I’m curious for your thoughts and opinion depending on your answer. This is an open ended question, because I know age and other factors play a part in it. If you said yes i.e., you can’t coach someone who isn't willing to put in the effort, even though they might have the desire to improve If you said no i.e., some need patience, motivation, lots of encouragement and need to focus on one thing at a tim I'm sure everyone has a story or example based on their experiences.
Some are too stubborn or not open minded enough. That reflects in their own life learning experience elsewhere.
Well, I would say anyone is coachable if they want a coach, but then you look at someone like Zhang Beiwen who left china and Singapore to play in America. She lost all her support and coaching and was playing with some little kid in a random Las Vegas gym by herself but she really flourished in that environment. Although in a recent interview she said something about "her coach" so obviously she has one again. I think no one is uncoachable. I think if someone wants a coach, they might have to look a long time to find one they connect with. And maybe not everyone needs or wants a coach, and those people shouldn't have one. But if you are talking about just forcing a kid to play, then yeah, some might be unteachable because they just don't want to learn. But that's not a reflection on coaches or coaching in general.
I'm in a situation atm that reflects your comment above. A friend that wants and has desire to improve, but does not have the work ethic, grind and resolve to put in the effort in and outside of the court. Friends and colleagues tell me that I'm wasting my time, but it's hard walk around or ignore that friend who wants to learn.
You're definitely right, it's about finding a coach you really connect with. They're essentially teachers and you need someone whose willing to learn.
This is slightly different to what I described. You can have a personality who can work hard but will only listen to certain people. Thus change is ineffectual as they cannot change mistakes or take in another opinion. For your situation, you can have a person who says they want to learn, but have a lot of excuses and lack the tenacity. What you think they can achieve is different from what the effort they can and need to put into that achievement. Heck, all of us want to to learn to play better without working at it. That you are friends first makes things rather difficult for a coach to student relationship.
Agree. There's a big difference between telling a friend that he must learn to lunge with his racquet foot forward (for example) and him struggling to find time to practise to get out of his bad habit (but agreeing with your advice), thus making limited improvement, versus someone who adamantly believes that he has lunged with his non-racquet foot for 10+ years, sees the pros occasionally do it and doesn't want to change it. Then there isn't hope to improve him as he is not willing to change. If there is no willingness to change, there is no coaching.
I believe there are people that are so convicted of their own opinions and logic that they're uncoachable in the sense you cant get them to reconsider anything they already do or think. Then there's the other kind - people who have such poor coordination, quick thinking and/or imitation skills that they're not making any considerable progress even with fairly significant training. While I wouldn't say they're completely uncoachable, this often overlaps with the former type of personality a bit so that they insist "I am ALREADY doing that!" when you correct them. I dont have the patience to teach and continually correct the second type even if they're agreeable - so to me personally, they are uncoachable as well
Offer them to take a video of them with their own phone. You're seeing it anyway, and that way you cannot get into trouble and they have a chance to see themselves...
there are multiple dimensions to it. firstly, it is the mental side. and even that has sub dimensions. like many have said, the environment and synergy with the coaching environment has a lot to do with it. my kids with their previous coaching group just didn't have the click. they didn't click with the coach and the other students there. they struggle (and so did we) and eventually we moved them away and they had a much stricter coach and they also enjoyed the company of the other kids. as a result they improved leaps in the past year. the other dimension is the mentality of the student, how willing they are to learn. and then there is the talent side. some students just aren't very athletic, bad hand eye coordination, not their fault but they can be hard to teach. some students have different biomechanics too. i have tried to taught someone whose wrist bends differently than others and it was almost impossible to teach them how to do wrist pronation in the normal way.
