The post was provided by Coaches Network

by Chris Wellman

Productive coaches spend 75 percent of their time teaching the sport to their players, and the other 25 percent of the time coaching. With younger athletes, this gap increases with teaching becoming more important.

The problem is that many coaches don’t understand how to teach athletics effectively. Plus, some coaches don’t take the time to grasp how athletes learn. Here are nine proven steps to becoming a better teacher and a better coach.

1. Understanding your passion for the sport first.

Before jumping into coaching, coaches first must understand their passion for the game. Having a high level of passion for the sport tremendously influences your energy, creativity and ability to motivate players. Passion is contagious. If one player or one assistant coach comes to practice excited and fired up, that emotion and passion easily is passed to every other member of the team.

2. Setting the stage for teaching.

Prior to the first practice, meet with your athletes and explain your role as a coach and teacher of the game. Let them know your purpose is to help improve their athletic skills. Impress upon them that you care about them as people, and that you are concerned about their lives even beyond athletics. Feeling cared about makes a player more coachable — effort and concentration increases. If you care enough about them, they’ll walk through walls for you.

Part of you caring is to work through players’ mistakes. Tell them mistakes are part of the learning process, and the only true mistakes are ones of lack of effort or concentration — both of which easily are corrected.

3. The importance of why.

Don’t assume players know why you are asking them to practice a certain technique or to perform a skill drill. Explain how everything has a positive effect on their ability to play. Be as detailed as possible, because it’s important that they understand why you’re doing certain things.

4. Fundamentals first, then complex.

Know the fundamentals of the sport you teach. This enables you to design practices for your players’ appropriate skill level. It also becomes easier to assist an athlete who cannot perform a certain skill. After grasping the fundamentals, players move on to practice drills focusing on more than one skill at a time. Don’t expect to teach complex skills to players who have not mastered the basics.

5. Use the whole-part method.

Oftentimes, it’s necessary to teach skills in parts or steps. Once again, in-depth knowledge of fundamentals gives you an advantage. Teaching a skill in part keeps the player motivated, because they are forming a mental checklist for performing the skill correctly. Educators refer to this as “task-analysis.”

Moving from one step to the next puts the focus on progress, which allows you to praise the player for grasping a skill and working with the player in areas that need more practice. A good barometer to know if a player is mastering a certain skill is to see if that player is teaching the skill to another teammate.

6. Effective motivation.

Find something positive to say to every athlete at every practice. This satisfies the athlete’s need for attention, recognition and appreciation. Be specific with your praise — specific praise is used to reinforce the why of practice. Always attempt to find more positives than negatives while constantly praising effort.

7. The hoopla of success.

When an athlete or team finally masters a skill or concept, don’t hesitate to momentarily stop practice to recognize the achievement. Praise their effort, and remind your players why mastery of the skill is so critical.

8. Model what you preach.

Most coaches talk to players about certain values and characteristics they hope to see in all team members. Coaches really are the best positive role models for these values. When stressing good sportsmanship, talk about coaching with honor, respect for the game and attitude toward officials. When stressing tenacity, never give up on yourself with your athletes. And, when stressing organization, conduct practices that are structured.

Players look to you for guidance, so don’t say one thing and do the opposite.

9. Encourage crossover athletes.

Coaches who are overzealous sometimes encourage their athletes to play one sport on a year-round basis. This can leads to overuse injuries and burnout. Participating in other sports improves the way the athletes play your sport. The movements and skills required for many sports are similar. Consider the footwork necessary for soccer and basketball are almost identical.

Productive coaching is highly dependent on the coach’s ability to teach their sport. Teaching isn’t just blowing a whistle, barking out orders and heading home after a couple of hours. Being a good teacher takes time, effort, practice, patience and a passion to make a difference in the lives of your players.

Recommended Coaching Resource:

Do Your Personal Goals Take a Back Seat to Coaching? Here are 12 ways to help you carve out more time in your busy schedule.

This post was provided by Busy.Coach

By Mandy Green

Carving out time in our busy schedules to accomplish things outside of our coaching lives isn’t easy. After all, we coaches are all too versed in the multi-role lifestyle. We’re coaches, we’re significant others, we’re parents, we’re colleagues, and we’re friends.

Whatever your goals are outside of coaching–starting a coaching blog, running a 5K, losing 10 lbs, and so on–if you’re not working toward achieving them, you probably have a long list of excuses which purportedly explain why you’re still in stand-by mode. And lack of time because of your coaching job is very likely to be at the top of that list.

Coach, do you sometimes feel like you are “sacrificing” your work for personal goals?

