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My Top 10 Coaching Principles

March 12, 2018 by

By Michael Smith

Michael Smith is the Head Cross Country / Track and Field Coach at  Mascenic Regional High School in New Hampshire. You can find more of his thoughts at New Hampshire Track and Field and New Hampshire Cross Country

Having coached now for fifteen years and having had some of my athletes and team perform at the highest level in this sport, I from time to time, get asked the question, what is the secret to success.  Anyone can coach that talented athlete to strong performances but how do you replicate that success when the truly gifted are hard to find? The bigger your team is the better your chances are to get another talent, but here in Division 3, those talents come around only so often.  So what do you do? You focus on making every athlete you coach a better athlete. And what if you are new to coaching cross country in NH regardless of how good you were at the sport in your day.

I have a couple of ideas that I’ve glean over the years and definitely have led me to more success than the knowledge I brought to the sport 15 years ago as a coach.  I know I certainly know I wanted to prove myself worthy and was reluctant to ask questions in those first few years. After a lot of reading and asking those coaches I saw as the best in the business I developed a program that I operate off of today, always adaptable, but focused on a few “truths” and those particular workouts and philosophies I know work for me.  Here are some guidelines for those new to coaching along with supporting information for those of us that have already been at it for a while.

  1. Make sure you believe in your program.  If you don’t know why you’re having the kids do a workout, either find out why or don’t do it.
  2. Teach the kids to understand why they are doing what they do.  Some kids will improve by simply telling them to do the workout, however all of them will improve if they understand what the workout is for and why they should do it.
  3. Learn each of your kids.  If you wish for them to truly improve to perform their best, it’s going to be a collaboration between athlete and coach.
  4. Don’t become so entrenched in a principle that you are unwilling to try something new.  Try it and if it doesn’t work, throw it out.
  5. The best workouts have already been done before, by someone else.  Get over yourself and steal their ideas. However make sure you know why you want to use it, it needs to have a purpose in your program.
  6. The best coaches do the same things, but differently.  Different style, different approach but the human system is mostly the same, adapts mostly the same, and improves mostly the same.
  7. Don’t be afraid to ask someone who has good teams what they do.  You’ll be surprised, many of them will tell you in pretty good detail.  If they don’t, what have you lost? Learn from someone else, then go out and beat them.
  8. Lose the clipboard.  You miss too much of what the kids are actually doing by worrying about splits.  If you can’t, give it to an assistant, have them take the splits, and watch what’s happening in the race.
  9. Athletes know when things are going really well.  Tell them anyways. They also notice when things don’t go great.  Remind them it’s a process. There are good days and bad days. But each day moves us further.
  10. Every true effort is good.  Find the part of it that is good and make sure to tell them that.  Don’t bullshit them but find the silver lining. If they just torpedo, say so, they know it, but find out what they’ve learned, ask them why.  Then move on.

Maybe I could call these my top ten coaching principles, but that would insinuate that I actually am that principled to follow a dictum, which I am not.  Everyone has their own way, just like every runner is different. Maybe some of these will strike a cord and you will use it in your coaching arsenal. Maybe they are all hogwash, who knows.  But I’ve learned, over time, that the most ingredient in coaching is you and the relationship you have with your athletes, not the top secret training plan.
Good luck in your season.


Filed Under: Distance, Professional Development

12 Ways to Make More Time for Personal Goals

January 5, 2018 by

Do Your Personal Goals Take a Back Seat to Coaching? Here are 12 ways to help you carve out more time in you busy schedule.

This post was provided by Busy.Coach

By Mandy Green

Carving out time in our busy schedules to accomplish things outside of our coaching lives isn’t easy. After all, we coaches are all too versed in the multi-role lifestyle. We’re coaches, we’re significant others, we’re parents, we’re colleagues, and we’re friends.

Whatever your goals are outside of coaching–starting a coaching blog, running a 5K, losing 10 lbs, and so on–if you’re not working toward achieving them, you probably have a long list of excuses which purportedly explain why you’re still in stand-by mode. And lack of time because of your coaching job is very likely to be at the top of that list.

Coach, do you sometimes feel like you are “sacrificing” your work for personal goals?

I found this definition of sacrifice: “to give up something for something else considered more important.”

If what I am saying rings true for you, you need to stop using a lack of time as an excuse and start making the time to pursue what you want. But how do you find time when you’re incredibly busy?

Below you’ll find 12 ways to make time to achieve your goals.  Obviously, there are more but I just wanted to give you a few ideas to get started.

