22 Motivate LAST PLACE: The Simple Words That Change an Athlete's Career

Coach Rodo shares why simple words of motivation can be the difference between an athlete quitting and becoming a champion. This episode is built around a powerful story from Rodo’s paramilitary-style training for Kalamazoo Central High School athletes.

He highlights a freshman girl who struggled with every drill but refused to quit. Rodo uses her resilience to discuss why coaches often neglect the "last place" kid, and why it's critical to coach them up to the "middle of the pack."

Rodo issues a challenge to all coaches: motivate the struggling athlete the same way you motivate your star, and understand that being a student-athlete is a demanding, full-time job. He emphasizes the "no man left behind" military mindset applied to coaching.

#AthleteMotivation #CoachingAdvice #YouthSports #LastPlaceAthlete #WinningRegardless #KalamazooCentral

(01:00) - The Training: Working with Kalamazoo Central High School athletes in paramilitary drills.
(02:30) - The Freshman Who Wouldn't Quit: Her struggles prove that effort cannot be taught.
(04:45) - Corner Cutting: Why cutting corners hurts your teammates, not just yourself.
(07:20) - The Breakthrough: How simple words of encouragement instantly fixed her technique.
(09:05) - Coach Rodo’s Philosophy: Why you must motivate the last-place athlete.
(10:45) - Student-Athlete Life: Why being a student athlete is a job.
(12:30) - No Man Left Behind: Applying the military mindset to coaching every single kid.
(15:40) - The Coach’s Impact: Choosing to make an athlete, never to break them.

