I had high hopes for my young nephews back in Ohio. Two of them seemed poised to eventually have their names called in MLB’s inappropriately-named “First Year Player Draft.” But by the time they got to high school, they gave up the diamond for the hardwood of the basketball floor. Why? They didn’t like their baseball coaches at the Babe Ruth and high school levels. No one did, they said. These “coaches” were dead-end characters toting clipboards, according to the lads.
It makes me wonder what will happen to baseball back in central Ohio if the coaches are as popular as a certain bell-ringing hunchbacks who work at a Parisian cathedral named after a college football team? Football? Don’t get me started. I was 13 when I watched OSU deity/coach Woody Hayes punch Clemson’s Charlie Bauman from the sidelines during the Gator Bowl, and this was way before “WTF” became a catch phrase. Believe me, I had choice words for that particular sports moment. I was horrified (but also laughing) because everyone around me worshipped Woody Hayes. And there he was, again leading by example for the youth of Central Ohio.
In this WTF day and age, there are places to turn for young athletes when coaching becomes a problem. One of them is a North Jersey-based company called Inner-Sports. They offer an “inside out” approach to athletic behavioral assessment and mentoring, to quote their website.
Now it is time to quote the founder and managing partner. His name is Garrett Kramer, a former college hockey player with coaching experience and a guy who survived winters at Hamilton College—so he must know a few things about cold hearts. He spoke recently with New York Family Sports over the phone.
How long has Inner-Sports been around?
Inner-Sports has been around as a boutique business for about 15 years, and as my full-time business about four years. I’ve helped athletes behind the scenes for years, and for the last four years I’ve kind of focused on it. It’s my passion, so I said, “What the heck, let’s see where this takes us.”
You are a coach. In your opinion, what is the hardest youth sport to coach?
Uh, I don’t think any of them are hard. I couldn’t really identify one—I don’t think there’s any right or wrong answer. It all depends on the state of mind of the coach in the moment, whether they’re thinking clearly. When you’re at a high-level of well-being everything is easy, including coaching no matter what sport it is. When you are in that low level of well-being, then everything is difficult.
Do you think it is easier now, say, for a small school district that doesn’t have that many available coaches, to teach a coach a sport quickly online?
I think that what you are talking about is more or less the X’s and O’s of coaching. I think there’s a certain aptitude for the X’s and O’s of one sport [that can] easily translate to another sport. I think you could go online or pick up a manual and learn drills very easily. When you are coaching at a high level, like the high school level, those drills are not necessarily pertinent to the game coming up or the game you just played. The real keys to X’s and O’s is understanding how a specific exercise or drill applies to the strength and weaknesses of the team at the current time. That’s a whole different ballgame. That is much tougher. Even tougher than that, though, is the most important part of coaching which is dealing with the state of mind and well-being of your players. You can read sports psychology books and motivational books until the cows come home, but that is something that really takes an understanding of what life is all about for yourself, first of all, before you can impart that wisdom on the kids.
I am always wondering if we are due for a new generation of coaches who grew up with bad coaches and now they vow to not repeat those mistakes? Do you think that is going to happen?
I pray it happens. I think that sounds good. You hear all the horror stories about players that dealt with coaches—but you don’t hear enough of the great stories of how this coach impacted my life in a positive way. You would think that the natural result of that would be adults, coaches and teachers that really want to be there for their players. Be a guide, mentor, etc. There are a lot of coaches that exist for those type of reasons. The problem is, a lot of those coaches fall back into the same old patterns habitually. In other words, the world has kind of told them what coaching is all about. Coaching in the sports sense is “Let’s go get ’em! Let’s grind it out! Let’s hustle! Let’s beat that guy! Let’s go hit our head against a locker.” Or “Hey! You’re not performing today, you gotta focus focus! Concentrate! Work!” That is kind of an habitual paradigm that I would say 95 percent of coaches follow. And it’s errant. You’re missing the boat. Most coaches—if their player exhibits what they determine in their opinion is negative behavior—they’re going to say, “Hey, we don’t do that around here. We don’t act that way. If you want to play for me, you’re going to play THIS way.” Unfortunately, when you approach a player or student like that, you are dictating. You are actually intentionally going down a road of stifling someone’s free will. That’s a problem. A big problem. Not to say you have to condone, say, a player who has been disrespectful to an official—the answer to the apparent issue is not the behavior of the player. The behavior is after the fact. Look at the level of well-being of the player, look at the state of mind of the player in the moment. That’s the answer. If you want to help a player not to behave that way, it is not saying like Vince Lombardi, “My way or the highway.” It doesn’t work. Players become angrier, defensive, resistant and it reinforces the behavior. If you want to get somewhere, teach players to recognize what their state of mind is in the penthouse, and teach players when to recognize their state of mind is in the carpark underneath the apartment building. Teach them to not act when they’re at that low level. Recognize what is going on, because at that level you will always make a mistake if we act. But from the high level in the penthouse, you will never make a mistake. You want to create players who are playing from a place of freedom, inspiration and with imagination. Go down that road. Unfortunately, those type of coaches who didn’t like what was done to them, they don’t understand or don’t have the aptitude for knowing what really motivates kids.
