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developing athletes at practice

9/12/2023

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“The best athletes have the most potential to be the best players.”

An insufficient amount of time is spent during sport practices on specific, individualized athletic development.  In my opinion, the best athletes have the most potential to be the best players.  I do not think simply playing sports maximizes athletic development.  I think proper instruction of sport fundamentals and mechanics utilizes and enhances athleticism, but a strong foundation of athletic training pre-season and during the season is the springboard to elite player development.

Prior to, and possibly including 8th grade, I think all players benefit from playing multiple sports.  During and after 8th grade, playing multiple sports may or may not be the best option for those athletes who desire to be elite in a given sport. (See, Sport Specialization – A More Holistic and Realistic Perspective – April 2022)  One of the factors which would definitely assist a player becoming elite in a sport is requiring all coaches in those sports to prioritize athletic development in their practice plans.

I think there are several reasons why many coaches do not do this.  First, their priority is on winning games and championships and they are currently able to do so without training athleticism.  Some coaches do not know why the best athletes have the most potential to be the best players.  Those coaches may also lack the ability to look at their players and see the athletes, i.e., to mentally remove the implements out of the player’s hand and just recognize the flaws in the movement of the athlete’s body.  They may not realize that the solution to flaws in the fundamentals of their players may not be in doing more sport skill drills, but may need to be first addressed as an athleticism deficiency in the player’s body, i.e., mobility, flexibility, stability, strength, power, speed or agility.

Most youth coaches do not have the education and training to teach the specifics of body movement even if they wanted to do so.  Of those who do, most probably do not know how to program such training into their practice plans in a logical, kinetic, and ultimately, a sport-specific manner.  Leagues should give them this education and training and should require that they use it on every team and, in every year, in a progressive, league-directed or supervised manner.

Many high school athletes erroneously assume and rely upon the playing of multiple sports year around to exclusively develop their athleticism.  Most of the time, these players would improve much more by, for 4-5 months, doing non-traditional sports such as martial arts 2 days per week and training 3 days per week with a nationally certified strength and conditioning coach who is a movement specialist with a proven track record of training players in the athlete’s sport.

It is essential that coaches actually teach athleticism every day with the same individual attention to detail, monitoring, and accountability as they do with the sport skills.  Coaches must train preparation, anticipation, and reaction, as well as, action.  When doing these things, coaches and trainers must frequently integrate the use of the ball used in the player’s sport into the exercise.

Here are the aspects of athleticism that can and should be trained as a part of every practice:
  • Body mobility, flexibility, and stability including ab/core development;
  • Body movement, coordination, and synchronization in all planes of motion with an early and continuous emphasis on running form, agility, and explosiveness.  Specifically, from the first year in youth sports, players should be taught to get progressively better at crawling, walking, marching, skipping, running, bounding, sprinting, backpedaling, jumping, hopping, and shuffling.
  • Strength training to learn how to push, pull, squat, hinge, and carry beginning with body weight exercises and progressing to using bands, kettle bells, med balls, and weighted implements of all types.
  • Speed, agility, balance, and Plyometrics using speed ladders, discs, cones, hurdles, boxes, jump rope, and Bosu Balls.
  • Breathing before, during, and after exercise and competition.
  • Visual acuity and mental focus and toughness
When leagues and coaches prioritize training athletes in every practice in every sport, the quality of play will increase dramatically, as will their goal of winning games and championships.

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Goal Setting

9/2/2023

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“Set S-M-A-R-T Goals – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Trackable – and begin with life skills.”

The process of teaching is a matter of establishing a progression of building blocks leading from the most basic step to the mastery of the skill, for sport and for life.  A coach must set goals to accomplish the desired outcomes.  Most coaches do not set specific goals prior to the season for how they are going to teach the fundamentals of their sport and do not establish any goals at all with regard how they are going to teach life lessons within the game for beyond the game.  And when a coach or player are setting or accomplishing goals, or teaching or learning a skill, it is the process that is important.

If you ask a coach or a player what their goals are for the season, most often you will hear result-oriented goals.  They will talk about winning games and championships, batting averages, hitting for power, on-base and fielding percentages, etc.  This result-oriented focus will not lead to the best results because good process leads to good results.  Master the process and good things will happen both in sport and in life.

Coaches and players will rarely talk about setting goals for teaching life skills, being a better mentor or a better teammate.  The absence of these goals will result in a hollow sport experience.  These coaches and players will lose in the ultimate game – coaching and being Champions for Life.

Here is an example.  This year, a Rookie Ball coach asked me for help with his initial practice plans for the baseball season.  My response was, “Please show me your goals for the season.”  The reason I asked him this was practice plans are developed from the end-of-the-season backward, form the end of the week backward, and then from the end of the practice backward to the beginning.  In other words, to plan where you are going, you need to know where you want to go – today, by the end of the week, and for the season!  Specifically, you need goals to develop the coaches and team members as people, athletes and players.

