During a sport practice, when I see a line of players with a coach rolling, bouncing or hitting a ball to the first player in line with the other players watching, I see the first sign the coaches have flaws in their practice design.
The design of a practice should include the following goals; coaching the person, athlete and player; have a series of progressive drills teaching fundamentals to be demonstrated in an end of the practice game simulation or scrimmage; and have a flow and energy so that, as much as possible, the entire team is constantly moving; is performing game-like repetitions; is competing, and being held accountable, yet supported, by their teammates and coaches in their successes and their failures.
Being successful at accomplishing these goals requires a careful consideration of many factors including the personalities and the spectrum of abilities in athleticism and sport skills of each of the team members, as well as, the weather, facilities, equipment, help, and time available for the practice.
When I see a line of players, the coaches have failed to consider, plan for, and multi-task into the practice design enough of these factors.
Last week, I watched the first in a series of 1-hour throwing and fielding softball clinics for U-13 girls on a cold night in an unheated hitting barn with a turf floor and barely adequate lighting. Twelve girls and their mostly able-bodied parents (some of whom have extensive coaching experience) attended the clinic which was being conducted by two coaches. Unfortunately, the coaching methodology used during this clinic was one I have seen in all youth sports, for all ages, and by the majority of coaches in my 40+ years of coaching.
The clinic consisted of 5 minutes of dynamic movement, followed by 15 minutes of “catch play”, 30 minutes of drills, and a 10-minute game. The “coaching” during the clinic consisted mostly of one coach telling the girls what they should do before each part of the clinic and one coach occasionally stepping in to “correct” a perceived flaw in execution by one of the girls while the parents watched.
If the goal of the clinic was to have the girls get hundreds of reps at throwing and fielding a softball, the clinic was a resounding success. If the goal was to have the girls be better people, athletes and players who improved their throwing and fielding, it was, at best, a complete waste of time, and, at worst, it caused the girls to go backward in their development by reinforcing bad habits.
I will take each part of the clinic and describe some of what could have been done to vastly improve the coaching methodology. First, a short meeting should have been held at the beginning to describe the goals of the clinic and to get to know the expectations and general backgrounds of the players and their parents. It should also have included a lesson from the game of softball to increase the sports IQ of the players and a life lesson, such as one about attitude and work ethic that related to the forthcoming lesson plan.
Second, each exercise in the dynamic movement routine should have been demonstrated correctly by one coach while the girls watched and then the girls should have followed the coach doing the exercise while the coach did it again with them. While one coach was demonstrating, the other coach should have been assessing the athletic abilities of each player and also helping them to improve by demonstrating what could be done better once the first coach was done. Each exercise should have been done 2-3 times so that everyone improved. It is better to do five exercises and have improvement on each of them than to do 10 and have no improvement.
The exercise choice should include the movements that will be required in the sport skill drills. In other words, if the fielding drills are going to require hip hinges, short choppy “chatter” steps, foot replacement, e.g., right, left pick-up, right, left target, and specific techniques moving in all directions, then the dynamic movement routine should include these things too.
Players should never just “play catch”. They should have a progression of drills to learn to receive properly and to throw accurately with an intent to do them perfectly for the type of throws they will be required to do later in the clinic, and ultimately, in a game.
At all times, coaches should coach. Parents should not coach, but they can roll, toss and bounce balls, chase errant throws, and feed balls into a machine.
The line drills that were done in this clinic, as in most clinics and team practice sessions, consisted of two lines of players with no differentiation in abilities, with a coach rolling or bouncing a ball to the first player in line. The player would attempt to field the ball and throw it back to the coach. If the coach saw a flaw, the coach would simply tell the player what to do next time. For youth sports, telling is not teaching. Therefore, in almost every instance, the next time was not much better. At the end of the clinic, if the player said she had fun, it was because she was with her friends and no one “criticized” her. She never experienced the fun of improvement and playing well.
This drill could have been improved in many ways. First, one of the parents with coaching experience should have rolled or bounced the ball so the clinic coaches could have done the drill with the players. Next, discs should have been set up for the players to learn the footwork to approach and field the ball with the players following the coach to mirror them in what to do. After the first time, when a ball was rolled to a player, a series of 3-5 in a row should have been rolled to her to practice approaching and fielding it, before she threw it. This series of repetitions will help them internalize what needs to be done much better than having them do just one at a time.
Have as many stations as coaches, equipment, and space will allow. If you have more than 2 or three players at a station, you have a line, and prior to practice, you need to recruit more help, gather more equipment, and if possible, find a bigger space. The players waiting should not just watch; they should be practicing what they will need to do when it is their turn, e.g., prep step, chatter steps, right, left pick-up, right, left target.
