Lessons From Painting and Soccer Camp

Within the past ten days, I’ve removed and refinished a popcorn ceiling, helped touch up over two dozen multi-bedroom apartments, and coached at a soccer camp.

I’ve gone to bed tired.

Painting is one of those projects I enjoy because it involves kinesthetic skillsets that can be done by most DIYers at an acceptable level, but it does require patience and practice. One can’t just slap paint on the wall and expect it to look professional.

The same can be said for learning how to play soccer.

I’ve made a number of connections from painting that that can be applied to everyday coaching. Here are three that stood out the most.

Follow the Proven Steps

Many years ago, when I first painted my townhouse, I skipped some of the prep work to save time and effort. When I finished, the walls came out fine. But day-by-day, especially in the natural light, I began to see all my mistakes: repaired holes that weren’t smoothed correctly, spots where I forgot to prime, cracks that re-appeared.

Professional painters will say that preparation is two-thirds of any project. Quality paint will never cover up surface mistakes. Whether painting walls or ceilings, interior or exterior, painters follow a process. They prepare the room by removing furniture, treatments, and ceiling fixtures. If necessary, they tape to protect surfaces. They take the time to repair holes and old bumps, learn to apply compound or spackle in layers and feather edges to avoid unnatural lines, and prime re-worked areas for better paint adhesion. They smooth out old paint globs, fix nail pops, reinforce worn seams, and clean up the dust. Painters then might repeat those steps before painting. They may take a day or two to get the surface ready, but it will only enhance the finished look.

Young soccer players are gamers. They want to show up on game day and score goals and make tackles and talk trash and win. But they can’t spin a defender and bury a volley into the upper-ninety if they don’t know how to receive a pass. For some young players, preparation might even begin with remembering to bring the soccer ball to practice.

When kids go to watch their favorite players, they see a finished product. What they don’t see is all the years of preparation it took for that player to grow. Many established players likely needed to learn how to practice like they want to play. That meant building training routines and skills on their own, implementing practice strategies into games, watching film, accepting feedback, learning from failures, and developing a winning mindset. As coaches, it’s our job to show them the process.

All of this takes time and effort. If we want a paint project to look clean and welcoming or we want to develop better soccer players, we can’t skip steps.

Prepare for the Mess

People often dislike painting because it tends to get a little messy. We can all picture the professional painter in their white shirt or coveralls, paint splatters all over like an exploding rainbow. Removing a popcorn ceiling is a complete mess.

A good sanding session leaves me covered in dust. Even with goggles and a mask, the dust makes its way into my eyes, nose, and throat. Particles float through the air, cling to walls, windows, blinds, or treatments that weren’t removed, and land in places I never thought it would have reached. After painting ceilings, my hat and face are still covered in spots. The body responds to all these movements, too. Muscles in the shoulders burn, back muscles stiffen, and days later I still feel the squats, ladder steppers, and bear crawls.

It’s sometimes difficult to teach young players the value of getting dirty. That doesn’t mean players need to develop a mentality where they’re flying in studs up or diving through mud for headers out of reach. It just means that they haven’t yet fully developed grit. Angela Duckworth, in her book Grit, describes her popularized term as passion and perseverance for long-term goals. She goes on to claim that grit isn’t about talent, luck, or how intensely you want something.

Throughout her research, Duckworth has found that the most successful people in any sport, business, or creative endeavor have the ability to outlast their challenges by embracing the mess. They develop an enjoyment for obstacles. They don’t lose focus when they’re covered in dust.

Painting and coaching soccer can be a mess from the start, but making a mess means we’re learning.

Mistakes Can be Fixed

One of the beauties of painting, and one of the reasons why most DIYers feel confident in starting a new project, is that they can fix mistakes. We expect flaws in our performance. We’ll miss spots to prep, we may paint over an edge, we may kick over the uncovered paint can all over the unprotected hardwood floor, or we may even finish the job only to realize we don’t like the color anymore.

Mistakes are a part of any painting project, but all mistakes can be fixed. The micro mistakes may add hours to a project, the macros may add days (and money), but each time we learn then apply that knowledge down the line. No matter how many people we ask or how many You Tube videos we watch, sometimes we have to experience the mistakes firsthand to grow.

A fear of failure is one of the worst traits a coach can instill in his players, yet this is one of the most common characteristics I’ve observed in my twenty-five plus years of teaching and coaching. Too many young players are hesitant to try new skills or strategies because they feel uncomfortable or because they’re worried about how it will affect the outcome of a game. It’s unfortunate many youth models are predicated on winning instead of learning because while we may believe we’re developing winners, we’re also developing the negative association with mistakes.

Along with fun and grit, developing a growth mindset in our players is one of the most-important characteristics we can teach. Soccer is a metaphor for life, and as coaches, we must remember we’re not teaching soccer players, we’re teaching kids. Most of our players aren’t going pro in soccer but will turn pro in something else. Life provides many losses, but it will reward those who develop a growth mindset, who push their own boundaries, who accept failures as learning opportunities, and who lose the fear of making mistakes or looking stupid.

Even the best painting projects and soccer players still have minor flaws. If we can develop the idea that some imperfections are expected and move on, we’ll be better prepared to grow.