In response to my question, the Rookie Ball coach said he had some goals, but he had not written them down.  This was his way of admitting that he had not really given the idea of goal-setting much thought.  When I asked him to send me a list of goals for the season for his team, what I received were things such as: “Have each member of the team get a hit and make a “baseball play” during a game”; “Have the team end an inning by getting three outs rather than just the inning ending by the other team batting through the order or reaching the five run limit”; and “Have each member of the team get a hit off of coach-pitch and not have to use the tee”.  You see the pattern?  All of these things are result-oriented goals.  They do not address the process by which the goals will be achieved.

Similarly, when the coach sent me his practice plan for the first practice, it merely included the usual list of hitting and fielding drills.  The drills had no purpose other than “to teach the players how to hit and field a ball properly”.  No thought was given to the building block progression for teaching the players the process of hitting or fielding.  For example, instead of just having three stations for hitting balls off of tees and soft toss, it would be much more productive to have an assistant coach at each station teach one basic skill such as how to grip the bat, how to properly load into the batter’s box, how to establish an athletic, balanced stance, etc., one station, one building block principle at a time in the proper order.  The mastery of this process and building blocks will lead to the desired results.

It is equally important to have on the list athletic, Baseball IQ, and life skill goals and the process by which the coaches were going to achieve them too.  And always begin and end with life skills!  

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filling the void - life after sport

8/15/2023

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A close friend from my high school and college years passed away recently.  He was, quite simply, the most talented and gifted high school athlete I have ever seen.  He taught me there is a significant difference between good and great.  More importantly, he taught me that in all areas of life, it takes extraordinary and well-directed hard work to elevate God-given gifts to competitive greatness.

I spent countless hours sharing the journey with him on and off the field.  I witnessed first-hand the day-to-day grind with trainers and coaches, teams and teammates, championships and heartaches. 

I learned that to maximize their potential in sports, people must have high character and integrity, be exceptional athletes, and be players with elite sport skills.  This journey requires an extraordinary commitment, dedication, and perseverance in the classroom, in the gym, and on the field.

If mentored properly, a player learns many life lessons within the game that should translate beyond the game.  Sadly, more often than not, they do not.  Why?  The primary reason today is the pursuit of athletic excellence is most-often a singular obsession.

American society is obsessed with sports.  Parents are seduced into club ball, travel ball, and leveling-up their player to win medals and championships erroneously assuming that good teams require good players and coaching, and trophies in sports will lead to success in life.  The truth is an appearance in a SportsCenter highlight is a one-off, not a predictor of success. 

In fact, the American obsession and glorification of sports is so intense that many athletes cannot replicate that feeling of excitement in any part of their life outside of sports and after their competitive sport life is done.

Many coaches use winning as the measure of all success, present and future.  Winning may ensure longevity at their job, but it does not ensure happiness and contentment for their players after their playing days are over.  Furthermore, these coaches wrongly assume that all important life-lessons can be learned by inference from competing in the sport.  They fail to proactively program life lessons into every training and practice session.  And too many coaches and athletic trainers only require their players be dedicated to the sport, not to a balanced life.  They simply run their athletes and players through their system of metrics and analytics with no regard for the players’ lives outside of the sport.
 
Another basic contributing factor is there are only so many hours in a day.  Coaches, teams, and leagues require that, to be elite, you must practice and play both in-season and in the off-season.  Many times this means a player must play on multiple teams in one sport in-season and play and train for multiple sports simultaneously year-round.  How many elite athletes during their high school years hold multiple jobs which require 20 hours a week for, at least, several months?

The American education system fails to prepare student-athletes for real world opportunities.  For most students, a liberal arts education in most school districts today requires way too many hours studying math and science and, for all students, way too few hours training specific work skills and gaining experience.  High school students are rushed off to college with little or no idea of a process to choose a career and a crippling assumption that all colleges are equally capable of preparing all students in every major for living-wage, self-actualizing jobs in the real world.

Most tragically, student-athletes make the mistake of choosing a college based on whether they can play their sport there and not whether they can get the best education for their career at the college.  The day after graduation, those athletes have, at best, some fun memories of being a part of a sports team, but the piece of paper they received during the graduation ceremony gives them no pathway to a meaningful and fulfilling career they are passionate about. 

My friend was one of those good people who achieved greatness as an athlete, but was seduced into believing that his success on the field would ensure the same happiness and success once his playing days were done.  For him, just like millions of other athletes, it did not.

We, as coaches, leagues, schools, and society owed him and all those who follow him, better.
Every day, we must proactively prepare our players to fill the void.

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the process of coaching champions for life

8/1/2023

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“ Team members are three-part development projects – persons, athletes and players.”

I. 
Why This Approach 
  A. To please the ultimate scorekeeper – “When taking accountability for your daily and life-long   
       accomplishments, be sure your lists and His are the same.”
  B. What matters most to your team members – when you have coached for a long period of time, you will
      receive communications from your players – very few, if any, of them will thank you for the wins and 
      championships – they will thank you for helping them be better people – that “you taught them life lessons 
      within the game for beyond the game.”
  C. When you are planning how to be a better coach in general or for having a better season or week of practices
      or a single practice, you need an easy to understand, well-organized outline to use as a template.
  D. This information is not about how to do sport-specific skills, e.g., how to throw, field and hit a baseball.  It is
​     about when I am ready to plan as a coach, I have general outline I can use to help me so that I include
     everything that needs to be taught and learned and done in the right way for the right reasons.  This is an
     outline and a template. 

