Inefficient Time Use? You need a Practice Plan!

Time is one of the biggest assets a coach has, but it has to be used appropriately. When a coach arrives to practice unprepared or overwhelmed, athletes will immediately pick up on that and follow suit. Pretty soon, you have endured a frustrating, useless practice. Everyone leaves in a bad mood, realizing that nothing was accomplished and blaming someone else.

When coaching, your job is to lead your players through drills, improve technique, prepare them for competitions, and build self-confidence and team unity. If you do not have your practice planned, none of these things will occur. Just like a teacher, a coach must have a “lesson plan” of sorts.

Certain things should be kept constant in practice. There should always be time for a warm-up and stretching at the beginning of a practice. During this time, you should help your team transition into “practice mode” and focus on the work at hand. You should help them prepare their bodies sufficiently for the physical exertion ahead and help them concentrate on what they individually need to improve.

Next should be time for technique and drills. This may be the least entertaining part of practice, but it may also prove to be the most worthwhile. No one enjoys repeating drills just to fix some minute error, but this develops strength, patience, a drive for perfection, and personal pride when the drill is performed correctly. All these drills and technique practices should follow a series, working from the most basic to the most intense. You cannot teach your players to run before they learn to walk, so start at the beginning and work your way forward.

After working on technique and drills, take your team to competition preparation. Show them tapes of previous games and what they can work on, or walk them through their last game mentally if you do not have tapes. Be sure to point out the positive aspects of their game as well as the negative aspects, and gently show them what needs to be improved for the next competition. When you enter this section of practice, you must pick a finite number of improvements on which you want your players to focus. More than three is unrealistic. Look at the past competitions and look for a pattern. Are you seeing anything that your team is consistently missing, even though you have raised it as a concern? If so, pick that as your only focus between now and the next competition. Sometimes, even three improvements are too many, especially when you are trying to change a major pattern you see in your team. Ask them to be aware of that issue and to do their best to fix it in themselves. They need to know that even though they are part of a team, their main responsibility is to ensure that their own actions are the best they can be.

To help your team remember which aspects you want them to focus on before the next competition, talk them through it during the warm-up each day. Have a new way of explaining the problem and remind them to focus on improving those specific areas. Also, remind them of past issues you have already resolved, so that they do not fall into the same problems again.
At the end of every practice, spend a few minutes with your team doing some cool-down exercises and more stretching. This will help protect their muscles and give you a chance to have a last minute chat with them before leaving for the day. Encourage them by recognizing the good work they have done during that practice and give them something to think about for the next practice. Keep the focus on their personal performances instead of winning or losing the next competition, because youth athletes perform much better when the emphasis is on performance instead of results.

Before each practice, spend some time thinking of what your team needs to accomplish that day. Follow the plan outlined, but be sure to tailor it to your own needs. This plan is a great way to build rapport with your team, especially during the warm-up and cool-down periods.