The WPH is thrilled to debut The Coaching Center, hosted by world-renowned sports instructor Boak Ferris. Mr. Ferris has worked with elite athletes in amateur and professional sports, to include but not limited to handball, tennis, baseball, volleyball and water polo. Mr. Ferris not only addresses proper techniques, body mechanics and strategy, but also sports psychology, cognitive psychology, analytical skills, and lifestyle issues. Mr. Ferris will host a number of segments in The Coaching Center, explaining and exploring the complexities of handball and how handball connects with other sports.
You have worked with some high-level and professional athletes in various sports, while you have also been coached in and competed in at least nine different sports. What is missing in professional coaching?
(Boak): A. Professional coaches must ask their clients prioritized interview questions, prior to establishing a relationship. Too often coaches assume their clients love the sport in question, and bring “no baggage” to the relationship. All athletes have complex feelings about sports, and all have inherited some baggage.
For a coach to achieve maximum service, the coach needs to know two key psychological features about their prospective clients. Does the client enjoy the sport? Why is the client pursuing that sport? If the client hates the sport or is doing it only for a parent or two, the coach does not have a “friendly” client, but an adversarial one, since the client may unconsciously view the coach as an extension of what the client resents. All coaching-advice will be questioned and fought. Coaches can work with adversarial clients, if and only if the client says, “I hate this sport, because [say] my mom/dad want(s) me to do it, and I don’t want to do what they want, but still, I want to get better at it.” Once that honesty is on the table, the client’s feelings may be redefined through free discussion, or better, rechanneled, as fuel for winning championships.
Also, during interviews, a coach must determine if the client simply wants to “play” the sport, or compete at it for championships. Making the first long-range coaching plan depends on having this knowledge up front. Yes, a competitor will change motives during the coaching period, and that’s OK and to be expected. At that point, coaches ramp up the intensity of goals, or scale back, as the client prefers. Coaches must represent the client first, and the sport second. Trying to force a client to love handball, for example, ruins the athlete, since the coach is trying politically hard to grow numbers in the sport—or worse, force the player to love what the coach loves. That’s tyranny. A coach who can empathize with the client’s needs has a better chance of winning sport-converts, and thus of helping clients become champions.
Coaches need to see, visualize, and know the correct full biomechanical cycle for the sport in question, based on models studied and drawn from the world’s best experts. (That’s my specific passion—studying all-sports’ biomechanics.) The difference between a client’s success and frustration may depend on the coach spotting the rear-foot still planted on the ground during the stroke, or a choked follow-through after the contact point. Coaches must accept that Genetics are important for top athletes, and athletes can get their DNA tested early in their careers to find out if they have “elite athletic DNA.” This is not about eugenics. It’s about establishing customized training procedures. If clients lack inherited athletic DNA, then they may need specialized training to influence their epigenomes, which will, over time, influence their basic DNA, including reshaping of the body and the mind, restructuring cardio capacities, replacing basic muscle fiber types, fat-distribution, etc.
And coaches need to know the championship attitudes that drive the world’s best in every sport, so as to transfer successful tactics in sports-psychology to their clients. There are three kinds of championship psychological profiles, (mindsets) in my experience: 1) Champions who hate to lose; 2) Champions who love to win; and 3) Champions who must dominate. S. Williams, Nadal, and Djokovic are no. 3’s. Federer is a combination of majority 2 and some 3. Chapman was a combination of all 3 and all 1. Paul Brady and Naty Sr. are examples of number threes who needed to dominate, in order to secure their paychecks. The winningest champion of all time, in racquetball, Kane Waselenchuk, is all no. 3. He has developed perfect biomechanics and elite positioning to achieve joy from his innate psychology to dominate without any mercy. A fourth type of rare champion exists, the idealist, who wins on the joy of perfecting technique. Tati Silveyra was one of these. So is Emmett Peixoto, IMHO. Jim Jacobs was 3 plus some 4. Frankly, pure idealists never acquire record-breaking performance-histories, because, winning is less important to these artists than playing perfectly. The greatest records usually involve a “heavy” type 3. Paul Haber. Simply asking a client, “How do you feel about winning/losing?” yields pretty good insight about the client, after which, the coach needs to define the three main types above, to see how the client can prioritize a baseline foundation for later coaching goals.
- Coaches need to be self-honest, about their own flaws, strengths, and weaknesses. I’ve seen coaches ruin athletes, because the Coach is a secret tyrant and power-monger, and is less interested in the client’s success, and more interested in “Hey, I own this client.” Supposedly, a coach has a superior knowledge of biomechanics and of the psychologies necessary for competing vs. “playing.” Too many coaches enter the profession without much science of Biomechanics, and or of Sports Psychology. They only know the waytheydo it, and teach their way to someone with a different body type and genetics. Yes, common fundamental biomechanics exist for all human body-types, and the coach needs to know these first, before helping a client adapt.
In my opinion, Tiger’s later coaches have mostly failed Tiger, in this regard, and allowed him to continue using flawed biomechanics that strain his body. If he made just a few adjustments he could play better into middle age, with more victories, and by becoming pain-free. Perfect biomechanics eliminate strain on all ligaments, and joints, the spine included.
- Coaches need to be up to speed on human-body-chemistry, (and endocrinology), and learn about their client’s allergies and dietary needs, client’s degrees of insulin resistance, and their clients’ needs to manage sugar or keto. They need to teach clients methods to manage game-influencing hormones, such as cortisol, serotonin, and endorphins.
Boak Ferris Bio
When Boak grew up overseas, Boak’s dad insisted he learn martial arts while attending boarding schools, and so Boak studied Boxing (his dad’s sport), Aikido, and a bit of Kendo over a period of twelve years. He also competed at tennis, golf, soccer, swimming, and handball between elementary school, and then in High School competed at Handball and Track. Moving forward in time, in 1989, Boak first befriended David Chapman, without involvement in any coaching. In 1991, Boak was recruited as a faculty mentor into CSULB’s TEAMWIN project to help university athletes excel in sports and academics. Among his university clients, he coached various members of the university’s tennis, water-polo, and volleyball teams, as the university directed to him, about 16 in all, including James Cotton in basketball and Jered Weaver in baseball—both of whom enrolled in Boak’s courses. Among his topics of engagement, he included sports psychology, cognitive psychology, analytical skills, and lifestyle issues. The TEAMWIN project, though successful, lapsed as a result of a loss of funding, about 1995. Around 1991, Boak also engaged in contributing coaching tips to Steffi Graf’s team and agency, while also joining David Chapman’s team as a bona-fide coach. He traveled on and off with David’s team until about the year 2000, at which point David’s travel schedule became too hectic for Boak, who had since been promoted to Coordinator of Graduate-Required Testing and Evaluation of CSULB students. Today, he is a number-two ranked handball competitor in the USHA Veteran Super Masters Division, and has six handball clients, ranging from 16 up to 70 years of age.