I found this definition of sacrifice: “to give up something for something else considered more important.”

If what I am saying rings true for you, you need to stop using a lack of time as an excuse and start making the time to pursue what you want. But how do you find time when you’re incredibly busy?

Below you’ll find 12 ways to make time to achieve your goals.  Obviously, there are more but I just wanted to give you a few ideas to get started.

1. Can you spend less time in front of the TV or playing games (sorry Chris Logan J?
2. Can you enroll the kids in an after-school program to give yourself after-work hours to work on you and your goals?
3. Go to bed at the same time as your kids so you can get up earlier.
4. Go to bed forty minutes later and work on your goals at night.
5. Use Your Lunch Hour.
6. Use Your Commute.
7. Block out the time for when you are going to work on your goal. By scheduling time to work on your goal, you know exactly when you’ll be working on it, instead of just leaving it up to chance.
8. Use Scraps of Time. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have a large chunk of time to work on your goals. If all you can carve out are fifteen minutes here and there throughout the day, use that time.
9. Can you negotiate with your employer that you’ll work longer hours Monday to Thursday, and then take Fridays off?
10. Work On Your Psychological Discipline. Keep in mind that making time to work on your goals is, to a large extent, about psychological discipline. A lot of the reasons that we use to explain why we don’t have time to work on our goals are just excuses that we’re using to avoid the hard work of writing, exercising, learning a new skill, and so on.
11. It’s not so much about how much time you have to work on your goals, as it is about the quality of your goal-achievement time. That is, when you’re working on your goals, are you completely focused on the task, or are you trying to answer emails and catch up on Twitter as you write? Work on your goals with laser-like focus.
12. Give Yourself Permission to Work on Your Goals. When the world around us is swirling in chaos, we often feel that taking the time to work on our goals is a luxury that we can’t indulge in at the moment. However, working on your dreams isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Write yourself a permission slip if you need to; but get to work on your goals.

No matter what goals or aspirations you might have, no doubt there is at least some form of sacrifice required for progress. And the only person who can determine whether or not it’s worthwhile is YOU.

So I encourage you to look at what’s really important. When you are making a decision between your personal and work goals, carefully evaluate the risks and rewards. What will be left behind? What will take its place? What do you really want, and what are you willing to give up in return? What price are you willing to pay? And how much is too much?

These aren’t easy questions. They force you to look at the whole picture and how your career impacts other areas of life. It’s not just about the money, or the title, or the lifestyle. It’s about ALL of these things and what they mean as a whole—to you, your family, and your future.

This article was provided by Coaches Network

By Alan Hargreaves and Richard Bate

There is nothing worse than a player who won’t or can’t listen. Because successful communication with your players is crucial, it pays to have some insight into the field of knowledge called communication. This field of knowledge has much to teach us, including the fact that, although we all have the ability to receive as well as transmit messages, many of us—especially coaches—are more skilled at transmitting than receiving! We might improve ourselves as coaches simply by becoming better listeners! Also, we know that body language, posture, and gestures (nonverbal communication) are all very important in transmitting messages to others, especially messages of enthusiasm and commitment.

What we say or do usually carries with it an emotional message. For example, some people can convey intense anger with a softly spoken word or inject humor into the most violent-looking gestures. We want to highlight three types of communication that will enable you to gain access to the minds of your players. These three types, which are often combined, are verbal, visual, and physical communication.

Verbal Communication

As coaches, we probably use verbal communication more than any other method. We know from experience that talking with players, rather than at them, can be one of the most effective means of communication. When you tell players what to do, always consider how they will receive your message; try to anticipate their reactions.

Double Positive Approach

Receiving good news is always pleasant; we all enjoy being praised, provided that it is sincere praise. When you see a successful performance, stop the practice and explain and demonstrate why the performance is successful. We call this the double positive approach because you simultaneously reinforce the player for good play while establishing the correct points of technique for the benefit of all players engaged in the practice.

However, players do make mistakes. When coaching players who can be especially sensitive, try to correct mistakes without discouraging them. If you go directly to the negative—the failure or mistake—you can very easily make a player feel insecure to such an extent that he may avoid trying again. Instead, begin with a positive opening remark before you correct what the player is doing wrong (e.g., “Good try, but . . .” or, “Yes, that move was OK, but . . . ”).

By giving an encouraging opening comment, you make the player feel secure and thus receptive. To be really effective, you must open the player’s mind to advice. In this way you avoid creating the closed mind of the irritated or reluctant player, whose negative emotions might momentarily interfere with cooperation and reason.

