EPISODE 13 – TIM LOUKS – ON BEING INSPIRED BY THE PEOPLE AROUND YOU, BEING SELF LESS IN SPORTS, AND USING RECOVERY TIME TO REFLECT, ADAPT & IMPROVE

Tim Louks is Head Coach of the McMaster Marauders Women’s Volleyball Team. Tim has spent over 30 seasons coaching and developing the women’s program and in the 2007-2008 season he led the team to it’s first OUA championship and he has coached his team to capture that title two more times in 2013/14 and 2016/17.

Coach Louks has received the OUA Coach of The Year Award 6 times and under his watch he has had 42 OUA all-stars, four OUA Rookies of the Year and four Marauders have been named CIS All-Canadians.

Tim is passionate about sports and the game of volleyball. He has coached since a young age and his mother was also a coach of youth sports so you might say it is in his blood. His technical expertise of individual skill, and overall game plan strategy is mind blowing. Tim is very pragmatic in his approach to coaching and anyone that has played for him will fondly recall his “Timism’s”, these are phrases he would use to describe a situation in order to get you to think more about what you were really doing or how you were feeling.

Tim believes there is so much value to participating in sports and that sport can teach you many life lessons and visa versa, which I believe as well. I had the pleasure of playing three seasons for coach Louks and I am looking forward to learning more about Tim’s journey to the court and what drives his continued love for this sport.

In this episode, Tim and I discuss the following:

• Differences between old school outdoor creative play and finding trouble vs. the reality today
• Challenges of forming relationships, friendships and finding community in today’s world
• Opportunities of exposure to sport at a young age and how it can help build lifelong relationships
• Similarities and differences of learning in sport vs learning in life
• Difficulties of learning how, where and when to trust
• Value of learning about people and humanity through sports
• Where passion and inspiration can come from
• Difference between being self less vs. selfish and how it relates to sport, passion and drive
• Understanding your leadership style and what you can learn from others
• Importance of leaving something better than you found it
• Difference of being happy to “get there” vs. “wanting to win”
• What “being the best” means and how it influences behaviour and attitude
• Importance of competing to be the best you can be and how far should you go to win
• Avoidance of discipline, punishment and failing and how it affects kids and society
• Information overload and the importance of recovery time to be able to reflect, adapt and improve
• The evolution of the volleyball, why we play it and why the game is played
• Importance of having good support or help in place to allow for recovery and still be able to continue to drive forward
• How outcome can drive passion and knowing that it is OK to be the best
• Importance of losing so you know how to win
• Importance of understanding people and being able to predict their responses to different types of feedback
• How the people that surround you provide fuel for your passion
• Why significant victories are like a hangover and the importance of not getting stuck on the “winning” component
• Importance of implementing change to produce a different result
• Why “selections” are different than “try outs”
• Single sport vs multi sport experiences and the value of each
• Risk of selecting and anticipating the potential growth of an athlete
• What happens when you use the term “I don’t think you”
• Importance of doing the right things to get noticed and having access to opportunities in sport
• How sport can teach us about adversity and how to react to it
• Value of playing varsity sports and the outcome for success after university
• Corporate team building and how it relates to sport
• Being self motivated and self driven vs collaborative, and everything in between
• Importance of working together and the rationale as to why all team members need to believe in the same end goal
• Using inputs and outcomes to identify what you want in the long term and having a plan to achieve it
• How there is no cookie cuter to success and that it is difficult to stay on top
• Knowing how to help a player that is self destructing by breaking down the emotional response vs cerebral response
• Getting past a loss to be the best you can be
• Believing in the people around you

I loved this conversation with Tim and I hope you do too!
If you would like more information on Tim you can visit:

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/tim.louks.3
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/timlouks/
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/mcmasterwvb/