A Thoughtful Excerpt
This is an excerpt from an interview at The Athletic with the coach of Marta Kostyuk.
Kostyuk is a young, rising tennis star, and her coach is remarkably thoughtful. Here's the excerpt:
"A coach can be right and still be unhelpful,” Zaniewska wrote.
“You can be completely right about what is happening — you can understand the tactical problem, the emotional pattern, the moment where the player is losing connection. And still, if you say it at the wrong time, in the wrong way, or from the wrong place, it might not land. It might make the player more confused, more dependent, more irritated, or more aware of something they were already trying to manage.
“I think a lot of good coaching lives in that uncomfortable space. Not in the dramatic intervention, but in the restraint before it.”
The reason I'm using this is because it applies to more than tennis or even athletics in general. Every relationship in our lives involves "helpful" suggestions flowing back and forth between us. We all instinctively know that what Zaniewska says is true, but this was a precise encapsulation of how it works.
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