Teaching Kids the Only Comparison That Matters
Cultivating the habit to focus on progress in their own journey
“Comparison is the thief of joy”
— Variously attributed
During the developmental years, a young athlete’s progress is best measured against themselves (i.e. what they were capable of last week, last month, last year, etc.) rather than comparing themselves to their peers. The myriad processes that govern talent development require the performer and those around them to operate on a longer timeline. Ultimately, staying focussed on development and process goals rather than obsessing over their current standing in age-group competition will provide the best opportunity for them to rank highly among their peers when it really matters.
Naturally, kids need to be given guidance and support to overcome the default tendency to compare themselves to others in their age group. First we must help them to realise that they are on a different growth and development trajectory to their peers. Talent identification has demonstrated that it is not straightforward at all to discern who might eventually emerge as a high performer. Results in junior competition are also not a reliable guide - performance in age-grade competition demonstates suprisingly little relationship to success in the senior ranks.
Being unduly concerned with ranking in junior competition can also be detrimental to continued participation. When kids fail to excel in junior competition or start to feel that they are falling behind other athletes in their age-group this can weigh heavily. Many become despondent, such that they disengage or drop out entirely. Too many kids abort the mission prematurely, or worse still are counted out by coaches and selectors who should know better.
Before rushing to judgement, the grown-ups and the young athletes themselves need to take into account the considerable individual differences in growth and maturation status. It is also important to appreciate that the timeline and trajectory for acquiring the host of different skills and capabilities that are required to be successful likewise vary widely between individuals. Only once the respective growth and development curves converge in late adolescence (or even early adulthood) will it be appropriate to make any definitive judgements.
To use a track and field analogy, it is like a 400m race: only once the stagger unwinds as they enter the final stretch can we clearly see the relative positions of each competitor. Moreover, it is often the competitor who finishes strongest who ultimately triumphs in the end. This is one of the major reasons why it pays for kids to stay focussed on their own lane rather than looking around and constantly comparing themselves to others. If they can hang in there and keep diligently working away they will reap the rewards in the long run.
Making steady progress and finishing strong is generally a sound strategy for long-term success. Indeed, achieving success too early as a junior can paradoxically be detrimental to continued development. Complacency is certainly one of the dangers, but more commonly early success confers status that young athletes then seek to protect and preserve, which in turn becomes an impediment to doing what’s necessary to develop in all areas.
It is likewise important that we help aspiring young performers to realise that the process of becoming better is not linear. Progress does not follow a straight line of consistent improvement. The nature of the journey is that sometimes you must traverse down into a valley in order to ascend to the next, higher peak. When progress stalls, sometimes there needs to be a realisation that what worked to get them here will not be sufficient to make the next step. In this scenario it may be necessary to take steps that will cause them to temporarily perform worse in order to give themselves the opportunity to make the leap. In the meantime, they may even lose to competitors that they would usually beat. Committing to working through the process and remaining steadfast typically requires adopting a different perspective and measuring progress using metrics other than wins and losses.
Language goes a long way here too. For instance, reframing things in terms of attempts rather than failures is not only less negative but also emphasises that triumph is typically the product of multiple attempts. Each attempt offers lessons that bring the performer one step closer to success. This is very different to most people’s notion of failure.
Observing top performers in the sport can provide a useful frame of reference. However, whilst it is true that coming up against top performers in the same age group can provide the most tangible and perhaps chastening sense of relative strengths and weaknesses, depending on their respective biological age and stage of development it can also give a misleading impression. The best approach is to observe the top junior performers in the older age groups, who are close enough in age and stage to be relatable but also further along in their journey so that they offer a clear idea of what the young athlete should be aiming towards and where they might need to improve. Even so, the path towards attaining these heights will be their own.
The final point to emphasise with aspiring young performer is that it is likewise not appropriate to use their peers at school as a reference for comparison. For one thing, they should be setting their sights higher but this is also one of the most common ways that we inadvertently restrict our horizons. The central theme that ties all this together is the necessity for each individual to find and follow their own path. Taking their lead from what all their schoolmates are doing is clearly not the way to go about this.
It is also important to recognise that the prevailing culture within a high school environment does not necessarily prize the virtues that are required for future success! In a scenario where those around you are disinterested and too cool for school, then the appropriate position is to be the outlier. Given the strong pressure to conform it can be a courageous act to dare to be extraordinary. In this context, not following others’ example is a prerequisite for the pursuit of lofty goals in the scholastic or sporting realm (ideally both). To that end, we should help aspiring high performers to cultivate the habit of holding themselves to a different standard if they wish to be successful as a student-athlete.