It’s that evening of the day after, and you’re replaying the match in your mind for the hundredth time. Your striker missed three scoring opportunities you’d seen her convert a thousand times in training. Your meticulously planned press system that worked brilliantly all season collapsed in the second half. After the game, you tried to explain the tactical adjustments to your team, but you could see it in their eyes—they weren’t getting it. You know what needs to change. You’ve studied the opposition. You’ve analyzed the data. You’re right about what went wrong. So why isn’t it working?
TLDR;
Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the world's great thinkers, shares his insights in how to think, teach, and communicate more effectively. This series of articles explores eight essential lessons from one of the world’s greatest science communicators that directly apply to coaching field hockey: understanding that being right isn’t enough without effective communication; recognizing cognitive biases in player evaluation; embracing the scientific method in tactical innovation; tailoring communication to different athletes; using progressive teaching strategies; measuring what matters; leveraging body language; and fostering genuine curiosity in your players. These aren’t abstract concepts. They’re practical tools that can transform how you develop players, implement tactics, and build winning programs.For four consecutive weeks we'll share two lessons each week with you...
When Science Meets Sports
The best field hockey coaches aren’t just tacticians or motivators—they’re teachers, communicators, and experimenters operating at the frontier of what’s possible with their athletes. Yet many of us approach coaching with the same cognitive biases and communication patterns that limit our effectiveness, never quite understanding why our brilliant tactical insights don’t translate to match performance, or why some players flourish under our guidance while others stagnate.
When Neil deGrasse Tyson delivered a masterclass on Scientific Thinking and Communication it wasn’t only about astrophysics, his field of expertise. It’s about how we discover truth, overcome our biases, and communicate complex ideas effectively. These are precisely the skills that separate good coaches from great ones.
In the next few weeks, we’ll explore eight lessons from Tyson that directly apply to coaching field hockey at competitive levels. We’ll examine how the scientific method can revolutionize your tactical innovation, learning from Tyson’s insight that “the scientific method is, do whatever it takes to not fool yourself into thinking something is true that is not.” We’ll confront the cognitive biases that cloud our judgment about players and tactics, understanding his warning that “we all have susceptibility to a certain category of bias.” We’ll discover why being tactically correct isn’t enough. As Tyson’s father told him:
It’s not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective.
We explore how to tailor your coaching to different types of athletes, implementing his principle that “the same ideas, the same concepts, can be framed, shaped, in different ways depending on the audience.” We’ll look at progressive teaching strategies that build understanding layer by layer, and examine how measurement and data can reveal truths about your team’s performance that would otherwise remain hidden. Finally, we’ll check out the power of body language and non-verbal communication, and how to cultivate curiosity in your players so they become thinking athletes rather than robots executing commands.
Today its about the first two lessons we wanted to share based upon the masterclass given by Neil deGrasse Tyson. But make sure you also take a look at these earlier masterclasses:
→ Jamilon Mülders : how communication will influence your team
→ Adam Commens : values based coaching
→ Ric Charlesworth & others in Sculpt a winning mindset
These lessons aren’t theoretical—they’re immediately applicable to your training session tomorrow, your team talk on gameday, and your season planning for next year. Let’s begin… with the beginning.
Lesson 1: “It’s Not Good Enough to Be Right. You Also Have to Be Effective.”
This single piece of wisdom from Neil deGrasse Tyson’s father might be the most important lesson in this entire series of lessons. As coaches, we spend countless hours studying the game: analyzing opponents’ defensive structures, identifying weaknesses in our attacking patterns, developing innovative press systems. We attend coaching courses, watch international matches, and pour over tactical analyses. We become tactically astute, often more knowledgeable than our players about the intricate details of the game.
And then we wonder why it doesn’t work on the pitch.
Tyson explains: “You can say, this is how the world should be, but if you don’t have a tactic, if you don’t have a plan to enable it, to enact it, go home. It’s not good enough just to be right. It has to also work.”
Think about your last tactical adjustment that failed to take hold. Perhaps you identified that your opponents were vulnerable to diagonal runs, exploiting the space between their center-back and fullback. You’re absolutely correct, the video analysis proves it, the statistics support it, every coaching manual would agree with you. But if your players don’t understand it, can’t execute it under pressure, or don’t believe in it, your correctness is worthless.
Effectiveness in coaching requires three elements: clarity in your own understanding, a method to transfer that understanding to your players, and the ability to implement it under match conditions. Notice that being right about the tactics is only the first element—and arguably the easiest one.
Tyson describes his preparation for media appearances: “I do a crazy amount of thinking and preparation. Every time I’m in the public venue. In any medium... There is machinery operating under the hood, within me, that I want to share with you.” He recommends being “ten times more prepared than anything you might invoke, in order to look like you didn’t prepare at all.” Consider every scenario beforehand.
Apply this to your pre-match team talk. You know what you want to say about pressing triggers, about exploiting their weak-side defender, about maintaining width in possession. But have you thought about how you’ll say it? Have you prepared examples that resonate with specific players? Have you anticipated their questions and maybe even confusion? Have you simplified without dumbing down? Have you considered demonstrating visually rather than just explaining verbally?