Transcript

0:00

We as coaches have to understand the impact of just simple words So in a year and a half, she's gonna be good at everything. I was back to doing what I love to do, which is be around kids, talking to kids, teaching them, be a positive motivator to these kids. Motivate last place the same way you would motivate first place, to get last place into the middle of the pack. Welcome everybody to another edition of Coach Rodo's podcast, Winning Regardless. Today, I wanna talk about motivating athletes and mainly young athletes, high school. So a friend of mine and I have the fortune and the gift of being granted the opportunity to train. uh the Kalamazoo Central High School varsity boys and girls, but you know, it's not just the varsity. We train the high school freshmen, JVM varsity. And the reason I said varsity because most of the time it's the varsity boys that show up. But now that the girls have gotten involved, have freshmen girls showing up and freshmen boys and all that starting to show up as well. So what we do is a paramilitary training. We put them through a uh physical, pretty much military physical fitness, but we also add some speed and agility along with along with stretching and things of that sort. And we've been doing it for a while. And the coach told us this summer that the kids... have been doing it with us for three years. This group has particularly has been doing it with us for three years. And he told us how good it's been for them and how it's shown and how they can see the difference in their bodies and in the physical movement due to the training type of training that we do. it's pretty difficult. especially if you've never done it before. So yesterday we were training and you know, I always was told that I was a good motivator and just, you know, it's just something that came natural. It's just, you know, because to motivate someone and to actually see them be motivated by your words or by your positive affirmation is to me, especially when it's a young person, when it's a child, it's like, it just does something to me, you know. And as it should to every coach, you know. oh So yesterday we were training and there's the girls were training with our boys and I had to we had the boys go first because of course they've been doing our training for a while. And some of these girls were new and pretty much the whole team was growth team was new to doing this training with us. So, you know, I always told them that they're example. And simply be it simply because. these girls have never done it before, so they need to do it right so these girls will know how to do it right. There's a particular young lady there who, you know, she was struggling through the whole, everything that we did, but the one thing that I noticed is she never quit, even if she was in last place doing... One of the calisthenics that we had, she was coming in last, because it's a tough one. You know, you've got to do a push-up, and then you crawl up to your hands, and then you walk your hands out, you do a push-up, and we have a length that you have to do it. So it's a very difficult thing to do. And this girl, I mean... And we say go through the line and she stopped before the line. Gary run down and my buddy said, no, no, no, no, come back. I said before that she didn't complain. He said, no, no, no, come back behind the line and till you cross the line. She didn't complain. She didn't cry. She didn't want. She just turned around, came back, got down, did it across the line. So, you know, we continue it. And, you know, as we're going, you know, the thing that I like to say is. If you're cutting corners when we're doing things, you know, we always say that you're hurting yourself. But what I told the kids is you're actually hurting your teammates. You know, I believe that if you're cutting corners, you're hurting your teammates. And the simple fact is he might get backdoored and expect you to be there to help and you're not there helping. Well, because you cut corner on the backdoor drill one time. You know, you never know when that corner cutting is going to show up. in your games or even in practice that'll get you sat on the bench. So, you know, again, we're going through drills. So now we already, we're over to the footwork part of the drills. And, you know, the thing about it is you have to, it's tiring. So you have to motivate these kids. You have to, you know, you have to clap. You have to yell. You have, and when I say yell, I don't mean like, you know. be derogatory and yell not like you have to, all right, let's go, we all got it, we got it, we got it, let's go, come on baby, you can do it, you can get it, that's all right, that's all right, let's go. So you have to give them those words. And this particular young lady again was struggling, but you know, it was, again, she just would not quit or give up. She didn't speed up to get through the drill so that she didn't have to do. the hurdles so she could skip a hurdle or two. She messed up and not stop until she got through every hurdle. So I'm noticing this about her. And you know, I can see her getting frustrated, but again, not quitting. And again, I love that because that is something you can never teach a kid. You can never teach them to not quit. If they're gonna quit, they're gonna quit. It's just like with effort. Effort is something that you can never teach a kid. If they got effort, they got effort. And the ones that don't, you'll know. And so, you know, as she's coming through, I said to her, I said, listen, don't worry about it. This is your first time ever doing this drill. I said, bye, about the third time doing it, third or fourth day of you doing it, it's going to be nothing. And she smiles and so she runs back. She's getting it. So we're going as we're going, maybe about a half hour later, going through it three times. I'm looking at her. She picked it up. She picked up the hardest part of the drill that she struggled with the footwork, which was the hurdle stepping over, jumping over it sideways. She struggled. She picked it up after about the third or fourth time of going through it. And when I told her, that's what I'm talking about. See, look at how you picked that up that quick, the smile on her face. It just, you know, as a coach, again, it warmed my heart because this was a girl who she didn't quit and was last. All of a sudden, now she's keeping up with the pack. We as coaches have to understand the impact of just simple words of motivation for a kid. We can't just see that that kid is struggling so they're gonna continue to struggle and they're the last ones so we don't give them no attention. We're concentrating on the ones that's doing it great. We're concentrating on the ones that's doing it right because after all, we've been doing it for a while. They've been doing it for while but we forgetting about the one that's struggling that this is their first time ever doing it. And when I say about motivating, we have to motivate every kid. I mean, it's unbelievable how much, you're really around kids, you realize you have to even motivate the best of them. Because even they come in some days not feeling like doing their job. And to me, high school basketball and college basketball is a job because these kids got so much schoolwork powered upon them. You know, and like I used to tell my son, you don't have to go get a job per se when you're a student athlete because I know how you got, you bring home a 50 pound backpack every day. You got a lot of homework to do. You got practice you got to do maybe twice a day. When you gonna go in and when you go on your weekend. Well, you know, if you're a player, you probably got a tournament or something, or you got to practice or something. you know, if you play another sport, you got, you know, batting practice, like he had baseball batting practice, you know, on the weekends that he didn't have basketball. So I feel that going to school and being a student athlete is a job to me. So again, you have to motivate at all ages. And again, as coaches, we forget that. I like to try to, you know, know all of the kids' names because as my friend who did, was on my podcast, reminded me and told me everybody deserves to have their names called. And the great thing about this young lady is first, I didn't know she was a freshman. And so that means she was coming from eighth grade and the ninth grade. So she had, of course, she'd never seen this drill before. And again, to just be told that she can pick it up, that you can do it, you know, the motivation that she had to do it. At the end of practice, I was giving all of the kids this hydration. Drink because a lot of was catching crimson. This is what I take for my crimp So I was giving them, you know tell them to grab a couple