We all like to see our kids or our fellow new racers doing well and when it’s our child, we often get too involved with coaching. As a parent, we all want to see our children do well but sometimes we can push them too hard or push them into habits that you wouldn’t teach other drivers. Being a parent coach can be one of the most challenging things as a coach but it can be even more challenging for the new driver. Hopefully, these reminders will help with the relationship between you, the parent coach, and the student or your child.
I always try to make it a point to make that separation between father and son … by constantly asking myself, “is the coaching that I’m giving the same as if it wasn’t to my son?”
Remember that you are there for THEM and not YOU. We’ve all thought about how we want our kids to be the next Lewis Hamilton, Scott Dixon, Sebastian Loeb, Travis Pastrana, or Kimi Raikkonen (my personal favorite) but their paths to the top won’t be the same. This is a challenge for me to remember this too. I always try to make it a point to make that separation between father and son (in my case) by constantly asking myself, “is the coaching that I’m giving the same as if it wasn’t to my son?”
Communication is always important when you’re coaching. Sometimes we overlook the stage of what our child’s skill level and push at a level that is beyond their skill or intellect to interpret your instructions. This is counter-productive and frustrating but it can also be dangerous to them and other drivers. Keep in mind of their skill level and if you are looking to teach something complex, then break it down into easy parts. For example, if you are going to teach an out-in-out racing line, consider first teaching the apex and then tracking out on where the kart/car will be when exiting the corner. Then start to work on your turn in point(s) to hit that apex. After they get that down, then look into different braking points, acceleration points, and slip angles, upon entering the corner.
When my oldest son first got into soccer, I ended up being an assistant coach for his recreational soccer league team. I’ve stated before that his first coach was as passionate about soccer as we are about racing. He also has an older son who he helped coach years before and drew from his experiences with him to coach my son’s team. Many of the coaching techniques and theories I learned from that experience carried over into my racing coaching experiences. What I’m trying to emphasize is that coaching from other sports can be utilized in coaching racing. Not necessarily on a physical level but on a conceptual level. When I use terms like, “building your own academy” or “breaking down complex skills into several easier skills” or the Blog Post 17: The Mindset; those are all concepts that I have taken directly from my experiences with coaching soccer. If you coach other sports like basketball, baseball, cricket, football, bike racing, etc. there is something that can always be used for the concept of racing. The other great thing about doing other physically active sports is that you continue to work on your conditioning, eye-to-hand coordination, and being able to strategize at full speed.
The last and most important thing to all of this is remembering to have fun. That’s a constant theme to all of these blogs and it’s for a specific reason. When you’re having fun, no matter what the sport is, it makes it interesting and your child will want to continue to learn more about it. The moment that it’s not fun is the moment when frustration, anger, loss of focus, and overall not a very good time. The overall experience should be fun, challenging, and when your child makes mistakes, don’t focus on the mistake but rather comment on it and move on. Most of the time, they know that they’ve made mistakes. Encourage a conversation about their mistakes and in the best of cases, they will ask you what or how the problem should be solved.
We all know that parent coaching can be extremely difficult and equally rewarding when done correctly. Here’s a quick overview of some of the concepts to remember when coaching your driver as a parent: You are there for them and their experiences will make the sport more fun. You will need to have the mindset of communicating like you would coach any other driver and being able to breakdown complex skills into easier parts, as this will help the learning process for your child. Continuing to use other coaching experiences from other sports, will bring some perspective to some of the challenging racing concepts. The most important part is to have fun as, without this key element, you’re doing a disservice to you and your child. All in all, we enjoy teaching new drivers, and teaching your child should be no different than teaching any other new driver.