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. Follow these next 10 points to become a better teacher — and therefore — a better coach.
1. Understanding Your Passion For Football...First. Before jumping into coaching, coaches first must understand their passion for the game. Having a high level of passion for football tremendously influences your energy, creativity and ability to motivate players. Passion is contagious. If one player, one assistant coach or you come to practice excited and fired up, that emotion and passion easily is passed onto everyone else.
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 football. 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 increase. If you care enough about them, they’ll walk through walls for you.
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.
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. After grasping the fundamentals, players move on to practice drills focusing on more than one skill at a time.
5. Use The Whole-Part Method. Often it is 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 he is 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.
7. The Hoopla Of Success. When an athlete or team finally masters a skill or concept, don’t hesitate to stop practice momentarily 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 them. Coaches really are the best positive role models for these values. When stressing good sportsmanship, be sure to coach with honor, respect for the game, referees, etc. When stressing tenacity, never give up on yourself with your athletes. And, when stressing organization, conduct practices that are structured.
9. Encourage Cross-Over Sports. Coaches who are overzealous sometimes encourage their athletes to play only football on a year-round basis. This possibly leads to overuse injuries and burnout. Participating in other sports improves the way your athletes play football. The movements and skills required for many sports are similar.