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Here's the uncomfortable truth - and I've been guilty of this too - we've been operating under a dangerous assumption. Parents think sports naturally teach life lessons. Coaches think parents are handling the emotional development at home.
Meanwhile, our athletes are caught in the middle, getting neither the personal development nor the emotional intelligence they desperately need to succeed on and off the field.
Today, we're changing that.
I recently had a publication in the Beyond Strength Journal for Psychology & Sport. I shared how to intentionally develop emotional capacity alongside physical skills at my lacrosse practices.
Check out the full journal here, then listen to my podcast breakdown and apply the concrete action items below you can implement at your practices and training sessions.
Full episode available on Spotify & Apple Podcasts
SEL Practice Action Items
Alright coaches, pick one to start with - don't try to revolutionize everything at once.
Action Item #1: Transform Your Warm-Up
The first 10 minutes of practice are the most valuable of your entire session. Stop treating it like a checkbox. Start seeing it as your daily opportunity for self-awareness and self-management development.
Hand the warm-up leadership to a different athlete each day. Not just your captains - rotate through your entire roster. Watch how they handle the responsibility. Are they building confidence in their voice? Are teammates following? When someone struggles with leadership, that's not failure - that's data. That's your opportunity to mentor.
Action Item #2: Strategic Conditioning Moments
When warm-ups aren't being respected, when athletes show up late without excuse, here's what I do: I take away the warm-up and go straight into conditioning. But not just any conditioning - low injury risk, high character building. Planks, partner-resisted exercises, movements that require them to depend on each other.
Here's the crucial part: Always bookend these moments with the lesson. "We're doing this because respect for preparation is respect for your teammates. How you do anything is how you do everything."
Action Item #3: The Emotional Check-In
During skill work or competitive drills, start asking emotional questions, not just technical ones. Instead of "What did you do wrong?" try "What were you thinking right before you made that decision?" or "How did that pressure feel, and how did it impact your choice?"
You're teaching them to connect thoughts, emotions, and performance. This is next-level coaching.
Action Item #4: The 360-Degree Communication Challenge
Pick one practice this week and challenge your athletes to only use teammates' names when communicating. No pointing, no "hey. yo." or my favorite, the blanket "freshmen!" This forces social awareness and relationship building. Watch what happens to team chemistry.
Action Item #5: Create Your "Fun-ishment" Toolkit
Running as discipline disrupts your conditioning periodization (for me anyways 🤣), is executed with piss-poor technique, and builds resentment for authority. Establish a collection of character-building alternatives: partner planks, single-leg strength circuits, exercises that require them to support each other while being challenged individually.
Here's what I want you to understand: Some athletes will grasp these lessons immediately. Others will require more intensive guidance - like "breaking wild horses," as the old saying goes. But here's the difference: We're not trying to break spirits. We're building emotional capacity and resilience.
That's not accident. That's intentional development.
Raise the Game
And here's the beautiful part: This approach helps you identify the athletes who need additional mentoring. Sometimes late arrivals and rule-breaking aren't defiance - they're flares going up. Emotionally intelligent coaches can sense this and get ahead of bigger problems.
Have you applied character developing techniques like this? What did you find worked or not at all? Any funny stories of athletes you broke like a wild horse and had them turn a corner?