Are your athletes different than you were at their age? Of course they are,  and that is why we must coach them differently than we were coached. In this post get 22 Tips for coaching today’s athletes.

By Alan Stein, Basketball Strength and Conditioning Expert

As Notorious B.I.G. once said, ‘Things done changed.’

One of the biggest changes to our society as a whole has been technology… more specifically the Internet… and even more specifically… mobile smartphones and social media.

What does that have to do with athletics?

Everything.

Sports have always been and will always be an interpersonal activity that requires human connection and communication.

Coaching is all about building quality relationships. As they say, ‘it ain’t about the X’s and O’s… it’s about the Jimmy’s and Joe’s.’

But because of things like social media and the ‘everyone gets a trophy’ mentality, the Jimmy’s and Joe’s of 2015 are not the same as they were in 1995.

And even though we can’t stop the waves… we can all learn to surf.

Here are 22 tips for coaching today’s players…

1. Find out how to truly connect with your players. Find out what makes them tick, what motivates them and what is the best way to coach them (in front of their peers and behind closed doors).

2. Embrace social media and technology… it’s not going anywhere. It’s important to your players, so it needs to be important to you.

3. Learn to speak their language (I am not referring to profanity). The top 2 ways players communicate today is through text message and social media (particularly Instagram and Twitter). Learn to use those platforms.

4. Understand this: consistency breeds excellence – excellence breeds trust – trust breeds loyalty – loyalty builds a strong program. Be consistent with everything you do. Players won’t respect you if you don’t.

5. Encourage this 3-step mistake policy with your players – Admit it. Fix it. Don’t repeat it! The first time it is a mistake. The second time it is a decision.

6. Coach attitude and effort before X’s and O’s. Without proper attitude and effort the X’s and O’s don’t matter.

7. Clearly articulate your core values, principles and each player’s role. These are non-negotiable. They make up your program’s culture.

8. Players want to know the why behind everything. So tell them! Explain why you do what you do, why you believe what you believe, and why you expect ABC from them. The higher the perceived relevance, the higher the buy-in. And at the end of the day, a coach’s #1 job is to get buy-in from every member of the program.

9. Social media has created an abundance of superficial ‘friends’ – make sure your players know you truly care about them (on and off the court). That you have their back.

10. Don’t try to be ‘friends’ with your players. If you are too close to them personally you can’t hold them accountable. You should be a role model, a teacher and a mentor… but not a buddy.

11. Players all learn differently. Make sure you can effectively teach each type of learner (audio, visual, intrapersonal).

12. Players want to show their individuality (shoes, haircuts and especially with pre-game starting line-up announcement antics and routines). Don’t fight it. Have some leniency within your program rules. Respectfully, today’s idols and role models are a lot different.

13. Create a climate and culture that values people over productivity. Your players must know you care about them as a human being first and a player second.

14. If you want to know if you are a good coach…ask your worst player.

15. You’re either coaching it or you are allowing it to happen. You either accept it or correct it.

16. Replace ‘but’ with ‘now’ when instructing a player. For example, “I like your release, now try to get your elbow over your knee.” This minor change will make a huge impact.

17. Focus on what your players can be… not what they are.

18. Science shows that most people have a pretty firm definition of what is right and wrong by age 13. Hold them accountable. Ignorance is not an excuse. However, learn to choose your battles. Kids will be kids. If a players posts something stupid on social media… don’t condemn them for life. Use it to teach a life lesson. Hold them accountable, but use it to teach.

19. Players actually want to be held accountable.  It shows them that you care and are invested in their success.

20. Most of the players today have grown up in the ‘trophy generation’ – which has created an immense sense of entitlement. Players need to learn another ‘E’ word… earn. Create a system where players have to earn

21. Players today want to play immediately. They don’t understand the concept of ‘right of passage.’ Freshman want to play varsity. Young players want to play serious minutes. Learn to channel this desire but keep them focused on the process and the long term.

22. One of the biggest changes between the players of 1995 and 2015 is with the parents. Parents are much more involved and much more vocal (especially on social media). Parents can be a tremendous support system… or they can be a total thorn.
    I’m honored to be in the coaching fraternity.Alan SteinHardwood Hustle Blog
    http://www.About.me/AlanStein

This article was provided by Coaches Network

Many of the keys to coaching are universal, but when it comes to coaching athletes of the opposite gender there are some extra considerations to keep in mind. Whether you’re a male coaching females, or a female coaching males, it’s important to be aware of respecting boundaries and understanding what is appropriate behavior. To make this easier, Dr. Cheri Toledo has provided some guidelines to follow in an article on Purpose2Play.com.

