By David Jacobson
Positive Coaching Alliance
As a Responsible Coach, you want to get all you can out of all your athletes every moment you can, because that’s how your athletes will get everything out of sports that they can, both on and off the field.
Just as athletes make their greatest gains in physical strength by pushing through their perceived (and often self-imposed) limits, coaches and players learn great life lessons – gaining mental and emotional strength – when they push through adverse practice conditions. This adaptation also brings the team closer together and builds stronger bonds among players and between players and coaches.
However, “pushing through” a practice does not necessarily mean driving the athlete’s harder or demanding greater physical exertion. Often, turning around an unproductive practice depends on creativity and a coach’s finely tuned sense to the rhythms of his or her team. For example, University of Colorado Head Football Coach Dan Hawkins occasionally breaks up the grind of practice by running contests to see which linemen can catch a booming punt.
Check out this technique Boston Celtics Coach Doc Rivers explained in the most recent Responsible Sports podcast: “Today we had a quiet drill. We had a half-hour stretch when there could be no talking. And I did it because I thought our energy was low. And I was trying to show the point, how important being verbal is in practice, and being loud in practice. And it was amazing, right after we finished the low half hour, and I said, ‘Okay, now let’s go back to our normal way,’ how loud the practice got and how the energy picked up.
“When you’re having a low tank day in practice, you’ve got to do something to make it competitive. Players are competitive by nature. It can be a shooting game. It can be a regular game. But you have to do something where there’s a winner and a loser at stake.”
Even without an all-out scrimmage, especially if players are overtired, you may do a homerun derby off a tee, in soft-toss or against a coach’s pitching, which many players find most fun, and which many coaches hold back as a treat for players to earn in practice.
Another way to change the dynamic of a practice is to have players officiate and coach. This has the added benefit of showing players the pressures facing officials and coaches, so they are more likely to empathize and less likely to confront either group. Watch a youth softball team reverse the roles and the kids officiate a close call at first base and see their reaction to miscalls.
One last suggestion is just to stop the physical activity completely and sit and talk. Get to know each other. Advance your team’s social, emotional and communications skills.
This will pay off during competition, when they are more likely to have each others’ backs and vocalize en route to better execution of plays. More importantly, it will pay off in the longer term as your youth players take those skills beyond sports.
