Principles of Good Coaching: Part 4
Be Active
This is the fourth and final part in the Principles of Good Coaching series. The first three parts can be found here: Principle 1, Principle 2, and Principle 3.
Principle #4: Be Active
This principle is the bread and butter of good youth coaching: kids love being active. They love racing around, jumping over things, kicking soccer balls and whatever else they can get away with. Nobody – nobody – likes to stand around waiting, especially if they can be doing something more fun (like playing soccer). Just think of all the times you stood on a sideline waiting to be subbed into a game – it’s not fun.
Yet at more sessions than I can count I’ve seen players waiting. They wait for the coach to finish talking, they wait for the cones to be setup, they wait in lines to shoot the ball. In an era where kids are spending more time inside and less time playing outside, it becomes the youth coach’s duty to maximize the time players spend playing.
The coaching adage of “No Laps, Lines, Lectures or eLimination games” gets touted often, but keeping players active requires more than just designing good exercises. We need to choose our coaching moments carefully so an entire team doesn’t wait while only one player is addressed. We need to be efficient with our feedback so players don’t look forlornly toward the game when we pull them aside to give guidance. Using this fourth principle correctly ensures that players are learning from the coach and learning from the game in the most efficient ways.
In short, we need to be doctors, using our tools as scalpels, not as hammers, to carefully carve away the minimum amount of time necessary to achieve our objectives. But doing this successfully requires careful planning and consideration as we implement our best methods.
Using Lines
This is a good place to start as it’s specifically mentioned in that time-honored coaching motto. But instead of listing all the exercises that should not use lines, it may be quicker to explain when lines should be used.
Years ago I saw a coach run a finishing exercise which had two goalkeepers in goal while the rest of the team took turns shooting, two at a time. Now it should go without saying – but also cannot be said enough – that player safety is of paramount importance. As you can imagine, this exercise came to a quick end when one of the goalkeepers got hurt.
It was only a bruised hand, but an unfortunate human habit is that we remember disasters but forget near-misses. This exercise easily could have ended with a concussion or something far worse. The moral here is that it’s better to control chaotic situations (ex: finishing exercises) by making players wait than to risk player welfare.
Another example: We’ve all coached camps that run from 9am-1pm during hot summer months. On the first day of one such camp, I saw a coach have his kids scrimmage for the first hour. Now imagine playing soccer for an hour in the sun then doing more soccer exercises for the next three hours. Then imagine doing that for another four days.
If we’re not careful, we will literally kill kids (I wish this was dramatic but well-qualified American football coaches have done this at a scarily shocking rate) with our coaching demands during the summer.
The takeaway here is that lines can be used to let players rest and recover between reps, whether it’s during hot summer days or intense winter practices. Determining how to use lines depends on the weather, the number of players, the size of the playing area, and the time ratio between rest and activity, all of which will be covered in a future article.
Laying Cones
Coach Toph, why are you writing about laying cones? It’s boring. It’s dumb. Every coach already knows what you’re about to say.
Yes, but as all coaches know, perfecting the fundamentals is what leads to greatness. Albert Einstein wore the same outfit every day. He reduced the amount of daily decisions that he had to make so his brainpower could focus on the bigger questions he was contending with. The same is true for coaching. Limiting decision-making ahead of time maximizes your ability to focus on what’s really important: the players.
Before every training session starts I draw out where I’m going to lay my cones and how big the playing spaces need to be. I try to do as little on-field decision making as possible when it comes to exercise selection and organization.
More importantly though, this planning keeps players active. Since everything is prepared ahead of time, the team spends no time waiting for cones to be laid down. At the end of an exercise, we shout “Pick up the yellow cones and get some water. You have two minutes!” and just like that we’re ready for the next exercise.
Besides keeping the players moving it also keeps them focused. There’s no time for them to distract each other or to kick balls everywhere, and it contains any social momentum which may go against the coaching goals for that session. Players know they have two minutes to drink water and get ready for the next activity. Laying all the cones out ahead of time keeps the session flowing, keeps players focused, and most importantly, it keeps them active.
Elimination Games
There are many games within youth sports that eliminate players as the game progresses. Some popular elimination games in youth soccer are Sharks & Minnows and World Cup. The issue with these games is not only do they eliminate players from playing, but they usually eliminate the players who are technically-weakest to begin with. These games rob the most-wanting players from getting touches on the ball, while giving more time on the ball to players who are already the team’s highest performers.
There are a few different ways to alter elimination games that keeps players active for longer periods of time.
First: simply change the rules of the game. Sharks & Minnows is a good example here. Instead of a Shark trying to kick a Minnow’s ball out of the box, tell players to take the ball back. If they do that successfully then they return to being a Minnow, and the player who had their ball stolen becomes a Shark. This gets players more touches on the ball, and it encourages players to defend like they actually would (or at least should) in matches.
**It’s worth noting that coaches should step in to play and facilitate the game as needed to ensure it’s not the same players who get their ball stolen every time.
A second way is by changing the scoring system. Using World Cup as an example, instead of players competing to see who can score a goal first, frame it as how many times can they score in four minutes. Using time constraints keeps players moving and provides a baseline that can be referred back to to gauge progress.
A third way is by using progressions. I’ve seen a coach ask players to complete a juggling pattern then sit down and wait for the coach to give the next pattern. A simple alternative is to show 3 different patterns, each one harder than the last, that players must complete. This acts as a self-correcting mechanism that pairs each player with the right level of difficulty. Novice players may work on the first pattern, while more skilled players move past it quickly but are then forced to focus to complete the third pattern. As these players practice the coach is free to move around and give coaching points.
Wrapping Up
At the end of the day, soccer players love playing soccer. When we rob them of that opportunity, whether it’s by having them wait in lines, being unprepared for the session, or choosing exercises that eliminate them from participation, we make their playing experiences worse and hinder their athletic development.
While avoiding such ills is often difficult, there are times when it is necessary to use them. Fortunately, these principles do not exist in isolation. When a principle cannot be followed for whatever reason — whether a coach needs to take a minute to explain something carefully or an exercise is run where not every player is actively playing the entire time — the other principles can be relied on to ensure the athlete’s experience is still positive. When all four principles are used in harmony, we will improve the experience for our players, and our coaching experience might just improve as well.
This was the fourth and final part in the Principles of Good Coaching series. The first three parts can be found here: Principle 1, Principle 2, and Principle 3.