Nate Zinsser, in his book The Confident Mind, wrote, on page 88: “Thinking about what you don’t want to happen only reinforces your brain’s familiarity with it, making it only more likely that it will actually happen.”
But…why?
“Your nervous system,” he explains later, on page 125, “doesn’t distinguish very well between something you actually do and something you vividly imagine doing.”
What Zinsser is saying is that when we say “don’t do this action” our nervous system bypasses the critical word that is “don’t” and only processes whatever the action is.
“Don’t” is cerebral; an action is physiological.
The player’s nervous system, during our attempt to steer them away from a certain action, is actually doing the opposite: It’s pushing that athlete towards the very behavior we no longer want to see.
Dr. Bob Rotella, a sports psychologist who wrote the seminal book, “Golf is not a game of perfect,” relayed a story from longtime PGA Tour pro Corey Pavin, who had a crack at winning The Masters and donning that coveted green jacket.
“Well,” Pavin said, “I’m cruising along Thursday, Friday and Saturday. I’m eight under coming into 16, with birdie chances ahead of me. I get up to 16, and for some reason, I tell myself at the last second, ‘Don’t hit it into the water.’
“Splash.
‘I go home that night, and I tell myself ‘Make sure you don’t do that tomorrow.’ On Sunday, I get back to 8 under. I’m in position to win the thing, and I get up to 16, and all I can do is remember what I did yesterday and think ‘Oh, God, don’t do that again today.’
“And splash again. Two mental mistakes and he was out of the hunt to win the Masters… “The brain, at some level, cannot seem the understand the word ‘don’t.’ If your last thought before striking the ball is ‘don’t hit it in the pond’ the brain is likely to react by telling your muscles to hit it in the pond.”
When we as coaches tell our athletes to not do a certain action, or if the athletes, like Pavin, tell themselves to not do something, “it only multiplies his chances of hitting it badly,” Rotella writes.
Since coming across much of this research, it has made it a fun and creative challenge for me as a coach: How can I go about fixing or removing bad habits or actions without using the word “don’t?”
It fosters a more positive environment as well, for, as Clear mentioned, it’s a totally different energy when you’re building towards something rather than pulling away from something.
It’s a focus on the positive, not the negative.
A shift towards what we want, and away from something we, ahem, don’t want.