The gap between being right and being effective is where most coaching insights die. A young coach might watch a professional match, identify a brilliant tactical pattern, and try to implement it with their team the following week. They’re right about the tactic, but they’re ineffective because they haven’t considered whether their players have the technical ability to execute it, whether they understand the spatial relationships required, or whether it fits within their existing tactical framework.
Conversely, an experienced coach might use a slightly less sophisticated tactical approach but implement it with such clarity, such repetition, such effective communication, that it becomes second nature to the players. This coach wins matches not because they know more than their opponent, but because their knowledge actually manifests on the pitch.
Here’s your action step: Before your next training session, take whatever tactical concept you plan to teach and ask yourself three questions:
How will I know if the players truly understand this?
What three different ways can I explain this same concept to reach different learners?
What’s my backup plan if my initial explanation doesn’t land?
Being right about hockey is the baseline. Being effective at teaching hockey is what separates coaches who develop players from coaches who just talk about development.
The legendary Ric Charlesworth, often emphasizes the importance of clear communication as well. He believes that “the best information poorly delivered might as well not be delivered at all”
Never hesitate to Assistant.Hockey more tips about this from the many other coaches we hosted in our masterclasses and workshops. If you’re already a paying subscriber… thank you 🙏 and please read on for the next lesson on cognitive bias. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, join us to get the most out of what we share here 😉 and make sure you don’t miss our next posts with the 6 remaining lessons…
Lesson 2: Cognitive Biases Are Sabotaging Your Player Evaluation
Every coach believes they’re objective about their players. We tell ourselves we pick the team based on merit, that we evaluate performance fairly, that our tactical decisions are rational. We’re wrong.
Tyson explains: “Being human, we all have susceptibility to a certain category of bias. Cognitive bias. These are things you think are true, but are not. And can be demonstrated to not be true.”
Let’s examine the most dangerous biases affecting field hockey coaches:
Confirmation Bias is perhaps the most insidious. Tyson describes it as seeing “three things out of a hundred that support your view and saying ‘see, I’m right,’ while ignoring the ninety-seven that don’t.” In coaching, this manifests when you’ve decided a player is “lazy” or “technically weak” and then unconsciously notice every mistake that confirms your judgment while ignoring the contradictory evidence.
You’ve written off your left-back as tactically naive, so when (s)he hesitates before stepping up in the press, you see it as confirmation of your assessment. You miss the fact that (s)he actually read the passing lane correctly and her hesitation prevented a dangerous ball into the channel. Meanwhile, your preferred player in that position makes the exact same decision, but you interpret it as “intelligent reading of the game.”
Tyson warns: “You went right to the thing that agreed with you. And you sat back and said, I’m even more right than I thought I was. Because I found something that agrees.” This is particularly dangerous in player development, where a young athlete’s trajectory can be derailed by a coach’s early, biased assessment that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In a masterclass with Adam Commens, high performance director for Hockey Belgium, we discussed how cognitive biases can cloud judgment. He stressed the importance of “being open to different points of view” and not shutting down ideas you disagree with. This echoes Tyson’s point about recognizing and overcoming biases.
Recency Bias causes us to overweight recent performances. A forward who has been your most consistent goal scorer all season has a poor match—suddenly you’re questioning whether to start him in the championship game. Conversely, a usually inconsistent player has one brilliant performance, and you’re ready to rebuild your tactics around him.
The Halo Effect makes us believe that a player who excels in one area must be good in others. Your striker is exceptional at finding space in the circle, so you assume she’ll also be good at pressing the goalkeeper—even though these require completely different skill sets and personalities.
Most dangerous is the urge to feel special, which Tyson identifies as a fundamental cognitive bias. Applied to coaching, this becomes: “I have a special ability to identify talent that others miss” or “I can see something in this player that previous coaches couldn’t.” Sometimes this is true, but often it’s just your brain convincing you that your hunches are insights.
Tyson’s solution? Build systems that force objectivity. “You need corroboration from different experiments, different investigators,” he explains in the context of scientific research. In coaching, this means:
Use Multiple Evaluators: Don’t trust your solo judgment on important decisions. Involve your assistant coaches. What do they see that you don’t?
Define Observable Behaviors: Instead of “lazy” or “poor decision-making,” define specific, measurable behaviors. “Failed to track runner on three occasions” or “chose to pass backward when forward option was available on four attacks.”
Track Over Time: One of the reasons video analysis is so valuable isn’t just to study opponents—it’s to force yourself to look at objective evidence of your own players’ performances rather than relying on memory and impression.
Actively Seek Disconfirming Evidence: Tyson emphasizes that you should “find another way to demonstrate” your belief is true. If you think a player isn’t ready for the senior team, actively look for evidence that you’re wrong. Watch him/her train specifically looking for moments of quality. You might be surprised.
The most liberating thing about understanding cognitive bias is that it’s not a moral failing—it’s a feature of human cognition. Tyson says: “It’s not our fault that we’re human.” You cannot eliminate these biases, but you can build systems and habits that counteract them.
As Tyson concludes: “If you want to get closer to objective truths, you have to be able to say to yourself, I was wrong, in the face of new data, you have to say, I was wrong. And if you can’t say that, you will never be a scientist. You’ll never be anybody who actually discovers things in this world.”
Replace “scientist” with “coach,” and you have your marching orders.