Do most of your players come to you because they want to improve personally, or because they have a bad coach and they feel like they’re not being steered in the right direction?
I’d like it to be because they want to improve, but a lot of players, it is the second thing you mentioned. They just know something’s off, that something doesn’t feel right. This experience is not what it’s meant to be, not what it’s supposed to be. They want to know “How can I make the most out of this journey regardless of what is going on in the outside world, regardless of my coach or my teammates or my mother and father?”
What is the age of your youngest client?
Twelve. I don’t really reach below that. What’s funny is that those kids younger than 12, they don’t as much help. They are closer to the source.
Your website shows a pretty large online component to the evaluation process
that seems to be the key to your business. Are athletes ever intimidated by the evaluation process?
Yes. It’s not really the key to my business. But the answer is yes. Sometimes you’ll get a player who is self-conscious or even in this world of sharing of information there’s privacy—they get concerned that this data is going to get out there.
What do you say to people who might think individual coaching goes against the whole team concept?
First of all, we work with teams. There are many teams that will start off and have a seminar with the whole team, sometimes with the coaches, management and front office also. What would I say to them? Well, you’re over-thinking it is what I’m saying. In other words, we’re not teaching or dictating to our players to go and take the puck and not consider your teammates—that’s obviously not what goes on here. I just think they’re over-thinking it. Clearly we’re really trying to uncover an understanding of what life and what this process is really all about for these players.
Have sports in general been overcomplicated by over-thinking—getting away from basic competition and more into the psychological and every aspect of mental preparation? How have we reached this spot?
Yes, I think we should move toward simplicity. I think that when we can’t figure something out, we want to complicate it. I have a very good friend who coaches hockey at the University of Maine and was a college teammate of mind and one of my dearest friends—and when we started Inner-Sports he was one of the first people I contacted. And his response, the first thing he said to me was, “My guys got enough stuff to deal with.” So, I get that. Yet, our approach is revolutionarily simple. When an athlete doesn’t feel right, or is playing poorly, we have this natural compulsion to fix it. Human beings are taught to become seekers. If we are not feeling right or are not playing well, we have to fix it. We have to do something. Fight through this until we find the answer. The reason why people turn toward outside sources, toward sports psychologists, sometimes drugs, [is] they’re looking for external circumstances to regulate their life. Here, what we teach players, is there’s nothing you have to do when you are playing badly or feeling poorly. The real secret is to understand what life is about… Hang in there. If we are playing poorly, thinking poorly and feeling poorly, if we just understand that there is always the chance for something better if we just hang in there, our minds will ultimately quiet and from that place of clarity and quiet we will find the answer to why we feel bad or why we’re playing poorly. The real secret is not to do anything. If you do something when you’re in that place, it’s like stepping on the gas with your tire in the mud. It is so simple, it’s crazy… We’re all victims of our thinking, period.
Did you study psychology in college?
Zero. I have some colleagues here who studied psychology and nothing that they learned in school has anything to do with the principles we teach. Zero. Most psychology has become the study and treatment of behaviors, and most therapists are working on behaviors and that is after the fact. That is why people are in therapy for 28 years. If therapists taught people to tap into their state of minds, it is a whole different ballgame. It’s amazing what we’ve done with athletes.
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For more info, go to www.inner-sports.com.
