Reconciling conflicting advice is the hardest thing to do. Most students want to follow the advice of all the coaches. I bet if you have worked with different trainers who might have given you different advice each of them. At best, they’ve given you something new or focused on another part of your game. Or, as is often the case, coaches give you conflicting advice on the same issue. Then your head gets confused and you get frustrated.
This is what you really need to do when you hear two different solutions to the same problem.
First, listen to everyone, try every suggestion and find out if which one works better for you. The best way to handle this situation is to become a problem solver. Therefore, treat conflicting advice as an experiment. Conflicting advice gives you a chance to find out which one is correct. In cases where both tips are valid, like hitting hard and hitting slow, you need to know when hitting hard will help you and when hitting slow is appropriate. Remember that some things take time for their usefulness to materialize. A structure will prevent you from discarding something too early just because it isn’t working right away. For example, spend half an hour hitting hard and another 30 minutes hitting slow doing the same exercise.
Second, address conflicting advice directly and talk to your coaches about it. Many students still fail to mention that Coach X told them to do something else. But you don’t want to be silent because you are unlikely to realize what you need if you keep it to yourself. Keep in mind that coaches don’t know everything, no matter how confident they may seem. Every coach has blind spots. Talking it up gives your coach a chance to explain why this can help you. It will also help the coach.
What we want to tell you with this post is that you shouldn’t blindly follow or reject every suggestion. You decide where to move and how to hit the ball. Coaches offer advice and it is your job to accept or reject it. Having an inquisitive method is your best chance to accept advice that is useful to you and discard the one that is not.