Coaching is Teaching. Its Strength Defines The Youth Sport Experience.
The decline in participation is a failing grade for coaches. Here is how to ensure this trend changes.
Coaching can be defined as helping improve performance. As applied to youth sport, it is for the purpose of increasing fun, self confidence and skill development.
Teaching is leading and guiding individuals so that they learn skills. As applied to youth sport, it is also critical in improving performance of those being taught.
Coaching is teaching.
Good coaching requires a versatile and extensive skillset. Communicator, leader, organizer, planner, tactician, friend, psychologist, hard worker, empathetic, motivator and ambitious, today’s coach takes on a lot when he/she agrees to carry the clipboard and whistle. The requirements in leading our youth, coordinate scheduling, communicate with families and deal the local sport association and governing bodies, in addition to getting the certifications to qualify to coach requires a massive time commitment.
When you factor in that many youth sport organizations are interviewing and evaluating these volunteers, one can see that a crisis emerges. Either not enough coaches or coaches are not able to develop the skills required because they have too much on their plate.
The customer is our youth. Participation of our customers are declining at an alarming rate. While the coach is not the only reason this is happening, we are in a significant position to influence participation.
Welcome to edition 193 of The Physical Movement. This week is the first of a 2 part series looking at some of the specifics in being a good coach and why it is so critical that we re-assess how we are doing things.
Becoming a Good Coach.
Is poor coaching ruining the youth sport experience?
Remember the teacher you liked in school? Why did you like them? What were the qualities that made he/she stand out?
Same goes for the teacher you did not like. Why did they stand out?
I use the teacher analogy because we can all relate. Not all coaches played in their youth but we had teachers. Good ones that we remember, bad ones we would rather forget.
The lack of coaching competence is hurting youth sport. Coaching youth sport requires hard and soft skills. Hard skills are defined as the ability to guide our athletes on the technical aspects of skill competence. Coaching also requires soft skills. Soft skills are those less obvious but equally important components of working with youth that include ability to communicate, clarify and organize.
Hard skills include:
Teaching the skills required to play the sport.
Are they able to break down the steps in getting into fielding position in baseball, triple threat position in basketball, changing direction in hockey?
Does the coach help the athlete improve in these areas ? spend time on this ?
Even at the college athlete and pro level, the best coaches help athletes improve in the fundamental skills required to play competently.
A lack of development in this area could be because the coach does not understand how the skills are performed sequentially? Does not demonstrate skills very well. Does not communicate instructions in different ways.
Soft skills include:
How, when and how often they speak to the kids.
Do they speak them as if they were small adults? Do they speak too much during pre-game, game, post game and practice?
Sharing expectations and guidelines at the beginning of the season.
Emotional intelligence:
Heated with officials and yells a lot or calm and collected in different situations? Is too friendly with some parents and a little cold with others. Shows disdain or respect for the opponent?
How much importance placed on winning at expense of the experience.
Personal organization: Arrives prepared and on time or scrambling and late?
Unfortunately, many coaches are not passing in the above categories.
This is not designed to be negative towards coaches. The purpose here is to highlight what is hurting the youth sport experience.
Let’s step back.
One of my favorite exercises in sport, life and business is to step back and look at the big picture first. What is the purpose of what we are doing?
Coaches dedicate a lot of time, mostly on volunteer basis, to assist our youth in their development with the best of intentions. The purpose is to create a positive experience for our young athletes.
With that in mind, we want all kids to do well and build confidence and experiences they can continue to build on for a lifetime of competence in physical health and mental well-being.
With that purpose, we can dig into the qualities that make a good coach/teacher:
A good coach/teacher understands that:
· Kids learn in different ways. Some are visual, some do better with auditory instruction and almost all do better when they feel themselves performing in ways that will improve performance.
· Youth athletes are much more receptive if they feel a connection to the coach and the purpose of the time together. It could be as simple as “having fun” but it is important to remember that fun in sport comes from having competence in the activity. Without competence, its tough to have fun.
Ask the youngster who strikes out a lot or has trouble turning while skating in hockey. The kid who can not control the basketball or soccer ball or who never gets the opportunity to even touch the ball are all examples we see often that lead to disappointment and “lack of fun”.
Lack of fun = not coming back. Our customer is not coming back.
Conversely, there is something magical when the ball jumps off your bat and flies a mile when you make contact in baseball, or when you are able to control the ball/puck without worrying about changing direction or speed.
Fun = coming back.
Fun = customer returning.
· Learning requires practice of the skills that will allow for better performance. It also requires mistakes to be made.
Nothing is learned without mistakes.
How many coaches lead with that acknowledgement to their athletes and families?
Creating an environment where mistakes are accepted as a stepping stone is key to positive experience.
· Practicing the skills requires an understanding of the fundamentals that make up the performance of the skill.
· Improving the execution of the skill requires verbal, visual and physical cues by the youth athlete delivered by the coach.
· Improving of desired skill requires repetition of the steps that will produce desired skill
· There are many ways to improve and develop. One way is to simply play the game and simulate the demands of the game as often as possible. Another way is to execute drills repeatedly until the outcome of skill execution improves (young gymnasts, divers, skaters are very familiar with this approach).
At a very high level, we have broken down some of the components of what makes a good coach.
The good coach is a good communicator.
He/she meets the youth athlete where they are at, uses words they can relate to, respects the athletes and makes eye contact. The good coach is approachable, and the athlete never feels threatened or intimidated. The good coach creates an environment where all feel secure, even in moments of mistakes.
Next week in part 2 on this topic we will look at some communication strategies that surpass all other skills in coaches development.
Have a great week everyone!