In my PT clinic, I better have a good reason for asking a patient to do an exercise, or get up and down off the ground, or walk every day, or check their blood pressure, or let me stretch them out into sometimes painful ranges of motion. There better be a why, and usually, it better be a good one.
This idea of ‘reasons’ was drilled into me when I was a student and out on my clinical rotations. Every time I’d come up with a plan for a patient, each of my Clinical instructors, whether they were in cahoots with each other or not, I’ll never know, would drill me ‘why this exercsie? Why this many sets? Why that many reps? What if it’s too hard or too easy for them? What if it makes them hurt? What will you tell them if they come in really sore the next day?’
This clinical reasoning is absolutely necessary in medicine and rehabilitation. It forces me to make great decisions on behalf of my patients. It forces me to think in terms of progressions and regressions.
It has bled into other areas of my life. I find myself consistently asking ‘why’ in planning my soccer practices, in conversations with my husband (I’ll always remember when we were talking about getting married, asking him ‘why’ he wanted to get married. He thought I meant why he wanted to marry ME, but I meant married in general. Like , what about our relationship would change if we got married? That was a long conversation that gave me some insight into what he thought marriage was and what we each expected out of it. )
If your players ever asked you ‘coach, why are we doing this?’ you better have a good reason, and you better stick to that reason. If you’re doing a passing drill to work on speed and accuracy, you have to focus on speed and accuracy. You can’t get picky about effort, focus, concentration (of course, all of those things might improve speed and accuracy), you have to make sure you’re getting done what you set out to get done. You have to have a reason and an answer to Why?
I like to assign an ‘objective’ next to each drill in my practice plan. That way I know there’s 1 thing to focus on, and to look for and give feedback on that 1 thing.
My challenge to you is to look for your reasons for why you do a certain drill, behave a certain way, or ask things to be done in a certain way. You better have a good reason. If you don’t, I challenge you to find a good reason and change how you are doing things.
