What’s In The Cup?

“Exactly,” said Master Ryutan. “You are like this cup; you are full of ideas. You come and ask for teaching, but your cup is full; I can’t put anything in. Before I can teach you, you’ll have to empty your cup.”

Many have heard variations of this old Buddhist quote. To paraphrase, before one is able to learn new concepts, one must first be open to them. If one is connected to existing ideas then learning new ideas is very difficult.

This is a concept that we encounter every day of our coaching lives, from both directions. As learners, we must engage with an open mind, and be ready to change ), for example when interacting in online coaching groups. As John Wooden said so eloquently, “Not all change in progress, but all progress is change.”

Over 5! hours of presentations from the 1st VfB
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As teachers, the ‘cup theory’ is one that we must be constantly aware of. When we speak with players, most of the time we assume (perhaps fairly, perhaps not) that players accept our suggestions on face value and attempt to implement them. The reality is that unless we are the only coach that player has ever had (and perhaps not even then), the process is much more complex. If the coach makes a suggestion to do (change) something, the player is not erasing their existing knowledge to replace it, they are adding to their existing knowledge and trying to fit it all together. The look of confusion is (often) not due to not understanding the new information, but trying to fit it all together.

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One particular player comes to mind who had a footwork problem. We worked on it directly without much success. By accident one day we were watching and discussing video and it turned out that his entire concept of his role was different to mine. Once our concepts aligned, the technical part was easy. It turned out that it wasn’t a footwork problem at all. Understanding what was in our cups saved hours and hours of most likely fruitless and frustrating work.

Before changing any part of a player’s technical or tactical skillset be sure that you know what is in that player’s cup.

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The total of 82 practical Coaching Tips can be found here and here.

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Read about the great new Vyacheslav Platonov coaching book here.