Clarity Through Less

If I threw 10 tennis balls at you, how many would you catch? If I threw 2 at you, now how many would you catch?

Albert Einstein once said,

He rated simplicity as the highest level of intellect. In sport there are so many factors interacting with and influencing each other that it very quickly becomes complex. The best coaches in the world have the ability to make the complex simple.

To achieve simplicity one of the areas we can most influence as coaches is the clarity of the learning focus. As we are the ones who generally get to plan and organise learning for the players, it’s imperative we are crystal clear on what the learning focus is for any session and are then able to extend that to our other coaches and players. An easy way to provide greater clarity for others is to reduce the number of messages we are trying to deliver.

So again -

If I threw 10 tennis balls at you, how many would you catch? If I threw 2 at you, now how many would you catch?

I really like this analogy because if we think of each tennis ball as a message or learning focus being thrown at the learner, then:

1. With 10 tennis balls it’s unlikely that the learner will catch all of them as there are just too many for them to handle.

2. If there are 10 tennis balls and the learner only catches a couple of them, we have no control on which ones are caught, so have no understanding which messages have been taken onboard.

3. In a team setting where we throw the 10 balls to multiple learners, we have no control on what balls they catch. This means we potentially have learners walking away with completely different messages, creating even less clarity for the team.

4. If we just throw 2 balls, we’re more likely to have the learner catch both and we’ll have greater clarity on what the players have actually learnt!

In 2025 as you plan your sessions you can ask yourself these 3 questions:

1. How clear am I on the learning focus for this particular session?

2. How does this particular activity support the learning focus for the session?

3. Looking over my session, how many tennis balls am I throwing at my learners?

The challenge in the execution is to have the discipline to stick to the focus you have planned. One great way to check how well you have done with clarity of your messages is to ask the players at the end of the activity or training what the key learning was. You’ll get some immediate feedback from them whether you were clear and didn’t muddy the waters with too many different messages!

Doug Lemov is one of the best in the world at showcasing what great coaching can look like - The Coach’s Guide to Teaching is a must read for all coaches.

Here is a great article from Doug on ensuring our messaging stays true to our learning focus when we provide feedback during training.

Want to discuss anything you’ve read? Email us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

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