II. A Different View of Your Team Members  
  1. Traditionally, coaches view their team members as players, i.e., people to help them win games and championships.  A paradigm shift in the coach’s thinking needs to occur to see their team members as people, athletes, players and teammates.
  2. Better People=Better Athletes=Better Players=Better Teammates= “Champions for Life”
 
III. What You Need To Accomplish Your Mission  
  1. Goals – In-season (backward from season, weekly, daily) and off-season – individual and team;
           S-M-A-R-T and Stretch 2
      2..Qualified coaches with the same coaching philosophies and approach to teaching
      3. Adequate facilities – to accommodate the number of players and the weather
      4. Sufficient equipment – to allow for safe and efficient multi-tasking
      5. Sufficient time to accomplish your personal, athletic, player and team goals
      6. Qualified, unselfish, and supportive administrative help
      7. A strong personal Growth Mindset – “The need to get better every day begins with you.”
  • Critically read and study every day to improve yourself in the same categories as your team members – personally (spouse/life partner, parent), spiritually, athletically, and professionally (employment and coaching)
  • Have reliable “go-to” resources for information in every category that are easily accessible (bookmarked websites, regular email, blog, and podcast feeds, eBooks and audio books)
  • Have an online very specific categorized library of information and coaching outlines
  • Video equipment to view the athlete and player frame-by-frame from every angle
  • Watch how and when coaches in multiple sports coach their teams and watch the action “off the ball”.
  • Quotes, Acronyms, Role Play Outlines
   8. A culture of excellence and a tradition of doing things the right way for the right reasons – effective reward
       and discipline systems9
   9. Support from your league where all teams and coaches are using the same approach.
   10. Athletes with elite sport skills, a teachable spirit, a growth mindset, competitiveness, leadership and are
        good people with character and integrity

 IV. Developing Championship People  
  1. A player/athlete does not care what you know to help them as a player or an athlete until you are able to connect with them to show them you understand and care about them as a person.
  2. You must be able to discover, relate to, and validate their feelings and experiences as a son, daughter, friend, student, and person in general.
  3. You must be able to take the person as and where they are and educate and motivate them to want to improve as a player, athlete, teammate, and person despite their obstacles and adversity.
  4. A coach must be able to communicate and teach their team members how, what and why they are experiencing in the sport can help them be better in their life now and in the future.
     5. The sport and life lessons that can be taught and role played are not a mystery – they have been the same
          from the beginning of time. They include:
  • Sport – injuries, bad weather, poor playing conditions, bad calls by officials, disputes about playing time, ineligibility of players by grades or conduct, bad language, bad attitudes, “helicopter” or unruly parents, disrespect from other teams, etc.
  • Self – attitude, growth mindset, work ethic, leadership, adversity, self-confidence, self-pity, self-esteem, self-advocacy, self-awareness, self-image, self-control, character, integrity, spirituality, prayer, academics and careers;
  • Relationships – empathy, communication, peer pressure, bullying, envy, the media, positive affirmations to teammates;
  • Temptations – smoking, drugs, alcohol and sex.
 
V. Developing Championship Athletes  
  A. You must see a flaw in a player’s fundamentals and recognize whether the player needs help with the
        mechanics of your sport or needs first to correct a flaw in their physical development and athleticism.
  B. You must be able to watch a player move and recognize weaknesses in their mobility, stability, elasticity,
      endurance, strength, power, speed, agility, and/or quickness. All corrections to sport fundamentals begin
      with an analysis of posture, balance, footwork, angles (in the body positions and in movement), rhythm and
      timing.  However, the solution to these problems many times must start with physiology and psychology, not
      methodology; coach preparation and reaction before action.       
  C. Then you or an assistant must know how to design a physical development program and teach the techniques
     to the player to correct these physiological weaknesses so that the functional demands of their sport can be
      improved.
D. You must also be able to educate the athlete about nutrition and recovery  (rest-sleep, hydration and mobility)
      so the work they are doing to improve physically will be optimized.
E. The key questions about nutrition are:
     What nutritional purposes are being served by the food I am consuming? Am I receiving the nutrition from
     the best possible sources? Why am I consuming it in this quantity?   Why am I consuming it now?
F. Examples of Things Even Youth coaches Can Teach Their Players
     1.How to crawl (e.g., bear crawls, dead bugs and bird dogs), walk, march, skip, jog, bound, backpedal, sprint,
        shuffle, jump and hop
     2. Reaction drills (e.g., predator/prey tag, ball drop, ball catch, etc.)
     3. How to push, pull, squat, hinge and carry
 
VI. Developing Championship Players
  1. Do you have accurate information and an understanding about how the fundamentals of your sport should be done?  
  2. You must teach the mechanics of the fundamentals in logical and efficient building-block progressions while multi-tasking using A-R-C-F (Action-Repetition-Competition-Fun).
  3. You must teach the building block progressions using all of the learning modalities (auditory, visual, and kinesthetic).
  4. You must program your teaching in a differentiated way so that players along the entire ability spectrum can consistently progress.
  5. You must educate and train preparation/anticipation (physical and mental), reaction and action in all aspects of the game.
 
