“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!
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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