Strategies and Resources to Aid Reflection
A coaching study says 10% of knowledge comes from formal education, 20% from informal conversations with peers, and 70% from our own experiences.
“Ten years of experience with no reflection is just one year of experience repeated ten times.”
With the winter break fast approaching, I figured now would be a good time to write about reflecting. Most of what we learn comes from our own experiences so it’s crucial that we can extract the most meaning out of it. In this piece I’ll briefly share my own reflection process and provide some resources and strategies that might help you improve your own.
How I Reflect ✏️
I assume most youth coaches are similar to me. They work during the day, coach in the evenings after school is let out, and then get home around 8:30 or 9:00pm. By that time it’s a challenge to sit down and reflect meaningfully on what just happened. I know all I want to do is get something to eat, decompress a little bit, and then go to sleep.
But I think there’s a silver lining here. Conducting a coaching reflection right after a practice or game means it’s difficult to have a healthy perspective on what just happened. I usually end up writing a reflection the next day and – provided I keep myself from being distracted by my email and social media – I can usually remember the key events to center my reflection around.
Before beginning my reflection I’ll note the alterations I made to my original lesson plan. These are things like the number of players who actually showed up, any adjustments to the exercises, how long they went for, etc.
Then there’s always 4 broad questions I go over:
What went well?
What didn’t go well?
What will I do differently next time?
What did I learn about myself?
There’s nothing groundbreaking about these questions. The first three are quite obvious – but I’ve found the fourth one has drastically improved my coaching development.
It’s similar to how we acknowledge that players are not just robots who perform our tactical and technical commands on the pitch. We can’t just reflect on an experience, generate a solution and then implement it. We are people too (obviously) and are subject to our own limitations. But that also means we have strengths, and tailoring our reflections into actionable steps that match our unique temperaments and personal goals is massive. (This is borderline mumbo-jumbo in my opinion but I’ll provide some steps that will hopefully make this actionable for you in the next few sections.)
Capture Your Reflections 🧳
There’s lots of ways to reflect. You can talk to a peer, sit quietly and ruminate, or go for a walk and talk to yourself. You can do any of those things, but the problem is that your thoughts and reflections won’t automatically stick in the long-run.
Learning is not permanent. We can reflect and problem-solve, but within two weeks 90% of what we gleaned will be forgotten. I know I struggle to remember what I did just a few days ago.
Therefore an important step in the reflection process is to capture your thoughts in some shape or form. I prefer writing with pen, so that’s how I do it, and studies show that putting things on paper helps transfer short-term memories into long-term memory.
After capturing your reflections it’s important to periodically review them. This helps you identify patterns in your thought processes and keeps your developmental goals in the forefront of your mind. And, most importantly, same with how we need to review topics with the players we coach, conducting reviews helps us remember and implement what we’ve learned along the way.
Get Specific 🎯
Mastery is achieved by layering skills on top of each other. While the general questions I mentioned above are great for developing a reflecting framework, it helps to be specific.
These are the 5 categories I use to guide my reflection efforts, but I encourage you to create your own to focus your coaching development.
Exercises: This focuses on the specific exercises/activities within a training session. I’ll consider things like whether the level of pressure was appropriate, balls were restarted from the correct place, players received repetitions of the desired skill/situation, the exercises matched game situations, the playing area was the right size, etc.
Coaching Interventions: These are the actual coaching actions. Things like the use of questions, commands, Freezes, demonstrations, etc.
Management: Similar to Dr. Carr’s classifications, this focuses on the management of the training environment. How well were exercises explained/understood, the use of field space/equipment, adapting to unforeseen circumstances, etc.
Leadership: This looks at the elements of culture-building: connecting with every player, working with other coaches, how core values are implemented, use of examples, how players were disciplined and rewarded, etc.
Information: We want to make sure the information we’re giving to players is correct, detailed, and actionable. So did the information we give result in the desired outcome, was there a noticeable change in behavior, did I send conflicting messages? These are good topics to observe for and consider.
Coaching is a giant cross-section of many disciplines. By isolating what we need to work on, we can then layer those skills on top of each other to develop mastery. After identifying one thing you want to improve during the next coaching session, it’s important to remember it. It’s so easy to get caught up in the excitement of coaching and forget that your efforts need to be focused. Coach Joe talked about how he’ll write a short reminder on an index card and then check it during water breaks. Perhaps that’s a strategy you can use too.
Tools to Gather Information 🛠️
To make the most accurate and helpful reflections possible it’s helpful to gather as much information as you can. One of the easiest ways to do that is simply by asking the players and other coaches you work with about your coaching.
As an example, if you’re working on your ability to teach turning, after the training session ends you can ask a player “What’s one thing I told you today that helped you turn with the ball?”
Younger players can be incredibly candid and honest and tell you exactly what they thought of your coaching. It’s a great resource to have at your disposal and should be used frequently.
The same can be done with your assistant coaches too. Even an assistant with less experience will be able to provide insights into slight errors and points of confusion.
Of course there are more quantifiable ways to gather information too. One tool I like to use is a simplified version of the Coach Analysis and Intervention System. I usually use it when observing other coaches but it’s great for self-analysis too:
Some other useful documents for gathering information have been kindly provided by Coach Tom.
The use of these resources is dependent on having at least an audio recording of your coaching. However, pairing it with video works best for one particular reason: you can see how players react after you coach them. We may think we gave an insightful and concise coaching command but if the player’s behavior doesn’t change then it’s not actual coaching. And if they only do it once but then never again, then it’s not actually teaching.
Wrapping Up 🎀
My advice is to do as many general reflections using the four broad questions as possible, and to ask specific questions to either players or coaches (or both) after every training session. Conducting one deep reflection using the analysis tools listed above once or twice a season will give you a clear idea of what your coaching actually looks like and give you a clear idea of what you need to work on and where your strengths lay.
Lastly, I’ll say that I enjoy this part of the coaching process but I am by no means an expert on it. So if there’s specific reflection methods, resources, or questions that you like to use, please share them in the comments. I’m sure that it won’t only help me but also all the other coaches that regularly read this newsletter.
Also keep an eye out for next week’s interview. It’s with a coach I greatly admire and he talks about so many actionable things that coaches can do to improve their training environments. I’m excited to share it with you!