Coaching Fundamentals: Reflect and Repeat

When giving feedback to my college practicum teachers following their lessons, I often start by asking the teacher how they felt about the lesson. Then when I provide feedback, I say, “When you teach this lesson again, [Insert any feedback].”

“You’ll demonstrate with more clarity using the three types of learners.”

“You’ll continue to structure the lesson to maximize practice.”

“You’ll provide more constructive feedback to as many students as possible.”

Or

“You’ll maintain engagement to avoid disruptive behaviors.”

In starting the conversation this way, I’m trying to emphasize how important reflection and repetition are for growth.

It’s easy to play Monday Morning Quarterback while watching inexperienced performers, but it’s more important for young teachers and coaches to self-reflect on a lesson’s successes and failures then have the opportunity to make and incorporate necessary changes.

If coaches can articulate what they did well. they’ll take those wins into future lessons. If they can’t pinpoint what they can fix, I usually back it up with video evidence.

“Replay the demonstration and track the time log.”

“Look at minute fifteen and see the students throwing the basketball off the ceiling.”

“Follow this student and count how many swings they took in 45 minutes.”

Physical evidence is very compelling for young teachers.

Believe me, I’ve turned the camera on myself a few times and opened my eyes to teaching practices I’d still like to improve. But as a cooperating teacher, my purpose is to guide young professionals on how to become better teachers, coaches, and individuals.

Reflection is an integral part of the learning process. Sometimes, because of the pace of the day, we may have limited time to reflect after a lesson. It could be the thirty seconds between one class leaving and the next class arriving, maybe during the bus or car ride home, or while making dinner or before putting the kids to bed. But reflection should be a fundamental practice for teachers and coaches.

What is working? What’s not working? Why? What can I try differently to make the lesson better?

Simple questions, but the answers will guide the next part of the process—Repeat.

As teachers and coaches, we tell our students or players the key to mastery is repetition. Perfect practice makes perfect. Whether it’s free kicks around a wall, foul shots while others talk trash, backhands on the move, or backflips into a foam pit, repetition with quality feedback leads to skill acquisition. During practice time, we intervene with cues or suggestions, coaching points to make the movement better. We wouldn’t let a player pass the ball 10 times in a row to the other team in a game without intervening, so the same concept applies to pedagogy. We want to help young teachers and coaches identify strengths and weaknesses, make necessary adjustments then send them back onto the field.

Inexperienced teachers and coaches are in an infancy stage of their lesson building. They’re often toying with different structures and concepts, exploring their philosophies, in many ways overthinking as they try to focus on improving too many skills at once. Experienced teachers have the benefit of repeating lessons and narrowing their focus. I may teach a lesson a half dozen times a week or more, refining one part every time. When I teach a new lesson or introduce a new concept, the first lessons can be rough, but as reflection and repetition continues, the lesson improves, the goals have more clarity, practice time becomes more efficient, modifications move closer to a flow state, the games have better rules, and students have more engagement, which leads to more time on task and more learning. By the end of the week, goals, activities, and assessments are better aligned.

Over weeks, months, and years of reflect-repeat, experienced teachers become more deliberate about how they teach, how they want learners to perform, and how they define success. Confidence and understanding would never materialize if they taught a lesson once then moved on because of too many mistakes.

One of the difficulties of being a young teacher or coach is limited opportunities inhibit repetition. My young professionals teach a lesson as part of their course then may not be in a position to teach the lesson again for some time. They may need to take the reflect-repeat process with them and apply it at the gym, soccer practice, or summer camp.

It took many summer camps observing experienced coaches for me to learn how to break down a skill. It took an entire semester of student teaching before I felt comfortable in front of students. It took two or three years of teaching on a regular basis, creating, adjusting, and failing to develop my own processes and feel competent. It took a number of years later to feel as if I’d mastered my craft. But I’m still growing and learning how to get better.

As in other areas of life, teaching and coaching takes time to develop requisite skills. That’s why great players don’t always make great coaches. By reflecting on lessons then having opportunities to practice in future sessions, any young teacher or coach can find the path toward growth and mastery more clear.