  1. Can you spend less time in front of the TV or playing games (sorry Chris Logan J?
  2. Can you enroll the kids in an after-school program to give yourself after-work hours to work on you and your goals?
  3. Go to bed at the same time as your kids so you can get up earlier.
  4. Go to bed forty minutes later and work on your goals at night.
  5. Use Your Lunch Hour.
  6. Use Your Commute.
  7. Block out the time for when you are going to work on your goal. By scheduling time to work on your goal, you know exactly when you’ll be working on it, instead of just leaving it up to chance.
  8. Use Scraps of Time. Keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need to have a large chunk of time to work on your goals. If all you can carve out are fifteen minutes here and there throughout the day, use that time.
  9. Can you negotiate with your employer that you’ll work longer hours Monday to Thursday, and then take Fridays off?
  10. Work On Your Psychological Discipline. Keep in mind that making time to work on your goals is, to a large extent, about psychological discipline. A lot of the reasons that we use to explain why we don’t have time to work on our goals are just excuses that we’re using to avoid the hard work of writing, exercising, learning a new skill, and so on.
  11. It’s not so much about how much time you have to work on your goals, as it is about the quality of your goal-achievement time. That is, when you’re working on your goals, are you completely focused on the task, or are you trying to answer emails and catch up on Twitter as you write? Work on your goals with laser-like focus.
  12. Give Yourself Permission to Work on Your Goals. When the world around us is swirling in chaos, we often feel that taking the time to work on our goals is a luxury that we can’t indulge in at the moment. However, working on your dreams isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. Write yourself a permission slip if you need to; but get to work on your goals.

No matter what goals or aspirations you might have, no doubt there is at least some form of sacrifice required for progress. And the only person who can determine whether or not it’s worthwhile is YOU.

So I encourage you to look at what’s really important. When you are making a decision between your personal and work goals, carefully evaluate the risks and rewards. What will be left behind? What will take its place? What do you really want, and what are you willing to give up in return? What price are you willing to pay? And how much is too much?

These aren’t easy questions. They force you to look at the whole picture and how your career impacts other areas of life. It’s not just about the money, or the title, or the lifestyle. It’s about ALL of these things and what they mean as a whole—to you, your family, and your future.


Filed Under: Professional Development

5 Stages of a Coach’s Career

December 26, 2017 by

Coaching is a rewarding profession. Coaching is a tough profession. It takes a lot of hard work to work your way from rookie to successful head coach. In the process most of us pass through these 5 Stages in our careers.

The following post was written by Coach Dawn Redd-Kelly and originally published on her coaching blog, Coach Dawn Writes

Let me tell you what I think about coaches: we’re crazy in our preparation and dedication, we work long hours and love it, we give up our nights and weekends, we mentor our student-athletes, we demand big things from them and even more from ourselves, we’re passionate in our belief in our team and our love for our sport, we believe in the power of sport to have a positive and long-lasting impact in our athlete’s lives.  So when I saw “The 5 Stages of Your Career” over at Bob Starkey’s blog, I wanted to expand on it over here.  It’s interesting to figure out what stage you’re in and those that you’ve already gone through…or have you circled back around to some you thought you were finished with?  Check them out and see what you think.

The 5 Stages of Your Career

1.       Survival: Don’t Know What You Don’t Know
Coaches, you remember what this stage felt like don’t you?   Or maybe you’re in the middle of this stage now and feel like you’re flailing.  I remember being beyond clueless…that’s back when I thought I just needed to know volleyball to be a volleyball coach!  Turns out also I needed to formulate a recruiting plan, balance a budget, create practice plans, order equipment, manage assistant coaches, and make in-game adjustments.  Color me unprepared, but thank goodness for a veteran coach who took me under his wing.

2.       Striving for Success: You Want Folks to Recognize You Can Coach
Your motivation?  Winning, plain and simple.  You’re obsessed with conquering the competition and put in hours and hours of your time to make it happen.  Being the best is what drives you and to be the best, you need the tangible accolades that go along with that:  lots of W’s in the win column, all-league awards for your team, and maybe a coach of the year for you.

3.       Satisfaction: You Relax, Set Another Goal, & Want To Get Better
Now that you’ve achieved a few of your goals, you can relax and know that you’re a good coach and you have the respect of your peers.  You attend conferences to network and visit with old friends as much as you do to learn some new things…you’re getting established.  Each year you set new goals to accomplish that will push you and your team forward…you’re focused.

4.       Significance: Changing Lives For The Good
At this stage you’re more concerned with how you impact your teams and your legacy than you are with personal glory…after all, you’ve already accomplished a lot.  Now you want to make sure your teams understand the value of sport and hope that you’re teaching them how to be better people, not just better players.  With all of your experience and years in the game, you’re very knowledgeable.  And because of the success you’ve had in your career, this is the stage where people solicit your opinion and ask for your help with their coaching conundrums.

5.       Spent: No Juice Left, Can’t Do It Any More
The busses, the trips, preseason, recruiting, the hustle, the grind…you’re over it.  You’re ready to hang with the family and actually make it home before nine o’clock at night.  And your weekends?  You want them back.  Not even the prospect of that super sweet and talented recruiting class that you just brought in is enough to bring you back into the fold.  As much as you love your sport, you’re just not that fired up about the season this year…it’s time to hang it up.

