One of the first things to ask players at training is some variation of “what’s your intention?”. It’s good practice. It gets players focused by giving meaning. It stops both coach and player going through the motions.
However, often players don’t know how to answer the question and end up with vague answers that is a guess as to what the coach wants to hear.
Worse, if they are bad at defining the intention, players can take longer than they want and get bored and irritated at the lack of activity. One answer is for the coach to decide the intention. This works, yet I feel the ultimate goal is to support players to be able to do it themselves.
How do we get there?
A useful intention is similar to a goal. It needs to be specific, measurable and realistic. I would add that it is externally-based rather than internal in most cases. Most crickters overanalyse technique and forget about actually performing.
If the answer you get doesn’t seem very SMART, you have some work to do.
Follow up
Let’s say you get an answer like “I just want to get back into it and hit some balls”. This is a classic line that sounds like an intention.
It isn’t.
Follow up with something like,
“OK, can you be more specific, what do you want to get out of hitting balls?”
“How will you know you have been successful, what does it look like?”
“How long do you need to do that before you move on to something else?”
“If you could put a number on that, what would it be?”
The follow up questions depend on how clear the intention was, but you get the idea; you’re trying to tease out a more robust answer that sets up the session.
The magic question - the one you ask when you just don’t know what else to ask - is “what does success look like?”
Dealing with resistance
By this point, players can get fed up. Eye-rolling and impatience kicks in with some players. They want to “just start”. Others decide not to try and disengage waiting for the coach to finish talking and not answering questions. Some get disruptive, making unhelpful comments and starting side conversations.
How you deal with this depends on the makeup of the group (personality, age, experience and so on). Most will be motivated by starting the activity so focusing on that is helpful. Others have different motivations, so you have to be flexible.
Click here for some ideas on different motivations and how to handle them
One trick that may work is calling the intention a “mental warm up”. Players understand the need to warm up to be physically and mentally ready, so “warming up your brain” with some thinking is intuitive.
The more you work with a group or player and demand an effective intention, the better they get at setting one. So, stick at it and you’ll see results.