Best way to coach your team through a challenge
Hey Coaches!
After week 2 of Coach Moments, we have had so many of you reach out and ask what is the best way to coach your team through the Wall that never ends and how do we combat The team is too fast? I have always found that people in the teams that I have played in, or young teams that I have coached, that all players consume knowledge in different ways and that as a coach, or leader, you must adapt to ensure that the message is effectively reaching your team. So through the Coach Moments series I placed an emphasis on trying to address the varying needs of a team, and found that by developing the visible aid, highlighting the problem, I was effectively able to coach my players into addressing the “on-court” problem.
I would start by firstly showing your team the video. This will help all of those visual, auditory and reading/writing learners by highlighting the problem in a manner that they can consume.
After highlighting the problem I would secondly walk the team through the problem, then the action taken to resolve the problem at the training. Those kinaesthetic learners really take to those movements, seeing the success of the outcome.
Thirdly, I review the resolution at the end of the drill, highlighting where we were from point 1, showing the success of point 2 where we aimed to resolve the problem through our structure and action. Those interpersonal learners love the “see, fix, finish” results of their work, giving them confidence to continually work at, and apply the learnings from point 2 to ensure that we always (fingers crossed) have a positive outcome on-court. When reviewing I want players taking away the key messages from the drill! How can they continually practice to ensure that they consistently implement throughout a game.
At the Diamonds we brought the third point into play after most drills and at the end of a session we had to recap what we had completed, but also we consistently aimed to review our learnings to ensure that as a team we were more aware and disciplined whilst at training. The old saying of practice makes perfect never rang truer.
By clearly highlighting, reviewing and then resolving, as a coach you are able to connect with your players on a number of levels. As I said earlier, we all consume knowledge in different ways so as I leader and coach I always took it upon myself to ensure that the message was reaching each of the players in the team. That responsibility ultimately lies with the coach, even if you have a “challenging” learner in your team. Understanding the players as individuals helped streamline our session and gave me great confidence in knowing how to get the best out of them, both as individuals and also as a team.
No one way is the absolute “right” way to do it. Over the years I have learnt from a number of great coaches both at the community and elite level and I’d love to hear from you to understand what steps do you take as a coach to get the best out of your players? We’d love to hear from you at NETFIT, and I’m sure that our community would also welcome your interaction as this is a great forum topic and one that I feel we can all learn a lot out of together.
Have a great week, and here’s to an exciting Week 4 of the Coach Moments.
Stay Safe.
KIMMY G x