VII. Developing Championship Teammates

    1. Empathy
    2. Communication
    3. Listening skills
    4. Non-verbal
    5. Verbal
    6. Mentoring = role model and teacher – “It matters less what the coach knows than what the players have
        learned and what they players have learned only becomes significant when they can teach it to others.”
    7. Attitude/Work Ethic/Accountability
    8. Leadership
    9. Team Chemistry
  • Caring Family Culture – Team Building Ideas
  • Positive Affirmations
  • Controlling what you can control
  • Expectations for coaches, players and parents
  • Physical and mental synchronicity
  • Honoring the game
    10. Effective rewards emphasizing effort, process and “small wins”
    11. Fair, consistent, and appropriate discipline – praise publicly, criticize privately about the conduct not the
          person


Caution!  When do you all of these things your players, their parents, and your AD will love you.  You will win games and championships.  You will get promoted.  You will be tempted by the mistress of success to have your life get out of balance.  “Your family loves you not your job. Be sure they get the best of you, not the rest of you.”  The same level of work ethic and dedication that you give to your coaching needs to be applied to your life partner and family!
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you have served and served well

7/13/2023

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There are very few certainties in life.  In coaching, one of those certainties is that no matter the season, not matter the league, no matter the sport, no matter the team, the head coach will be criticized and second-guessed.  The criticism may come from parents of players, “boosters”, other coaches, casual fans of the game, an athletic director, a league board member or members, or all of the above, but it most certainly will happen.

Such criticism will often feel very painful; it may even rise to the level of feeling like a betrayal. Sadly, depending on the source of the criticism and how long it persists, it may even get the coach fired. 

This is why every coach should have this famous quote, known as “The Man in the Arena”, on their wall and should read it every day:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”  
President Theodore Roosevelt, April 23, 1910

Most importantly, these are the things every coach should do as the person in the arena:
​
(1) Be sure the highest priority of what you do every day is developing players of high moral character and integrity, great leaders, and role models,  The planning for every season, every training session, every practice, and every game should begin with how the coaches will proactively teach life lessons within the game for beyond the game.  The expressions of gratitude from the people who matter most, your players, ten years after they played for you, will not be about the wins and losses; they will be about how you made them a better person.
(2)  Be sure the universal goal of getting better every day begins with the coaches - personally, athletically, and professionally.  Don’t just preach the standard; be the standard.
(3) Be sure the process and the methodology of how your team, program, league, and sport are operated and taught were better because you were involved.  Speak, write, and volunteer to give others knowledge that will elevate what they do so that players far beyond your team and program will benefit from what you know and have done.
4) Be sure you and your team volunteer to serve the disabled and disadvantaged with no expectation of any kind of monetary return.

When you do these things, it will not matter what others outside the arena will say.  Those in the arena will know the truth – that you were much more than a coach.  You were a teacher, a role model, and a mentor – a true Champion for Life.  For whatever time you had the privilege to spend in the arena, you can stand tall and be proud.  You have served and served well.

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Lessons from the Legends - What Legendary Coaches Taught Me About Coaching

7/1/2023

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“The need to get better every day begins with the coaches.  If you expect your players to be students, you must first be a great student yourself.”
 
I. Rod Dedeaux – your team must expect to win and have a swagger about them, i.e., something the opponent cannot help but take note of and is very concerned about overcoming – “The other team is going to hate us anyway; we might as well give them a good reason.”

II. Augie Garrido – your team must know that everything about who they are as people and as players matters to you at the deepest level, i.e., their development as people of strong character and as elite athletes is something you care about on a personal level.

III. John Wooden – the best motivator of your players is the development of their self-esteem – coaches spend too much time with how to praise and discipline their players (less than 15% of his coaching time combined) and not enough time on the details and methodology of player development.  Players are motivated most by doings things individually and as a team that they never dreamed they could accomplish.  Becoming a better teacher is the best way to motivate your players.

IV. John Scolinos – the importance of surrounding yourself with good people and those ‘good people’ start with Him.

V. Jose Mourinho – when you watch sports, watch off the ball much more than what happens with the ball and study coaches more than players; there is much to be learned from good coaches in all sports.

VI. Bill Self – how to coach your players to play hard and to think and play unselfishly in practice so you only need to be concerned with execution in games.

VII. Jim Calhoun – how to imprint your personality on to your team during practice and how your team will impose it upon the other team in the game.

VIII. Lou Piniella – a coach establishes a bar of excellence for all of his teams, but great coaches adapt to the personalities of each of his players on every team.

