the process of coaching champions for life

“ 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!