As a Certified Elite Life Coach with more than 15 years of coaching experience at the college and high school levels, Toledo has seen how coaching athletes of the opposite gender can provide some unique challenges. Much of this comes down to understanding how to effectively communicate with different athletes. And this can require some reading, research, and experience. One source that Toledo found particularly useful was the book You Just Don’t Understand by Deborah Tannen.

“[Tannen] found that boys focused their communication on independence, self-reliance and the avoidance of failure, while girls focused on connection, preserving intimacy, and avoiding isolation,” writes Toledo. “In addition, boys were most interested in sharing content, while girls were concerned with the interaction itself.”

This means that the way you communicate with your athletes is key. According to Toledo, female athletes generally respond better when you avoid yelling and ask them for their input, whereas male athletes often respond to motivational yelling or concise demands from a coach. While the content of what you say may be very similar, the way you deliver the message can make all the difference.

Practice habits may also differ. According to Toledo, research has shown that female athletes are often under-confident while males can sometimes be overconfident. Having enough confidence is crucial to performing at a high level, so in order to help female athletes overcome this hurdle work on improving their confidence during practice. In order to do this, try making practices more intense and reward players based on their effort and performance.

Toledo also lists some dos and don’ts in order to make sure you maintain an appropriate relationship with your athletes of another gender.

-Avoid one-on-one situations: To keep a player from feeling uncomfortable or getting the wrong impression, always have a third party present. If you are meeting in your office, have another coach there and keep your door open, but preferably meet in an open area. Also, never have a player stay over at your house or in your hotel room, and avoid driving a player home alone. Even though these things might be completely innocent, you don’t want to give the wrong impression.

-Be transparent: Communications with your athletes should be public, not private. Emails and text messages should be group conversations, not one-on-one. And when a player approaches you with personal information, it’s important that you still share this with either their parents, your assistant coaches, the athletic director, or a counselor at the school.

-All touching must be appropriate: A pat on the butt might be okay if you’re the same gender, but when you’re coaching athletes of another gender stick to a pat on the shoulder or upper back. Hugging can be a great way to show your athletes you care about them, but opt for a side hug rather than a front hug so that you don’t make anybody feel uncomfortable. In general, it’s better to use your voice than your hands.

“Coaches are in a power position – they need to avoid using that power to gain any inappropriate control over their players,” writes Toledo. “Remember, people’s perceptions will always override the facts.”

Click here to read the full article.

This post was syndicated from the Inner Drive blog.

Giving feedback can be a double-edged sword. The Sutton Trustreports that if it is done right, it can be one of the most effective ways to help someone improve their learning; however, research suggeststhat 38% of feedback interventions actually do more harm than good.

What we intend to be encouraging and constructive can easily be interpreted as judgement and criticism. So how can we save ourselves from the pitfalls of giving unhelpful and potentially damaging feedback?

Here are ten tips on how to give better feedback:

Don’t delay too much– An interesting review on when to give feedback found something quite curious. The researchers discovered that in experiments conducted in a laboratory, delayed feedback were more helpful; however, in a real world setting, especially in classrooms, immediate feedback was more beneficial. This makes sense when you think about it: the real world is messy and complicated; leave things too long and things get forgotten; memories get distorted; other pressing events crop up.

It is not always possible or practical to give immediate feedback. This is especially true if emotions are running high. The trick is to give timely feedback in a way that doesn’t smother people (too much too soon can be just as bad), but early enough that the event is still fresh in their mind. As with all things in psychology, there are some caveats to the rules.

Research suggests that in some situations, delaying feedback may actually be better. These may include when the task is simple and when there is plenty of time available (giving the other person enough time to try several different strategies)

Be specific – When you say ‘good’, the assumption is that the person will know exactly what was good. This is not always the case. It is easy for people to misunderstand what you mean. This is especially true when giving feedback to teenagers, who as a result of their brain restructuring, can find it harder to understand someone else’s perspective and thought process. The more detailed and specific the better. This will remove any ambiguity. It is far better to say, ‘The way you did X was really good.’