IX. Geno Auriemma – the critical importance for all players to master the details of every aspect of the game and how to design practices that teach them to do it through “perfect practice”.

X. Mike Krzyzewski - how to empower team captains while teaching leadership skills to all players.

XI. Urban Meyer – how to get your team to play in sync and with a single purpose – team claps and cheers; consistent discipline.

XII. – Anson Dorrance – how to build team chemistry by gatherings and events off the field; how men’s and women’s teams differ in this regard.

What I am most proud of in my own coaching - teaching life skills within the game for beyond the game – explicit program and practice design that makes it clear to the players that what the players are learning transcends sports into their personal lives.
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when building a league, program or team culture start with why

6/3/2023

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Every organization on the planet, including sport teams, leagues and programs, operates on three levels – what they do, how they do it and why they do it.  The fundamental mistake made by leaders of many of those teams and programs is they start their recruiting of players and they build the foundation of their teams on what they do, i.e., winning games and championships and how they do it, i.e., their allegedly superior process to teach fundamentals and mechanics to develop players.

And yet, every truly great leader since the beginning of time has always inspired their followers by starting with the why, i.e., the purpose, cause or belief that defines why the program exists in the first place.  Great leaders, by their words and actions, create a clear vision of a world that is so different and amazing that the followers want to commit their hard work to help build it.  The leader just serves as a compass to get there.

The reason the why is so powerful is that when you connect to it, the response is visceral, i.e., it connects to the emotional part of the brain that controls behavior not language.  The follower cannot explain it, but they are certain it defines who they are.

Fundamentally, what great leaders do is offer a vision of a better place and one where the followers feel safe. These two factors cause the followers to believe the leader has their best interest in mind.  The reward for the leader and the program is hard work, loyalty, love innovation, ideas, progress, cooperation and trust.

Why does your league, program or team exist?

Every sport team, program and league promises the possibility of wins and championships because they have great coaches who use sound methodology and the latest technology to develop great players and a winning approach.  And yet, only one team can end the season with a win.  Experienced coaches know that for many reasons a great team and, sometimes even the best team, does not always win.  Most of the players on those teams will not play the sport in college or professionally. 

Experienced coaches also know that the communication of appreciation they receive from their players ten years after their time in the program is done almost never talk about the wins and championships; they only thank them for how the program and coaching made them a better person.
 
So when the season is done, what defines your team, your program and your players?  What defines who they are and have become that they can use for the rest of their lives?  What lessons within the game for beyond the game have they learned that will inspire them to promote your program, to teach others what you have taught them to work tirelessly to help the less fortunate, and to make the world a better place? 

Here are some ways you can properly develop a why, a purpose, to your program:

1) Start with a paradigm shift in why you coach; a mission not simply to win games and championships, but for deeper reasons for the long-term benefit of your players as people of high integrity and character;
2) Set goals for the season generally and for every practice during the season that proactively teach the players to be better sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, spouses, students, employees and leaders.
3) Use quotations, role plays and guest speakers to proactively design life lessons about self-care, character, integrity, and caring for others into every training and practice session.
4) Have your players play games in your sport with children and people with disabilities;
5) Have your players voluntarily serve other organizations at your school and in your community with no expectation of a monetary return.

When you do these things, your program will not only easily recruit high-quality people that will win games and championships, those people will gratefully work now and in the future to develop and inspire Champions for Life. 
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how to coach life lessons within the game for beyond the game

6/1/2023

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Coaches must be sure the culture of their program is grounded on the mentorship of student-athletes to be not only great competitors, but people of high character and integrity.  Coaches are mentors when they are master teachers and are role models in everything they say and do. They have had a “successful” season when they have built the self-esteem and self-confidence of their players so that individually and as a team they have achieved things they did not think were possible.
 
When their players not only know how to do these things, but can also teach others how to do them, coaches achieve the ultimate goal of Coaching Champions for Life.
 
Coaches of Champions for Life must find practical ways to develop players not just as competitors, but to use the sport proactively to teach them life lessons. I call this the process of holistic coaching.
 
Specifically, coaches must teach players that the value of a person’s life is the impact he or she has had on other people. The purpose of life is to be successful and significant. To be “successful”  means to: (a) determine the gifts God gave you; (b) which of them you are so passionate about you want to spend 8 – 10 hours a day doing; and (c) developing them to be better than anyone else you know into marketable skills, not just a hobby. 
To be “significant” means we use our gifts to help and serve others particularly the less fortunate and to make the world a better place.  The goal is not to be just a person of success, but rather to be a person of value, i.e., significant.

A team has two goals every day: (1) could we have defeated out toughest competition today? And (2) did our conduct inspire those who observed us to be better in their lives?   

The first step in the process is a critical one – the coaches and the program must strictly adhere to the philosophy that, “We coach people, not sports; it is the quality of the person, not the player that is the most significant outcome.”
 
The reason this is mandatory is coaches must learn to change how they see the members of their team (and frankly, the way they see their coaches too). Most coaches look at the members of their team and see players, i.e., members of a team that, if developed properly, can help them win games and championships. What they fail to realize is that to develop the player to be the best they can be, they must first develop the athlete. And before they can develop the athlete to be the best they can be, they must relate to, connect with and validate the person.
 