Coaching Fundamentals: Mastering the Demonstration for Player Understanding

I remember early in my career being bored out of my mind writing objectives. They had been drilled into my head by every professor so much that the mentioning of the word elicited a response similar to opening a trashcan lid and inhaling last week’s fish. I wanted to get to the fun and games. Beginning with the end in mind is one of the most valuable skills a coach can develop. Once the end result is clear, the rest of the session should funnel toward that goal.

When the coach identifies the goal of the session and the supporting activities, it’s time to demonstrate how players are going to progress toward the goal. Inexperienced coaches rush through an explanation of a drill or game then send the group off with limited information on how to perform the activity. Minutes later, chaos ensues. Players are attacking the wrong goal, dribbling out of bounds, or failing to transition, and the coach tosses up his hands and asks what is wrong with today’s youth. Experienced coaches intentionally demonstrate an activity how and where they want the players to perform it with the end result in mind.

When demonstrating for young players, have them sit so they’re more attentive. Don’t allow players to walk around, play with a ball, or talk during the reception of critical information. In creating a respectful environment that exceeds the playing field, listening is a core skill. Review the goal of the activity. “Today, we are going to play a game to improve first-time finishing” or “This training exercise is about pressuring the ball after losing possession.” Connect the activity and its relevance in the game because ultimately that’s where the coach is trying to transfer the performance.

Demonstrate using three learning senses (visual, auditory, and kinesthetic) in the space where players will perform the task. The visual learners need to see the activity in motion, where to stand, where to move, and what happens when they transition. The audio learners need verbal cues, simple words and phrases the coach can repeat to emphasize actions. The kinesthetic learners need to experience the activity for themselves and feel their way through the movements. If the session is set in the penalty area with a goal, that’s where the demo should take place.

Experienced coaches follow the I do it, You do it with me, I do it with you, You do it formula for scaffolding before players perform on their own. First, the coach shows the players how to perform the activity. If they can’t perform the activity alone, they use players to help. Then the players perform the activity with the coach’s guidance, repeating until the players can perform it on their own without the coach’s cues. If the coach doesn’t allocate time for players to understand what they are doing, the time wasted trying to re-explain, re-demonstrate, and re-focus destroys the activity, the session, and players’ confidence.

Coaches may have a goal they want players to achieve but may lack the patience for and the understanding of the process of acquiring the skill or concept. Players learn at different rates. Sometimes, an activity is too difficult for players to understand, and the coach may need to simplify the concept. Other times, players may grasp the main ideas immediately. A coach could teach the same concept to ten different groups and have ten different results. Coaching is a constant shift between instruction, assessment, progression, and regression. Learning doesn’t have a deadline. Mastering a skill or concept may take players an entire session, a week, a month, even a season.

Coaches want players to independently solve problems on the field, yet too often they intervene during the problem-solving process to assert their adult experience. Guide the problem-solving process rather than do the work for players. Run a game through several rounds. Check-in with the group. Ask questions for understanding. “What’s working, what’s not working?” Make tweaks. Stop and re-demo if necessary. It’s easier for something to be too easy than too hard. Once the group grasps how the activity flows then throw in wrinkles or scenarios to challenge player thinking. But if the group is confused from the start because they haven’t practiced enough, the activity will implode.

A plumber wouldn’t ask an apprentice on the first day of the job to re-route a bathroom drain all by himself, so coaches should express the same patience with players. Start with a toilet handle and progress to a flange then replace a wax ring. Demonstrate the process then increase the challenge gradually, but allow for mistakes. Failure is part of the process of acquiring a skill. Teach players that’s it’s ok to make mistakes. Because in a game setting, they will make tons of mistakes. Experienced coaches empower players to fail then reinforce skills for how to respond afterwards.

A coach’s main role is to prepare players for success on the competitive field, which begins in a training environment. An activity that aligns goals for all learners, with time to grow and adjust, begins with a clear demonstration. A lack of player understanding might naturally occur because sports are complex and ever-evolving, but coaches can enhance player understanding by modeling the activities in the direction of their defined goals.