Original episode & show notes | Raw transcript
This document breaks down the core concepts from the podcast conversation between Kolie Moore and Patrick Smith, a PhD student in behavior analysis and endurance coach. The discussion offers a framework for understanding the psychological dynamics of the coach-athlete relationship and provides powerful tools for enhancing athletic performance and well-being.
The conversation begins with a fundamental principle: effective communication requires a shared language.
The Problem of Assumption: A coach, as the expert, might hear an athlete’s question and immediately provide an answer based on their own understanding. However, the athlete, lacking technical vocabulary, may be describing their experience in imprecise terms. This creates a disconnect where the coach answers a question the athlete didn’t truly ask.
The Coach’s Responsibility: The expert’s primary job is not just to provide answers, but to first ensure both parties are starting from the same place. This is achieved through a process of clarification:
“What exactly are you asking?”
“Describe that feeling to me in more detail.”
“Is it more like this, or more like that?”
The “Rat” Analogy: When two people say the word “rat,” one might picture a brown sewer rat while the other pictures a white lab rat. The word is the same, but the underlying concept is different. This illustrates the subtle inaccuracies in language that must be clarified.
Remote Coaching Challenges: This process is even more critical in remote coaching, which lacks the rich, non-verbal data of in-person interaction (body language, casual asides). Without this data, a coach must be even more deliberate in asking questions to avoid filling in the blanks with incorrect assumptions.
A central theme is the concept of “rules” as defined in behavior analysis. This definition is more technical than the everyday meaning.
What is a Rule? A rule is a “verbal stimulus” that describes a contingency—an if-then relationship.
What is “Verbal”? In this context, “verbal” isn’t just spoken words. It’s anything that functions as language, including written text, body language, or gestures.
The Danger of Rigid Rule-Governed Behavior: While rules are useful for learning, problems arise when an athlete’s behavior becomes rigidly governed by them. This means they follow the rule inflexibly, without sensitivity to the immediate context.
The “Rickroll” Effect: Patrick uses this metaphor to describe the unintended negative consequences of a coach hammering a single rule too hard. The “watts-per-kilogram” rule, when applied rigidly, can lead an athlete to focus exclusively on weight loss, ignoring strength gain and potentially developing an eating disorder. The coach didn’t intend for that outcome, but their inflexible application of the rule caused it.
Other Examples:
A sprinter who always follows the rule “don’t kick until 200m to go” will lose on a downhill finish where a 400m sprint is required.
An athlete who rigidly follows the rule “always stay out of the wind” will have poor positioning and never be able to respond to critical attacks.
If rigid rule-following is the problem, the solution is psychological flexibility.
Context Sensitivity: The goal is to develop an athlete who is highly responsive to the context—their body’s signals, the behavior of competitors, the weather, the race course. Experience teaches an athlete to prioritize which contextual cues matter and which don’t, refining their “decision tree.”
Values Clarification: This is the process of helping an athlete identify their core guiding principles.
Values vs. Goals: Goals are finite and achievable (e.g., “win this race,” “achieve 5 w/kg”). Values are ongoing descriptors of action that are never truly “completed” (e.g., being “aggressive,” “sincere,” “resilient,” or “development-focused”). Goals are the steps you take in service of your values.
Values are Context-Dependent: A boxer’s primary value in the ring might be “aggressiveness.” However, applying that same value with the same intensity in a personal relationship would be disastrous. The athlete must learn which values are most important in which contexts (practice vs. race vs. personal life).
The Power of Values-Driven Behavior: When an athlete has clarity on their core values, it provides a powerful motivator for change. For the athlete stuck “sitting in,” the thought, “What I am doing right now is not consistent with my value of ‘courageous racing,’” can be the impetus to break the old rule and move up in the pack.
This section covers the mechanisms behind behavior change.
Operant Theory: The core idea is that behavior changes as a result of its consequences.
Reinforcement: Coaches reinforce certain behaviors, often without realizing it. If a coach praises hard workouts but is silent on rest days, they are reinforcing working out over resting, even if they verbally tell the athlete to rest.
Workability: This is the criterion used to evaluate behavior. The key question is not “was it good or bad?” but “did it work?” Crucially, “working” must be defined as moving the athlete closer to their chosen values. A behavior that achieves a short-term goal but violates a core value (e.g., cheating to win) would be deemed “unworkable.”
Excessive post-race analysis can be as detrimental as a complete lack of reflection.
The Button Study: This experiment revealed that when a task’s rules suddenly changed, participants on both extremes of environmental sensitivity—those who noticed very little and those who noticed everything—were the slowest to adapt.
The Goldilocks Zone: The most adaptable individuals were in the middle. They were sensitive enough to notice that the old way wasn’t working but not so hyper-analytical that they became paralyzed or lost sight of the main goal. For an athlete, this means being able to reflect on key moments without getting lost in an infinite list of “what ifs.”
Disappointment is an inevitable part of pursuing challenging endeavors. The podcast offers a two-step process for handling it, rooted in acceptance.
Acceptance: The first step is to accept the feeling of discomfort. Our capacity for language allows us to constantly imagine better pasts or futures (“I could have been faster”), which makes discomfort a constant possibility. Acknowledge that this internal dialogue is normal and will happen.
Values Clarification: Instead of immediately jumping to “what will I do better next time?”, ask a deeper question: “What is the important value to me that is causing this discomfort?” The pain of a poor result often stems from a dissonance between what happened and what is deeply meaningful to us (e.g., a value of “competence” or “being competitive”). This re-frames the disappointment as a signal of what truly matters to you, making it a source of information rather than just pain.