Focus feedback on their process, not their natural ability– Praising someone’s effort (instead of their intelligence) will help them to develop a growth mindset. This impact has been found in even very young children, with the type of praise given to 1-3 years old impacting on if they have fixed or growth mindset up to 5 years later.

Praising someone’s effort increases their intrinsic motivation and provides a template for them to follow next time. A separate study found that the type of praise children receive actually drives the type of feedback they then seek out themselves post task. In this study, 86% of children who had been praised for their natural ability asked for information about how their peers did on the same task. Only 23% of children who had been praised for effort asked for this type of feedback, with the vast majority of them asking for feedback about how they could do better.

Avoid lavish praise – When someone has repeatedly struggled, it is tempting to heap lots of praise on them when they achieve some level of success, no matter how small. This can actually do more harm than good. Insincere praise is very easy to detect. Too much praise can convey a sense of low expectation and, as a result, be demotivating.

Limit public feedback – Teenagers care a lot about what their peers think of them. Public feedback, even if well intended, can easily be interpreted as a public attack on them and their ability. This can quickly lead to a fear of failure. This can result in teenagers putting on a front, accompanied with bundles of bravado.

A nice way to overcome this is what author Doug Lemov calls ‘Private Individual Correction’. This limits the publicness of the feedback, whilst still getting the message across clearly. This is similar to the technique he calls ‘The Whisper Correction’, which although done in public, the pitch and tone of voice is done to limit everyone else’s attention to the individual feedback.

Combine open and closed statements – A closed question is one where the answer is ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (i.e. ‘Were you nervous before the exam?’). The problem with these questions is that if the answer is no, the conversation can grind to a halt. You may find out that they weren’t nervous, but you won’t find out what they were actively feeling (sad, angry, not bothered, tired etc.). An open question, such as ‘how were you feeling in the morning?’, encourages someone to tell their story.

A combination of open and closed questions and statements can help when it comes to giving feedback. Closed statements help you to convey the information you want and can potentially save time and keep the conversation focused. Open questions allow for a good two-way conversation and can help students develop a sense of ownership of the situation.

Avoid comparisons with others – It is far better to focus your feedback on their individual development and improvement instead of in comparison with others. A recent study found that being positively compared to someone else can lead to narcissistic behaviour. This sort of comparison can also reduce someone’s intrinsic motivation, which has been associated with lower confidence, emotional control, academic performance and increased anxiety.

Discuss the strategy they used – This can help them identify helpful thought processes so that they can do the same again next time. Psychologists call this ‘metacognition’. Put simply, metacognition is the awareness and control of your thought process. This is a very valuable skill and has been found to significantly help students improve their grades.

Maintain high expectations – A famous study, conducted almost fifty years ago, found that high expectations can have a powerful effect. Teachers were falsely told that some of their students had been identified as potential high achievers; they were expected to bloom over the course of the year. Several months later, when compared to the rest of their classmates, these students had in fact made significantly more progress. What drove this change? The teachers’ increased expectation for these students.

This is known as the Pygmalion Effect (named after the mythical Greek sculptor who loved his statue so much that it actually came to life). Have high standards and people will often up their game in order to match them. Sometimes students need someone to believe in them before they can believe in themselves.

Suggest clear action points to move forward – This is one of the key points from the ‘What Makes Great Teaching Report’. Feedback that doesn’t lead to behaviour change is redundant. There must be a point to it. What do you want them to do differently? What are they going to do after this conversation to improve? The more detailed and specific the action points the better.

FINAL THOUGHT

Giving feedback isn’t easy. If done right, however, it has the ability to transform someone’s learning and performance. If done wrong, it can actually do more harm than good. So don’t delay, focus on their effort, be specific, avoid lavish praise, limit public feedback, use both open and closed questions,  avoid comparisons with others, and suggest clear action points moving forward.

This article was first published on The Guardian website on 10.11.16. You can read it, alongside all of our other Guardian blogs here: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/bradley-busch

About Inner Drive

InnerDrive is a mental skills training company covering the traditional areas of sports psychology and mindset training.

Their work covers the traditional areas of performance psychology, sports psychology and neuroscience. They work with over 120 schools in England and last year worked with over 25,000 students, teachers and parents.

The company is led by Edward Watson, a retired Army major and Bradley Busch, a HCPC registered psychologist.

