We had a really challenging question in yesterday’s class, which was posed to our guest Larry Lauer, a sport psychology consultant and one of my colleagues at the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports.  The question was about the video review session for a football team.  The typical procedure is to run through the tape, and for the coach to point out mistakes that have been made.  Occasionally, the coach may also point out what players have done well.  The coach might use emotion to illustrate a point.  For instance, a player might not be hitting hard enough, and the coach might show the clip with the sub-standard hit, then emphasize to the player – with emotion – “HIT HIM HARDER THAN THAT!”

The question that arose was this… if we know that too much criticism is a bad thing, is there a better way to run…