Having a great coach can really increase your chances of boxing progress and success. When your coach is determined, equipped and deeply invested in bringing out the best in you, it is a sure-fire path to success.

However, as amazing as your coach may be, their efforts are meaningless without another crucial part of this success equation: your own coachability. Even with the best coaches at your disposal, it is your coachability in conjunction with great coaching that will ultimately determine your progress.

To get possible results with coaching, whether it's someone looking for a life coach to help achieve their professional goals, a business owner looking for business coaching to help scale their business or working with one of our amazing Gloveworx coaches to reach your fitness goals, you need to have the same skills: a willingness to learn, take constructive criticism, and willingness to get out of your comfort zone to Become Unstoppable.

Definition of Coachability

Coachability is not a technical skill or an inherent ability. It is a mental attitude. It is defined by your ability to be coached. It is determined by your emotional ability to withstand the necessary constructive criticism and pressure from your coach. It requires you to do so without losing your positive spirit and without slackening in your motivation and effort. It is also defined by your ability to adapt and to improve as required.

Benefits of Being More Coachable

The objective of improving your coachability is not just a matter of making you more obedient to your coaches. Although that will certainly make their lives easier, it has numerous benefits for you too.

Some of the amazing benefits of improved coachability include:

• An accelerated pace of learning and of progress in your training.
• A smoother and more pleasant training experience.
• The benefits improved coachability will extend into the rest of your life, making overall success come more naturally to you.

Becoming coachable allows you to take an objective look at your strengths an weaknesses in all areas of your life. Having this skill will help you when listening to feedback from your coach, allowing you to enhance your training and improving your ability to change.

Develop a Growth Mindset

Developing a growth mindset is one of the best ways to improve your coachability and to grow as a person.

Definition of a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset is one that values a commitment to constant self-improvement over natural ability or good fortune. A growth mindset values personal growth, hard work, humility and a love of learning.

Benefits of a Growth Mindset

Having a growth mindset can drastically improve your coachability in boxing while adding tremendous value to your life overall. As you develop a greater growth mindset, you will:

• find greater peace of mind, as you commit to a lifestyle of constant improvement, without being attached to immediate results;
• become more likely to succeed as you entrench the habits that facilitate growth in every way; and
• discover that the traits of a growth mentality tie in with those of coachable one.

Things You Can Do To Develop a Growth Mindset

A growth mindset may sound great, but a little elusive at this point. We are always looking for actionable and tangible ways to develop. Here are some things you can start doing to develop your growth mindset to become more coachable:

• Re-prioritize your values. Learn to value effort and hard work over results, actions over innate traits, self-pride over external praise.
• As you achieve your goals, constantly set new ones. This will sustain mental growth as well as the desire to grow.
• Schedule regular self-reflection sessions to monitor all your improvements no matter how big or small.
• Be willing to try new learning tactics, especially those that take you out of your comfort zone.

Humble Yourself to Become More Coachable

Humility is a wonderful quality to have throughout your life. In coaching, having the right balance of self-confidence and humility can help you Become Unstoppable. It is normal for our egos to get the better of us at times. In our training, it can really do damage to our coachability as well as our training progress.

How Your Ego Can Be Detrimental To Your Progress

When our egos are fragile, it can make us proud and unwilling to accept our flaws. This poses a problem to progress, as we cannot accept the constructive criticism we need to improve. When an unchecked ego meets criticism-- even when it’s constructive-- it can bring about some unpleasant behaviors and traits. Some of these include:

• Aggressive, defensive and sometimes rude responses to feedback.
• An arrogant attitude.
• A hostile attitude to coaches and fellow contenders, with continuing feelings of resentment to those trying to help.
• Diminished self-confidence.

Ways You Can Overcome Your Ego to Improve Coachability

Since your ego is something you will always have to keep in check to keep you reaching your goals, here are some things you can do to get there:

· Accept that you are not perfect, but a work-in-progress. Learn to take pride in that. Being embarrassed by your shortcomings will only make it harder to confront them.

· Try not to be immediately defensive and offended at the prospect of criticism. Rather, try to be patient and hear a person out, even if you do not agree.

· In moments when your ego feels hurt, try turning to humor and positive self-talk. Positive self-talk is an encouraging and healthy form of internal dialogue that pushes us without being psychologically harmful.

Effective Communication to Improve Coachability

The coach-contender relationship can be a complicated and rewarding at the same time. It requires constant effort on both sides to bring out the most proficient results.

What Coaches Can Do To Help You Improve Your Coachability:

We have looked at ways that a contender can become more coachable, but there are also behaviors that a coach can employ to get the best out of their contender. These include using a diplomatic way to get through to you, finding the balance between empathy and “tough love” and making a conscious effort to use positive and fair rhetoric, as opposed to harmful rhetoric.

An example of harmful rhetoric during training: “That was a lousy jab. Pathetic! You are getting lazy!”

How to use more positive and fair rhetoric, instead: “That jab wasn’t your best form so far. I know you can do so much better than that if you try! What can we do to get your motivation back on track?”

Coachability for Life

Surrounding yourself with others that have the same growth mindset as you -building a tribe - is one way to develop life-long coachability. Another is immersing yourself in material that teaches and encourages the qualities of a growth mindset and coachability.

Developing coachability, like all abilities, requires conscious, long-term effort and a little guidance, which we are more than happy to offer at Gloveworx.