Sometimes this paradigm shift in thinking is a tough sell when coaches are being evaluated by an Athletic Director and/or by parents solely on wins and losses.   As any experienced CCFL Coach will attest, communications from past players thanking them for being their coach universally have one thing in common; they almost never discuss wins and losses; they only describe the impact the coach has had on the player’s life.
 
As a practical matter then, the first step is to begin all preparations, for the season, for the week and for each practice session, by planning how coaches are going to teach life lessons to their players. This planning is done well in advance of the season and then continues each week and each practice session once the season begins. Specifically, within the strict confines of time, regulations and resources of their program, how will they teach them to be better sons, daughters, siblings, students, business and community leaders while simultaneously developing them as athletes, players and teammates to win games?
 
When goal-setting for the season, a coach should use the same process-oriented methodology to teach life lessons as the coach would use to teach the mechanics of their sport. For example, if the ultimate goal is to mentor the person to be a better son or daughter, a coach should not just tell the person they should be respectful and appreciative of their parents.
 
At the youth level, the coach should actually require such things as having the player go immediately after practice to their parents and thank them for bringing them to practice and for supporting them in their sport. The coach could require the player to volunteer to do at least one thing to help the parent prepare dinner for the family each night. The player could also be required to do such things as read with or help a sibling do homework for ½ hour each night. The coach should notify the parents that these are requirements imposed by the coach and the coach should follow up on whether the player actually is doing them. The list is endless, but you get the idea.
 
In my experience, words are very powerful. I have always discussed inspirational quotes as a designed part of each practice or training session with my athletes. I even wrote a book for use by coaches for this purpose – Takeaway Quotes for Coaching Champions for Life.
 
At the start of and during each practice or training session, I use quotes relating to the sport that we discuss as a team to raise the Sport IQ of the players. I also assign homework to assist in this process. For example, I assign each player to research a current All-Star or a Hall of Fame player that played their position and ask them to learn what made that player a great player and a great person (or not).
 
At the end of a training session, I discuss a quote that is a life lesson to mentor the player(s) how to be a better person of high moral character and integrity. However, some of these life lessons need to be role played during practice occasionally, e.g., weekly, so the players learn how to handle these issues in a real-world way.
 
Yes, it takes time, so you need to prepare these role paying scenarios prior to the season and to delegate some of them to your assistant coaches too. And believe it or not, it is becoming very common for coaches in many sports to start their practices in the classroom where these role playing activities are easy to do. Although some of them might have more effect on the field.

​Having guest speakers come to practice to talk about how playing the sport prepared them to be a better person later in life is also very powerful.
 
During practice, the commitment to teach life lessons must be at the tip of a coach’s mind constantly. Every coach in the program must be constantly looking for opportunities to relate what is happening in the sport to something in the players’ lives - how can I relate what we are learning about our sport to the players so they will be better people, siblings, sons, daughters, spouses, students, employees, and community leaders? Remember, always see the players first as people with lives you are preparing to be successful beyond your program and next as athletes, i.e., student-athletes, and the teaching life lessons mindset will become second nature over time.
 
The sport and life lessons that can be taught and role played are not a mystery – they have been the same from the beginning of time. They include:
 
  1. Sport – injuries, bad weather, poor playing conditions, bad calls by officials, disputes about playing time, ineligibility of players by grades or conduct, bad language, bad attitudes, “helicopter” or unruly parents, disrespect from other teams, etc.

  2. 
Self – attitude, work ethic, leadership, adversity, self-confidence, self-pity, self-esteem, self-advocacy, self-awareness, self-image, self-control, character, integrity, spirituality, prayer, academics and careers;

   3. Relationships – peer pressure, bullying, envy, the media, positive affirmations to teammates;

  4. Temptations – smoking, drugs, alcohol and sex. 

At the start of your season, a coach should anonymously survey the team, coaches and players, to learn what they think are the positives, negatives, securities and insecurities in their lives. (“Never assume mental or emotional stability from athletic ability!” Many self-inflicted tragedies occur from this erroneous assumption!) These responses will be a guide as to what are the timeliest issues to be discussed.
 
One more tip regarding teaching life lessons; use team-building activities to illustrate them! My favorite ones to teach life lessons are those that involve service to others with no expectation of monetary return such as:
            Miracle League – youth with disabilities
            Children’s Hospitals
            Community Work Projects
            Gather Used BB Gear for Disadvantaged Youth – ABCA “Turn Two for
                Youth”
            Volunteer at Elementary Schools
            Host a “Parents Night Out” with players as babysitters
            Canned Food Drives
            Raise Awareness Campaigns
            Clean up a city park or a local youth league’s baseball field
            Help to promote and work at a school event
            Read/discuss as a team “Chop Wood, Carry Water” by Joshua Medcalf
 
Also, if you want cheerleaders, band and drill team members to attend and support your games like they do other sporting events at your school, try attending their competitions as a sign of school spirit and reciprocity. You will find they will appreciate it very much!
 
