President’s Message | Alex Chang

Planning, Shifting Perspective, and Purposeful Adaptation

By the time you read this, most of you will be full swing into the new season with fresh competition plans on the horizon. With 2020 comes a fresh start and a time to dream big and implement well-intentioned stratagems. It’s a time to restart the competition cycle with hopes that this year everything runs according to plan. But… what do you do when the hiccups happen, a reoccurring injury flares up, a mental block hinders progress, or better yet, the inevitable growth spurt materializes overnight?

Take a moment to pause, step back, see the bigger perspective, and assess the damage before you coursecorrect. (A.K.A. Don’t react.) Your brain and self-talk will kick in no matter what, so take the opportunity to find an unexpected silver lining, like: “It’s a good thing this happened now and not before regionals.” Taking a moment to re-orient yourself (and your clients) will help you find the teachable moment amidst the frustration.

For example, it would not be helpful to say, “You made mistakes, you missed a jump and a spin, AND got a timing violation!” Don’t panic – this is good feedback for the next event. I like to use: “Yes you made a mistake but think of it like this: You got a ‘parking ticket’ on the streets of skating. Pay your $50 fee and move on. You don’t sell your car or stop driving, but you also stop parking on the wrong side of the street.” Then, you talk to your skater and make the corrections – “move the jump earlier, change the spin, and stop on time!” Sounds simple, but sometimes we need a reminder or a pause to re-center our coaching.

The education within PSA will hopefully provide new material for you and your skaters to prosper throughout the season. But no matter what we anticipate and purposefully plan for, there are going to be gaps and what I like to think of as opportunities for our true coaching talents to really shine. How do we explain the unexplainable? How do we get past the personally-crippling frustrations that come along with competitive skating and striving to be our best? That is when pausing, shifting perspective, and adapting to our circumstances will allow us to get back to our plan and purpose. These life lessons about overcoming obstacles will be what our students remember most about us, our time together in this sport, and what makes us skaters.

PSA is here to help, not only to teach ‘at you’ but to also provide seminars, mentorships, community discussion, and lots and lots of interactive opportunities… to talk about the fuzzy, the frustrating, and the seemingly unanswerable questions that come along with coaching. More than an organization, the PSA is your partner in providing a pathway for coaching development.

We hope our education provides some concrete answers, but more importantly we hope it will spark discussion, generate clarity, and help forge new relationships within our coaching community.

In other words, the answers reside in you and we are here to help you discover them. We are very excited for the 2020 slate of events as well as our online/on-demand offerings including PSA TV, and we invite you to explore our many offerings to find the right fit for you.

I’m sure each of you have many stories of your own about your favorite teachable moments. Share them with your fellow colleagues and further the conversation. By sharing we all can spark something within ourselves and each other that answers the many questions we face in real life, or in our case, on the ice.

Cheers to you in 2020!