So what stage are YOU at?

 

Coach Dawn Redd-Kelly has authored a book on motivating females athletes. Many coaches have found this book to be helpful in coaching females in their program

Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players?  Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??

Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes

Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.

 


Filed Under: Professional Development

Four Items for Your Coaching Toolbox

December 17, 2017 by

This article and other helpful coaching tools can be found at Coach Dawn Writes

By Dawn Redd-Kelly, Beloit College.

Folks who are fixer uppers or tinkerers know that the key to handling any situation is having a nice toolbox.  Whether its needle nosed pliers or a power saw or cordless drill…these things will prove to be essential for any job that needs to be completed.  And it’s the same with coaching!  We need to have a toolbox that is stocked so that we’re able to deal with the disgruntled athlete as well as the athletic director that wants you to fundraise a ridiculous amount of money each year.

Here’s four things that every coach should have in their toolbox:

Mentors

When I took my first head coaching job at age 24, my toolbox only had a hammer and a couple of nails clanking around in it…not nearly enough for the repair project I’d taken on!  I was certainly enthusiastic, but that needed to be combined with knowledge…and I was a bit short on that.  Enter our men’s basketball coach who was a legend in his field and had a head full of coaching genius that he was willing to share.  So I’d haul my butt up to his office about once a week and we’d chat.  Sometimes about my team, sometimes about his, but each and every time I learned something from this man.

Peers

Here’s one thing I know: coaches love talking about coaching.  Once you find folks with a similar philosophy, make it a point to talk to them and pick their brains.  I truly believe that coaching is coaching so it doesn’t matter if you talk to the football coach or the soccer coach…if you share the same philosophical foundation, you’ve set yourself up for fun and challenging conversations about coaching.

Seminars/Conventions

Be a coaching nerd!  Go to your sport’s convention…and attend the sessions (not just the social stuff) and hang out after it’s over and chat with the presenter.  Go to local clinics even if you don’t think you’ll learn something new…you certainly won’t if you don’t go!  Plus other coaches will be there and maybe you’ll be able to chat them up and get a different viewpoint on an old problem.  This will help keep you current in your field.

Books

I read a lot of books.  I read books for myself in order to grow in my leadership and influence.  I also read books that I think will be good for my team to read during the season.  Sometimes they’re sports books, sometimes they’re business oriented, and other times they’re faith-based…but what they all share in common is that I think that they’ll make me a better coach.

 

Are you tired of walking into practice and seeing lackluster effort from your players?  Have you had it with trying to get your female athletes to care about the team as much as you do??

Click here to find out more about Coach Dawn’s eBook: Motivating Female Athletes

Comes with a FREE PowerPoint presentation called Guarantee Your Success: Using John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success To Increase Your Team’s Cohesion.


Filed Under: Professional Development

What a Good Coach Looks Like

November 16, 2017 by

This article was provided by Coaches Network

By Dr. Alan Goldberg

Healthy competition and the desire to be the best is part of the motivation and energy that makes sports appealing, but it should not be the main goal above things like integrity, good communication, mentorship, and support. The coaches who can do that often end up winning more games anyway.

So let’s talk more about what a “Good Coach” looks like.

A good coach is someone who can see the big picture but also be fully present to meet the needs of each athlete they work with, whether they’re focused on just one athlete at a time, or coaching a team. Either way, that’s what coaching a sport is really about: the athlete.

A good coach will teach their athletes to love their sport, to fully understand the nuances and strategy of that sport, and to work hard in order to reach excellence and mastery of that sport. Sometimes, for a particular athlete, that excellence involves falling back and allowing their teammates to get the glory, but a good coach will communicate the importance of teamwork and roles in such a way as to have that athlete cheering their teammates on the sidelines and sharing in their glory rather than feeling excluded, inferior, or jealous.

A good coach will inspire their athletes to dream big and take risks in pursuit of their goals. They will push them through hard work and fatigue when they know the athlete can handle it, and allow them appropriate periods of rest and recuperation when that is called for.

A good coach can recognize the unique characteristics of each athlete’s physical and emotional capacities, and works with them individually to facilitate growth and strength, rather than applying a one-size-fits all approach to everyone

A good coach will build trust between teammates, and between themselves and their athletes so that everyone works together for a common goal and can rely on each other for inspiration, motivation, support, and even a touch of occasional humor to create joy and camaraderie.

A good coach will teach valuable life lessons and model these in their own behavior, “walk the talk” so to speak. They are not above learning and growing in their own skills as they encourage elevation and confidence in others. They will directly or indirectly transform their athletes into better, more confident, happier people.


Filed Under: Professional Development

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