When we do these things we coach champions, Champions for Life.

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failed systems and missed opportunities

5/7/2023

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I am not coaching a team this year, just individuals.  I recommend for “life coaches” that every five years or so, a coach takes a year off to watch teams at different levels play and coaches at higher levels and in several sports coach in practice, as well as, in games. 

True, when coaches do this, they will observe much more of what not to do than what to do, but if coaches observe objectively what happens “off the ball”, both by the players on the field and by the coaches on the sideline, many lessons can be learned from these observations.

In the past two weeks, I watched several baseball practices and games at both the youth and high school levels.  In all those games, rarely was a batted ball properly received, fielded, transferred and thrown by every player involved in the play, including the high school varsity game I watched. 

I think this is very common in every youth league in any area.  

I wondered if the coach of the team who won by a score of 18-2 realized how poorly his team played.  Did he ask himself after the game the two most important basic questions: 1) could we have defeated our toughest competition today? and 2) by the way we went about our business today, both on and off the field, did we inspire others to be better in their own lives?

When a coach attends a practice or a game, it is essential they arrive in time for “warm-ups”.  Most often, what the coach will observe when they do so, are failed systems and missed opportunities.  Choose a favorite mantra here, “as you practice, as you play”, “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”, etc.

Here are the failures and missed opportunities coaches typically observe in those instances:

1. A failure and missed opportunity to coach – not once, at any level or at any practice or game, did I see any coach stand by his players to carefully observe, analyze and coach anything in warm-ups prior to the first drill at practice or prior to the pre-game infield.  When the players “warmed-up” their bodies and their arms, the coaches were off attending to field preparation or talking to other coaches. 

Unfortunately, players today play as many or more games as they have practices, particularly in the summer. At the youth level. coaches cannot afford to miss opportunities to coach individual fundamentals and mechanics on game days.  Coaches cannot afford to wait to start coaching at practice until the first hitting or fielding drill is done.

2. A failure and missed opportunity to adhere to a standard of excellence from the very start – most importantly, coaches should be present at every moment to be sure the philosophy of “chase perfection, catch excellence” is followed.  Whether at a practice or before a game, failing to coach the little details during all of the warm-up routines will lead to big problems in the game.

3. A failure and missed opportunity to acquire knowledge – too many coaches and leagues assume that because the coach played the sport for many years, they know how to coach it. Wins, losses, batting averages, and ERA’s are not reliable indicators of the quality of play.  Many times what a coach was taught about the fundamentals and mechanics of the game was never correct; sometimes it may have been the thinking at the time, but now, science, technology and examined experience have demonstrated that they should be done differently. 

Sometimes it was obvious the failure of knowledge by the coaches was due to the fact they had experience at certain positions, but not others, e.g., pitching or catching, and sometimes the failure was the league not providing them with the equipment, training and methodology to coach teams in a systematic, progressive and efficient manner so that players in all parts of the ability spectrum develop to their fullest potential.

4. A failure and missed opportunity to properly prepare the players’ bodies to play – baseball challenges a player’s  mind and body to do very difficult and stressful things.  Running to a foul pole or a tree and back followed by static stretching are not going to prepare a team to play well.  A comprehensive and biomechanically progressive, age-appropriate dynamic movement and arm-care/shoulder integrity routines need to be done and carefully coached by every team at every level to properly prepare the players’ bodies to have the mobility, i.e., range of motion, and flexibility, i.e., stability to hold athletic positions, during the game.  Components of anticipation and reaction, as well as, action must be incorporated into the warm-up routines.

5. A failure and missed opportunity to have a proper throwing and receiving progression, not just “catch play” – there was one primary and consistent reason that not a single play in any game I observed in the past two weeks was executed with proper mechanics – the players warmed up throwing before every practice and game by doing “catch play” and not by doing a thoughtfully designed throwing and receiving progression.

At the youth level, I think during part 1 of the “extension phase” of the throwing progression, the players should do basic throwing mechanic drills and, in part 2, they should do long toss with about a 35 degree arc on the ball and a relaxed arm and throwing motion out to about twice the length of the base path for the level of the players.  Flat training gloves should be used by all players to be sure proper receiving and transfer mechanics are done on every throw.  Bad throws start with bad receiving mechanics. Balls with a stripe drawn on the middle of them should be used as visual cues to ensure proper grip and rotation of the ball.

On the way in, during the “pulldown phase” of the progression, every player should practice the throws and mechanics for their positions.  For example, outfielders should do long hop throws, “do or die throws” (ball-in-glove fly ball and ground ball throws), relay throws and should be runners for infielders doing hot box drills. 

Infielders should do all types of footwork (e.g., foot replacement, shuffle, rocker step, one-leg) from every angle (e.g., forehand inside and reverse pivots, backhand at you and crossover, and charge), and every throwing angle (e.g., “clock throws”), and all types of throws for double plays.  Throw down bases should be used for tag and force play mechanics, relays and hot box drills.  (And yikes! Don’t get me started on bag and tag mechanics during pre-game infield. Horrific!)  All types of short throws must be mastered too, e.g., underhand, backhand, dart, glove flips and rapid fire.  Muffs, digs and dives are a part of every game so they must be included in the daily routine too.

