How Coaches Can Make Their Practices More Effective
It’s no secret to coaches and players alike just how important practice is. That’s how we get phrases like “practice makes perfect” or “practice makes permanent”. So, the real question is how can practices be more effective for players and coaches alike. In my opinion this starts with the coaches.
If you’re a coach looking to make your practice more effective, more structured, and more impactful for your players, this is for you.
I believe there are four key steps to making practices more effective:
Set the intention for the session.
Explain why.
Positively reinforce players when they perform the skill well.
Make it fun.
Let’s take a deeper dive into each step.
Set the intention for the training session
The best teams and coaches are always purpose driven and highly organized. It’s commonplace for teams and coaches to set goals at the start of a season, by doing this they try and set the intention or set the tone for the season. However, it is not as common for coaches to set an intention for each individual practice.
I believe that setting an intention for practice serves coaches by helping them be more organized and specific in developing drills, and serves athletes by orienting them into a mindset of focus on that specific skill. A coach should set the intention for his/her own practice prior to arriving so they know what drills they want to do, and then communicate the intention for their athletes at the beginning of practice. For example, a soccer coach could set the intention for Tuesday’s practice on Monday, and then at the start of practice on Tuesday get the team in a huddle and set the intention by saying “Today we are going to be focusing on improving our technique specifically as it relates to volleys.”
Explain Why
Communicating why you do what you do is essential for leaders in all aspects of life. Relating to coaches in sports, explaining why you chose a certain drill or skill to work on is important because it builds a sense of purpose for the players as they approach practice. It also builds trust with the athletes because it demonstrates reflection and preparation.
What would this look like in practice? Well, continuing with the aforementioned example of practicing improving technique on volleys, a coach could say something like, “We are going to practice our technique with volleys because in our last game we had a lot of opportunities to score that came from crosses out of the air, and we were not very efficient with scoring on those opportunities because we hadn’t practiced volleys yet.”
By giving the players a “why”, coaches provide them with a framework and a mental picture of how skills they practice can be applied to a game-like situation.
A final note on this; it is pivotal to connect your “why” for the practice to a game, race, match, etc. This is critical because a game, race, or match is quite literally what the practices are preparing the players for, and is usually what the players get most excited about.
Positively reinforce players when they perform the skill well
In the book Bringing out the Best in People, Audrey C. Daniels writes, “Feedback and positive reinforcement form the most powerful combination of techniques for bringing out the best in people.” (p. 106)
Coaches can utilize this teaching to make their practices more effective by positively reinforcing players who demonstrate growth during practice in the specific skill that is being worked on. Constructive criticism is helpful, but negativity is detrimental to growth. Instead of calling out players who are struggling, focus on finding the little things they are doing right in regards to that skill and reinforce that. This is not to be confused with simply complimenting the players who are not struggling with the skill, but rather noticing little things that each player does over the course of practice to positively harp on.
Offering an example with the framework from the first two steps, a soccer coach could say, “David, I know you missed that shot, but I loved how you used the laces for that volley just like we practiced because you made a great connection with the ball off the cross, and technique like that will lead to goals with more repetition.”
When coaches positively reinforce good habits, skills, and techniques that are the focal point of the practice, players take it to heart, learn more, and increase confidence.
Make it fun.
The fourth step is to incorporate fun for the athletes in practice as much as possible. Given how critical practice is to success, coaches want practice to be an environment that athletes want to return to, and look forward to being a part of. If athletes never have fun at practice, they will likely never get the most out of them.
Coaches should see it as a personal, creative challenge to make practice have some fun aspects to it. Running, and conditioning are always critical to success, but if an athlete rues the hour of practice, then the joy gets sucked out of the sport for them. It’s a coaches job to institute practices and drills that are necessary for player development and fitness is certainly a part of that, but practice should also be a place where players learn to grow in their love of the game as well as in their skills and fitness.
If you are a coach looking to help your players reach their new level, you can utilize these four steps to help make your practices more effective.