Like most of us, old-school coaches touched almost every facet of my early life, from academics to dancing and writing. Now that I have over twenty years of experience as a fitness and writing coach, I can unequivocally say coaching that beats people into submission should be actively drummed out of society. It leads to poor self-esteem, decreased performance, and in extreme cases, creates an atmosphere of ongoing abuse like that cultivated in USA Gymnastics.
 

Enlightened vs. Old-School

Coaching is the task of getting people to perform their best, often for a specific goal. Enlightened coaching achieves that objective through a positive attitude and effective motivation methods that foster greater confidence, critical thinking and capacity for joy.

Given that valuable payoff, we might assume enlightened coaching is standard in amateur or professional sports, the workplace, the entertainment industry or within any other goal-oriented activity.

Instead, old-school coaching persists and includes tactics such as:

• making negative appearance- and body-related comments that lead to lifelong eating disorders
• withholding water or rest as a form of punishment
• ignoring injuries, or even encouraging participants to play when injured
• indulging in tirades that belittle participants

Rather than inspire better performance, such behavior causes anxiety, self-doubt and a decreased ability to differentiate between what’s right and wrong, baggage that negatively affects kids and adults alike, often for life.

I have dozens of clients, for example, who believe they’re uncoordinated and lack talent based on negative comments made by coaches and instructors during formative my clients’ formative childhood years.
 

The Real Problem: Opposite Goals

The greatest difference between enlightened and old-school coaching is they have opposite underlying goals. Enlightened coaching focuses on making the most of a person’s potential through positive methods of teaching and reinforcement. The goal of old-school coaching is to win at all costs, even if that means emotionally or physically abusing participants.

In one case involving a Palo Alto, CA, high school, the water polo coach got angry and threw a ball at a player. He broke her nose, yet not only failed to acknowledge the injury, but continued to berate the team.

An even more tragic example is that of USA Gymnastics. The charge of the sport’s national governing body is to train youth for high-level gymnastics competitions with the ultimate goal of producing a winning Olympic team. Beginning in the late 1990s, over 350 female athletes alleged they were sexually assaulted by gym owners, coaches and staff. The abuse flourished within an old-school coaching culture that led young women to believe they were nothing and had no right to complain. If they did, they’d forfeit their dream of making an elite team. Worse, the organization didn’t have a legitimate process for making and investigating complaints.

And that’s just one organization. As of 2019, the U.S. Center for SafeSport, an independent nonprofit focused on ending abuse in sports, had 69 coaches on its “ineligibility” disciplinary list. USA Track & Field had 71 on its list. Just recently, USA Water Polo paid a $14 million settlement to 12 female water polo players who sued the sport’s governing body for not doing enough to protect them from sexual abuse by coach Bahram Hojreh.

Why does old-school coaching persist, often at the highest levels where notoriously abusive coaches and leaders — Bela Karolyi of USA Gymnastics and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein — make so much money?
 

Reason 1: Deep Roots in Culture

Old-school coaching is often deeply rooted in the culture of high-level organizations, schools, teams and companies such as Uber. If such entities are built on toxic habits of harassment, the environment is unlikely to change without a drastic top-down overhaul, which rarely happens.

Such cultures are further protected by those who experience the abuse and somehow forget the misery, or come to see the mistreatment as beneficial, i.e., it made them tougher or culled the wimps. People may even defend their abusive coaches, much as those who defended Penn State University Asst. Football Coach Jerry Sandusky, even after he was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse against boys, many of them members of his youth charity program, The Second Mile.
 

Reason 2: Fans

Fans can unintentionally foster an unhealthy atmosphere of win at all costs. While they may say they love their teams, and delight in stories about players’ lives, fans can also be quick to belittle players’ mistakes, and in turn, demand coaches get tougher.

Alternately, when teams win, fans are often willing to explain away old-school tactics of bullying and belittling players while praising coaches for the win.
 

Reason 3: Erroneous Belief in “Tough Love”

Lastly, many people still subscribe to the erroneous belief “tough love” is the only way to elicit a great performance, when instead the opposite is true.

As Patrick Cohn writes in How Stress Can Affect Sports Performance, “…too much stress, or bad stress, can cause performance anxiety, which hurts your health and does not allow you to play relaxed, confident, and focused in competition.”
 

What You Can Do

If you’d like to help drub out negative coaching in favor of enlightened coaching, the most important action you can take is to report the abuse you experience or witness, and continue to do so until a legitimate effort is made to investigate the incident. Regarding sports in America you can contact the U.S. Center for SafeSport.

If your kids complain about poor coaching, believe them and find another coach or team that exemplifies enlightened coaching.

If you’re a fan of a team, school or company, question coaches’ negative behavior that you witness or read about in credibly-reported articles. Make your displeasure of that behavior known via social media or other public avenues.
 

Conclusion: We Need More Confident/Competent People in the World

Inaction against old-school coaching guarantees the continuance of harmful behavior, that while possibly forcing a great performance in the short term, can cripple people in the long term.

Whereas if we foster enlightened coaching aimed at helping people reach their potential, we’ll decrease the number of people with lifelong trauma and increase the ranks of those who are more confident and possess the skills to succeed.