This may be the subject of a future full-length article, but I must note here that the part of the game, at any level, that is poorly executed most consistently is relays.  In pre-game warm-up or at practice, fly balls are typically hit to outfielders with the only standard of proficiency required is the catch of the ball.  No attention is paid to how the player traveled to catch the ball, received it, transferred it and the footwork and mechanics used to throw it.  Most of the time, the ball is simply thrown back to the coach hitting the balls or to a player standing next to him and not to a relay player.  If a relay player is involved, rarely, if ever, is the player coached to adjust the distance to receive the ball to the strength of the outfielder’s arm so the throw can be received chest high and coached to do all of the mechanics to properly receive, transfer and throw the ball.

At all times, coaches should be present and demand excellence from themselves and their players in all the little details or risk losing in big games and in life.

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the five most powerful words in coaching

4/22/2023

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Coaches tap into infinite resources to teach their players the fundamentals and mechanics of their sport, and yet, they often fail to tap into the most important one – the mental and emotional state of their players living through many challenges in their daily lives.  They fail to recognize that before they can train the athlete and develop the player, they must connect with, validate and support the person.  

Student-athletes today who want to be elite must meet high standards in every aspect of their life.  In school, they must master scores of details in six or more subjects every day or they will fall short of achieving grades sufficient to get them into the college of their choice.  In sports, coaches at top programs challenge and scrutinize every athletic move they make and the “get better every day” mantra sets a bar that seemingly can never be met.

​At home, dissonant chords bang louder every day.  Well-meaning parents echo the sentiments of the player’s coaches by preaching the benefits of proper nutrition.  Yet, too often such food and drink do not exist on the shelves or in the refrigerator in sufficient quantities or at all.  Even if it does, there is frequently no one there to consistently prepare it for them or to educate them what and how to do it themselves.

The atmosphere at home can be a roller coaster of emotions.  Parents are typically under overwhelming stress to meet the financial needs of their family and, many times, there is an unrelenting fear of keeping or even finding a living wage job.  Jobs that are rewarding and satisfying are even more scarce which further depresses the mood of the household.  Combine these facts with the practical responsibilities of supporting the children’s school and extra-curricular activities, and the emotional temperature is rarely stable.  It is very common for youth to feel responsible for the marital problems of their parents and the academic and emotional struggles of their siblings.

Youth try to escape the madness by doing what they have been conditioned to do since before they could talk – get lost into their technological devices.  Most days, this distraction lasts well into the night at the expense of their academic study and the precious hours of quality sleep necessary to support and recharge their growing bodies.

Coaches feel intense pressure from athletic directors, boosters and parents to win games and championships.  Many times coaches define their success in these same ways.  Yet, truly great coaches learn that the words of appreciation they will receive from their players years later will have nothing to do with wins and championships; they will be about how the coach made them a better person.  Players will forget most of what a coach said or did, but they will never forget how a coach made them feel.

The first step in developing a good player is getting them to believe they are a good person.

DK Metcalf, the star NFL wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, was asked recently in an interview what person he credited most with motivating him to be the best he could be in his life.  He quickly responded, “My seventh grade math teacher.”  When asked why, he said, “He took me aside and told me he believed in me; that I was special and had abilities and potential very few people had.  If I worked hard to do my best at all times, he said I could do and be anything I wanted in life.”

I have trained many players in my career who have had great success in their sport.  Those who did not all had one thing in common.  They did not believe the coaches of their teams truly understood, cared about and believed in them as people.  A coach must earn the trust of the player before the player will fully buy into being taught by the coach.

At all times, and in any setting, the most powerful motivational words in life are, “I am proud of you.” 
​
If a player thinks the coach understands, cares about and believes in the person, those words can cause the player to achieve things even the coach did not think were possible.  Every day, coaches need to find ways to make their team members believe they are good people and are worthy of their praise before they try to make them good athletes and players.

When coaches do this, they coach champions, Champions for Life.
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    Adam Sarancik is the owner of Elevate Sports Academy which mentors student-athletes in physical conditioning, nutrition, career and college counseling, and sport skills.  He has spent most of his adult life coaching youth ages 8-22 in baseball, soccer, and basketball.  He is a favorite speaker at and director of coaches' and players' clinics.  He has also developed several youth baseball leagues.  Adam is a frequently published contributor to the ABCA publication Inside Pitch, Collegiate Baseball News, and the Coaches Insider, Coach Deck and Sports Engine websites.  He was also a Certified Impact Trainer for The Positive Coaching Alliance. 
    ​
    Adam is known for his comprehensive and innovative practice plans and for consistently developing championship teams and players who excel at the next level. 
    He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from San Diego State University, his J.D. degree from the University of San Diego School of Law and his Masters of Arts in Teaching from Western Oregon University.


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