Initially, put players together that are at the same ability or have similar things to improve. Coaches must be able to progress all players in the ability spectrum. I say initially, because the players will feel more comfortable competing against and being held accountable by players of their own ability, but eventually all players must be comfortable and skilled supporting and holding accountable all of their teammates.
The drill needs to accurately simulate the game. A player should not field the ball, turn, and throw it back to the person rolling the ball to them. In a softball and baseball game, 95% of the balls, after being fielded, are not thrown straight ahead. Even at this clinic, where there were, regrettably, two lines, a line on the right could have been set up where the fielder was 20’ from the person rolling the ball to them and a line on the left could have been 15’ to the left of the first line and 40’ back of the person rolling the ball to them. The players in the first line could have thrown to a player to the left who was working on footwork and receiving mechanics at second base. The players in the second line could throw to a player diagonally in the corner of the space who would be working on footwork and receiving mechanics at first base.
If the skill level does not allow receiving the balls at a base, the players can throw to a target, such as a ball on a tee. But please, extend the stem of the tee or put the tee on a bucket so the tee is at the height of a typical player’s chest for that age group. Tees on the ground condition low throws. Even the tee on the bucket may need to be extended to maximum height or put on two buckets if the distance of the throw in the clinic is shorter than the distance required on the field in a game.
The game at the end of practice should also simulate an event in a real game and should require the players to demonstrate the skills they have learned during the clinic/practice. To evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching, it is essential that the coaches be silent during the game and they should simply observe what the players have learned. When doing this, they should not just watch the results of the throw or catch, but from the ground up, they should note the kinetic chain of movement as the player performed the skill. This will let the coaches know what they need to work on next time athletically with each player before moving on to the sport skill drills.
At all times, coaches should role model, teach, and require players to enthusiastically complement one another and hold each other accountable by encouraging each other to do the process better regardless of the result. When holding a teammate accountable, players must be taught how to do it with non-verbal cues. No one likes to be called out publicly verbally.
Each phase of the practice, including the dynamic movement routine, should end with a competition with a significant reward for winning. Sometimes “winning” could be the player who improved the most or followed the process the best, not the player who had the best result. This is how players learn to control what they can control, being comfortable being uncomfortable, and that failure is a necessary part of improvement. All phases of practice should train reaction, as well as, action.
Every practice should end with the players stating what they have learned as people, athletes, and players. Coaches should then correlate these things to life lessons beyond the game such as how to overcome adversity at home, at school, and later in life.
When coaches do these things, they will not only develop better players, they will mentor Champions for Life.
The design of a practice should include the following goals; coaching the person, athlete and player; have a series of progressive drills teaching fundamentals to be demonstrated in an end of the practice game simulation or scrimmage; and have a flow and energy so that, as much as possible, the entire team is constantly moving; is performing game-like repetitions; is competing, and being held accountable, yet supported, by their teammates and coaches in their successes and their failures.
Being successful at accomplishing these goals requires a careful consideration of many factors including the personalities and the spectrum of abilities in athleticism and sport skills of each of the team members, as well as, the weather, facilities, equipment, help, and time available for the practice.
When I see a line of players, the coaches have failed to consider, plan for, and multi-task into the practice design enough of these factors.
Last week, I watched the first in a series of 1-hour throwing and fielding softball clinics for U-13 girls on a cold night in an unheated hitting barn with a turf floor and barely adequate lighting. Twelve girls and their mostly able-bodied parents (some of whom have extensive coaching experience) attended the clinic which was being conducted by two coaches. Unfortunately, the coaching methodology used during this clinic was one I have seen in all youth sports, for all ages, and by the majority of coaches in my 40+ years of coaching.
The clinic consisted of 5 minutes of dynamic movement, followed by 15 minutes of “catch play”, 30 minutes of drills, and a 10-minute game. The “coaching” during the clinic consisted mostly of one coach telling the girls what they should do before each part of the clinic and one coach occasionally stepping in to “correct” a perceived flaw in execution by one of the girls while the parents watched.
If the goal of the clinic was to have the girls get hundreds of reps at throwing and fielding a softball, the clinic was a resounding success. If the goal was to have the girls be better people, athletes and players who improved their throwing and fielding, it was, at best, a complete waste of time, and, at worst, it caused the girls to go backward in their development by reinforcing bad habits.
I will take each part of the clinic and describe some of what could have been done to vastly improve the coaching methodology. First, a short meeting should have been held at the beginning to describe the goals of the clinic and to get to know the expectations and general backgrounds of the players and their parents. It should also have included a lesson from the game of softball to increase the sports IQ of the players and a life lesson, such as one about attitude and work ethic that related to the forthcoming lesson plan.
