What You Watch From the Stands Is What They Carry Into the Arena

The short answer. What you put your focus on in the stands is what your athlete will put their focus on in the arena. Care about execution more than the result, cheer instead of coaching, and leave technique where it belongs: at practice.

Your focus becomes their focus

If your focus is on winning and losing, that tends to create anxiety, nervousness, worry and fear. If your focus is on execution and performing, they tend to be more confident, more excited, prouder, and more in control.

So if you want your athlete to be more confident, you, as the parent, need to care more about what athletes should care about in order to perform. They read it in your body language during, and they hear it in your first question after.

“Did you win?” teaches one thing. “What did you execute that you were proud of?” teaches another.

There is a right way to think, and it depends on the day

Bringing skills in is the whole point of practice. Letting skills out is the whole point of competition. Each has its own mindset.

The practice mindset is critical, judgmental, complex, weakness-focused and scientific. That is what makes practice work.

The performance mindset is trusting, accepting, simple, strength-focused, instinctive, creative and confident. That is what lets the skills out.

When we go to competitions, we flip the mindset. There is no more learning that day. (The full picture: the two mindsets and the four phases of performance.)

I know this one personally. I was a monster in practices as a young athlete and never got any better at competing, because I went to competitions and got straight into the practice mindset.

What coaching from the stands actually does

A technical instruction from the stands, the fence or the pool deck, however accurate it is, hands your athlete the practice mindset at the one moment it hurts them. “Keep your elbow up.” “Move your feet.” “Watch your turns.”

Every one of those pulls them out of trusting and instinctive, and back into critical and complex, in the middle of the thing.

And if the instruction starts with “don’t,” it does something worse.

That is the reason behind cheer, don’t coach. It is not about being polite to the coach. It is about which mindset you are handing your kid.

What to do with yourself instead

Know what they are going for today. If they defined success before the competition, you already know the two things to watch for. Watch for those. It gives your attention somewhere useful to go.
Cheer. Effort, fight, how they carry themselves after a mistake.
Keep your own state steady. They look up. What they see on your face after a bad moment tells them how big it was.
Leave the other athletes out of it. Comparison is a spectator’s habit, and it spreads.
Afterwards, feed them and let them be. The conversation waits 24 hours.