of my of course I say grab one or two I leave with maybe three or four in my bag and I had 60 70 So, you know, they never listen again in high school kids, so you don't expect them to you live with that So, of course, that's a fun thing. But as I'm doing that this young lady walks over to me and she thanks me and tells me her name and then asked my name and I tell her, she says to me, thank you, those were very nice words, you're a very nice young, you're a very nice man. And I mean, I appreciated that because again, she struggled and as a coach, it's up to me. to make sure that no man left behind. That's my military mindset. After all, we were doing a pair of military drills. So no man can be left behind. So even waiting behind the last person and that last person who we were waiting behind ended up catching up to the middle of the pack after going through it three or four times just from hearing that you could pick it up, you'll get it. And again, I didn't know she was a freshman in Erg and me and her coach was talking about it and I was telling them about her and how I thought that the fact that she doesn't quit is phenomenal. And he said, and the thing about her is she's not that good yet. But the fact that she's at everything, she works hard at everything and she doesn't quit. So in a year and a half, she's gonna be good at everything. I said, and the thing about it is watching her learn that ladder drill at the speed in which she did, I can see with the right words of encouragement, with the motivation, the want, and the ability to be able to get better. I can see it happening for her. Because again, I mean, you had to be there to see it. we need to be more motivational towards those ones that are at the back of the pack because you never know. Just a few words can get them to the middle of the pack. And after all, that's all we need them to do. If we can get you to the middle of the pack, you can be a contributor to winning. You know, and the way that we do that is taking the time to maybe coach up the one that's at the bottom of the pack. You know, we have as coaches the ability to make or break an athlete. Me, myself, I choose to make them. I never want to break an athlete. I never want an athlete. My words are what made them stop loving whatever the sport is, whatever it is that I may have broken them from. And sometimes, you know, I've seen coaches do that. And it's not, to me, it's not a good thing, you know, because you never know what you broke, you know. So as a... as a coach, believe motivation is your number one tool of getting the kids to perform. And you have several different ways of motivating. When I used to talk to my kids when they were in elementary, they were, you know. They knew me. They loved me. I loved them and they knew I did. you know, was because I could motivate a kid that was jogging down the court and I knew he's faster and I could say with his parents sitting up on the stairs with a smile on my face, man, you see this size 13. If you don't get down the court, it's gonna help you get up the court. And then he started laughing and sprinting. You know, I could say that to the kids because he knew there's no way I'm gonna put my foot in his behind. But it was my way of saying to him, man, get up the court, let's go. I know you can work harder. I know you faster than that. But it was in a motivational way instead of a barking at him type of way. Now with my son and my other two little kids that I used to call my little nephews, with them, it was different. But you know, again, it was never a beat down and a breakdown session with them. was always uh my motivation, my motivational way of talking to them was different. I used different types of languages because they lived with me, you know, or they stayed the night at the house and you know, their dad was pretty much the same as me. so, you know, was motivating them was different. But as coaches, it's up to us to figure out what motivates the children, what motivates the kids, what makes the, the, the school player want to listen to you, what makes him or her believe in the words that you say. And it might be the way that you say it to them. My way of motivating might be different than somebody else's. But the thing about it is we all have to get back to motivating instead of pretending like... This is not part of the job, pretending like, I shouldn't have to motivate you because you should want to be here. No, they do want to be there, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to continue to motivate them again. Like I said, got now these guys are seniors. They've been with us this be their fourth year. And I still have to get on some of them. I still catch some them cutting corners and I still have to call them out for it. Because sometimes it's part of the game. uh It's part of coaching. It's part of being a motivator. To let them know I see everything. And then one thing they know about me is I'll call you out about it. But at the same time, when you're doing what I just caught you cutting a corner on, now that I called you out and you're going double hard, I'm gonna tell you, that's some good shit. You should have did that the first time. That's what I'm talking about. Let's go. Again, it's the way that you motivate. I don't like to leave my athletes with a, I got in a behind thought and that's the end of it. That's not fair to them. That's not right to them because when I get in your behind, I expect you to correct the behavior. How did you know if you corrected the behavior if I didn't tell you? to my satisfaction. And you already know my satisfaction is high. So that means I know that you're work extra hard now that I called you out to get to a higher satisfaction level. So therefore I'm gonna tell you that's the shit I'm talking about right there, baby. Let's go. Let's go. Be a leader. Motivational words. You know, just like. The last place person. It's all right, we gonna be good. You gonna get there, don't worry about it. Let's go, just keep working. Long as you don't quit. Long as you don't quit. And that's the number one thing. You have to choose the words of motivation. When you're going to motivate, how you're going to motivate. You know, I love to tell kids they're doing great just as well as I do when they're not doing great. And I don't, you know, like to tear them down and then leave them torn down again. Like I said, I like to, you know. and not even tear him down with my words, just let him know, know, it's, you know, we can do better. You know, we can be better. And it took me a lot of years to get to that point of my coaching. I mean, I was never demonic because I was never coached by a demonic coach. You know, I mean, I was fortunate in that aspect, you know, that Paul Cook was a good coach. So I didn't, you know. was it was never demonstrative towards my players. Now the referees, that's a different story. But you know, I guess that was because I was a referee. I, you know, felt that I should, that I did know everything. But also as a referee, I had to understand that there's, you ref a certain style too. You know, you ref according to the game. So they're reffing according to that game. You just happen to be coaching it. So, you know, but when they was terrible, I let them know, you know, but again, I was never, you know, demonstrative coach to my players and I was always highly motivated. And I guess I had missed it once my son left, and went to high school and then went to college to play ball. You know, having coached it so long. And then when my buddy asked me to come and do this, the motivation factor oh for me came in to where I was motivated every day because I was back to doing what I love to do, which is be around kids, talking to kids, teaching them, motivating them. that feeling that you get to where you're anxious for it every year now. Because you get to be around the game at a higher level. I love to travel and go watch these guys play. uh Now this year I get to go watch the girls play because it's going to be girls before the boys. seeing them in our program and then getting to watch them play, it's going to be a great thing. And you will hear me out there motivating them. you'll hear me trying to be a positive force, trying to be, you know, what we saw coaches as when we were younger. So, you know, what I really want to say again is be a positive motivator to these kids. Motivate last place the same way you would motivate first place, to get last place into the middle of the pack. all about how you motivate them with the words you say. It's all about how you treat them. That's also a way of motivation. I would like to thank you for tuning in to another episode of Coach Rodo's Winning Regardless podcast. And you can find us wherever you listen to your podcast at.