Second, each exercise in the dynamic movement routine should have been demonstrated correctly by one coach while the girls watched and then the girls should have followed the coach doing the exercise while the coach did it again with them. While one coach was demonstrating, the other coach should have been assessing the athletic abilities of each player and also helping them to improve by demonstrating what could be done better once the first coach was done. Each exercise should have been done 2-3 times so that everyone improved. It is better to do five exercises and have improvement on each of them than to do 10 and have no improvement.
The exercise choice should include the movements that will be required in the sport skill drills. In other words, if the fielding drills are going to require hip hinges, short choppy “chatter” steps, foot replacement, e.g., right, left pick-up, right, left target, and specific techniques moving in all directions, then the dynamic movement routine should include these things too.
Players should never just “play catch”. They should have a progression of drills to learn to receive properly and to throw accurately with an intent to do them perfectly for the type of throws they will be required to do later in the clinic, and ultimately, in a game.
At all times, coaches should coach. Parents should not coach, but they can roll, toss and bounce balls, chase errant throws, and feed balls into a machine.
The line drills that were done in this clinic, as in most clinics and team practice sessions, consisted of two lines of players with no differentiation in abilities, with a coach rolling or bouncing a ball to the first player in line. The player would attempt to field the ball and throw it back to the coach. If the coach saw a flaw, the coach would simply tell the player what to do next time. For youth sports, telling is not teaching. Therefore, in almost every instance, the next time was not much better. At the end of the clinic, if the player said she had fun, it was because she was with her friends and no one “criticized” her. She never experienced the fun of improvement and playing well.
This drill could have been improved in many ways. First, one of the parents with coaching experience should have rolled or bounced the ball so the clinic coaches could have done the drill with the players. Next, discs should have been set up for the players to learn the footwork to approach and field the ball with the players following the coach to mirror them in what to do. After the first time, when a ball was rolled to a player, a series of 3-5 in a row should have been rolled to her to practice approaching and fielding it, before she threw it. This series of repetitions will help them internalize what needs to be done much better than having them do just one at a time.
Have as many stations as coaches, equipment, and space will allow. If you have more than 2 or three players at a station, you have a line, and prior to practice, you need to recruit more help, gather more equipment, and if possible, find a bigger space. The players waiting should not just watch; they should be practicing what they will need to do when it is their turn, e.g., prep step, chatter steps, right, left pick-up, right, left target.
Initially, put players together that are at the same ability or have similar things to improve. Coaches must be able to progress all players in the ability spectrum. I say initially, because the players will feel more comfortable competing against and being held accountable by players of their own ability, but eventually all players must be comfortable and skilled supporting and holding accountable all of their teammates.
The drill needs to accurately simulate the game. A player should not field the ball, turn, and throw it back to the person rolling the ball to them. In a softball and baseball game, 95% of the balls, after being fielded, are not thrown straight ahead. Even at this clinic, where there were, regrettably, two lines, a line on the right could have been set up where the fielder was 20’ from the person rolling the ball to them and a line on the left could have been 15’ to the left of the first line and 40’ back of the person rolling the ball to them. The players in the first line could have thrown to a player to the left who was working on footwork and receiving mechanics at second base. The players in the second line could throw to a player diagonally in the corner of the space who would be working on footwork and receiving mechanics at first base.
If the skill level does not allow receiving the balls at a base, the players can throw to a target, such as a ball on a tee. But please, extend the stem of the tee or put the tee on a bucket so the tee is at the height of a typical player’s chest for that age group. Tees on the ground condition low throws. Even the tee on the bucket may need to be extended to maximum height or put on two buckets if the distance of the throw in the clinic is shorter than the distance required on the field in a game.
The game at the end of practice should also simulate an event in a real game and should require the players to demonstrate the skills they have learned during the clinic/practice. To evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching, it is essential that the coaches be silent during the game and they should simply observe what the players have learned. When doing this, they should not just watch the results of the throw or catch, but from the ground up, they should note the kinetic chain of movement as the player performed the skill. This will let the coaches know what they need to work on next time athletically with each player before moving on to the sport skill drills.
At all times, coaches should role model, teach, and require players to enthusiastically complement one another and hold each other accountable by encouraging each other to do the process better regardless of the result. When holding a teammate accountable, players must be taught how to do it with non-verbal cues. No one likes to be called out publicly verbally.
Each phase of the practice, including the dynamic movement routine, should end with a competition with a significant reward for winning. Sometimes “winning” could be the player who improved the most or followed the process the best, not the player who had the best result. This is how players learn to control what they can control, being comfortable being uncomfortable, and that failure is a necessary part of improvement. All phases of practice should train reaction, as well as, action.
Every practice should end with the players stating what they have learned as people, athletes, and players. Coaches should then correlate these things to life lessons beyond the game such as how to overcome adversity at home, at school, and later in life.
When coaches do these things, they will not only develop better players, they will mentor Champions for Life.
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