In our view, the double positive approach is the most important of all of the strategies. If you can spend most of your coaching life looking for and positively reinforcing what is right, good, and correct, then you are much more likely to be a happy, successful, and respected coach.

Question-and-Answer Technique

We believe it is a mistake for any coach to continually tell players what they should be doing. You can often achieve far more by asking players rather than telling. We recommend what is known as the question-and-answer technique. For example, if you ask your players a question such as, “Who can tell me why that was such a good pass?” or “What defensive systems are our opponents using?” you will achieve two objectives. First, you will elicit the correct technical diagnosis; and second, by involving the players in the discussion, you will encourage them to develop their own powers of observation and critical analysis. Getting players to appreciate and develop their own knowledge of the game is surely at the heart of good coaching, and the question-and-answer technique enhances this process.

Visual Communication

Good visual communication—the ability to demonstrate well—is a priceless gift. Not only does a good demonstration provide a picture for your players, but it also adds to your credibility and prevents the boredom of long verbal explanations. Following are some important characteristics of a good demonstration:

Simplicity. Emphasize only one major point and perhaps one minor point each time you demonstrate. Bring out additional features in the next demonstration.

Reasonable goals. Your demonstration should always set goals that are within the ability of your players.

Appropriate body language. If you want players to move quickly and urgently, demonstrate the correct pace and tempo of the movement. If you want to stress calmness and composure, let your body movements and your voice convey these qualities.

Talking while demonstrating. This enables you to draw attention to key points while you are actually demonstrating them.

Refraining from overdemonstrating. Restrict demonstrations to one or two repetitions. You may occasionally need to demonstrate a skill three times, but four or more demonstrations will usually bore your audience.

What if My Demonstration Goes Wrong?

You cannot afford to continually make errors in front of your students. How, then, do you handle a mistake when demonstrating? You may find the following strategies useful:

Always try to rehearse in private. If you need a server, practice with that person. If the server makes a mistake in the actual demonstration, don’t try to compensate; stop and try again.

Before you demonstrate, say to the group, “I may need two or three attempts to get this demonstration right.” If you alert the group to the possibility of failure, it won’t be a disaster if you fail. Furthermore, this implies that the players too must be prepared for failure and that failure is not necessarily a bad thing. Of course, succeeding the first time is a bonus.

Stop after your third unsuccessful attempt at demonstrating. Don’t keep on failing! If you are not successful by the third attempt, start the players working with a comment such as, “Sorry, it’s not going well for me today, but you can see what is needed!” No one is perfect, and the players would rather practice themselves than watch you fail. A sincere coach has nothing to fear from an occasional failure.

What Do I Do if I Simply Can’t Demonstrate?

The ability to give good demonstrations is a priceless asset. There are limits, however, and no one who is seriously interested in coaching soccer should be discouraged by an inability to demonstrate. You would not, for example, expect every track coach to sprint 100 meters in under 10 seconds! What matters most is that you know what should be done and why and can get that knowledge across to your players.

If you do not feel confident enough to demonstrate, consider using a preselected demonstrator, the discovery approach, a group challenge, or visual aids.

Preselected Demonstrator: Select a good performer, take him to one side, and have him rehearse the skill or movement several times. Then let this player demonstrate for the entire group.

Discovery Approach: With this method you introduce the topic and start the group off without an introductory demonstration. For example, to coach accuracy in passing, you might start with the players in pairs passing to each other, or you might organize mini-games of 3-on-3. As the players pass, watch for players who pass accurately; then stop the practice and ask the accurate passers to demonstrate for the others.

Group Challenge: Give small groups of players the same task. After a set period of time, let each group demonstrate in turn. In this way you will produce a number of tactical moves to discuss with the players. Further, you will have challenged your players’ initiative.

Visual Aids: Coaching videos, handouts, and charts are useful, but you must use them with care. Examine them in advance, and show only sections you want students to see. Showing a video of a complete game can often be a waste of time, for example—be selective.

Physical Communication

Physical communication involves guiding players’ limbs through the correct movement. This is more important when coaching younger players. Young children must discover how to perform new skills, and they learn more by doing and feeling the correct pattern or shape of the movement than by listening.

This technique affords a special advantage when coaching younger players. Young athletes really respond to being coached by someone who is literally on their own level rather than someone towering above them and perhaps talking down to them in more ways than one.

The overriding strategy is really quite straightforward: observe the players, diagnose their strengths and weaknesses, and then select the methods of communication you think will best suit the group at that particular time. Then, depending on their skill levels, concentrate on making each drill a little more demanding than the previous one.

This is an excerpt from Skills & Strategies for Coaching Soccer, Second Edition, published by Human Kinetics