This article as provided by Busy.Coach

By Mandy Greene

The Pareto principle states that 20% of a person’s effort generates 80% of the person’s results. The corollary to this is that 20% of one’s results absorb 80% of one’s resources or efforts. For the effective use of resources, the coach’s challenge is to distinguish the right 20% from the trivial many.

Identify the high-payoff activities within your program.  High-payoff activities are the things you do that bring the greatest value to your program, team, or staff.  They are the three to five activities that lie in your “sweet spot.”  You do them with excellence.  These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, etc.  They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Being able to prioritize your personnel, time, and energy will allow you the freedom to produce more efficient results.

Here are a few exercises taken from John Maxwell’s book Developing the Leader within Youthat should get you started:

Task Priorities

Determine what 20% of the work gives 80% of the return. These activities could be building relationships with recruits, making phone calls to parents, sending emails to recruits, managing your current team, etc.  They are your unique discipline or distinctive skills and abilities that distinguish you from other staff members.

Make a list of the tasks that you are working on today, this week, and in the near future.

Place each task next to the appropriate category below.

• List of things to do now (High Importance/High Urgency). Tackle these tasks first;
• List of things to do (High Importance/Low Urgency). Set deadlines for completion and get these tasks worked into your daily routine
• List of things to delegate (Low Importance/High Urgency). Find quick, efficient ways to get this work done without much personal involvement. Delegate it.
• Low Importance/Low Urgency: Busy or repetitious work. Delegate it.

Staff/Team Oversight and Leadership Development

• Determine which people are the top 20% producers. Start by making a list of everyone on your team.
• For each individual, ask yourself, if this person takes a negative action against me or withdraws his or her support from me, how big will the impact be?”
• If their absence would hinder your ability to function, put a check mark next to that name.
• When you finish making the check marks, you will have marked between 15 and 20 percent of the names. These are the vital relationships that need to be developed and given the proper amount of resources to grow your program.
• Meet one-on-one with the people you checked above.
• Spend 80 percent of your “people time” with the top 20%
• Spend 80 percent of your personal development dollars on the 20%

Sit down and spend the time to find out how this principle applies within almost every aspect of your program, and you have the power to set the vital priorities which will mean the difference between failure, survival, and success. This principle will save you time, effort, money and resources, and take you further down the road to success.

Knowing what your high-payoff activities are and actually doing them, however, are two very different things.  Many surveys that I have read over the past several years have shown that the average American worker spends only 50-60 percent of the workday on activities specified in her or her job description.  That means that workers waste 40-50 percent of their time on low-payoff activities, tackling things that others with less skill or training should be doing.  Are you in this category coach?

By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more productive things done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

The more time you spend doing the high-payoff activities, the more value you will bring to your team, program, and staff.  By disciplining yourself to clearly identify your high-payoff activities, and then by filling your calendar with those things and appropriately delegating, delaying, or dropping the low-payoff activities, you can and will get more high-payoff activities done everyday, reduce your stress, and increase your happiness.

Have a great week.

This article was provided by Training and Conditioning

As more and more research is done on sleep and athletes, we achieve a broader understanding for all the areas it impacts. Three recent studies open our eyes even further, showing how a lack of sleep can affect reaction time, performance, and substance use.

According to an article in Science Daily, fastballs in Major League Baseball take about 400 milliseconds to travel from the mound to the plate. Getting enough sleep can help players react to different pitches faster, says a new study. It found that by increasing their amount of sleep by one hour for five days straight, MLB players could improve their cognitive processing speed by reacting 122 milliseconds faster. They were also able to react 66 milliseconds faster on a selective attention task.

“Our research indicates that short-term sleep extension of one additional hour for five days demonstrated benefits on athletes’ visual search ability to quickly respond when faced with distractors,” Cheri Mah, MS, a Clinical and Translational Research Fellow at the University of California San Francisco Human Performance Center and the study’s lead author, told ScienceDaily.

Performance gains from sleep aren’t limited to the baseball diamond, according to another recent study. Researchers at Stony Brook University analyzed more than 30,000 late-night tweets from 112 professional basketball players along with their stats from home games spanning 2009 to 2016. The results showed players who tweeted between 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. saw an average of two minutes less on the court, along with fewer shots, rebounds, steals, and blocks.

“Using late-night tweeting activity as a proxy for being up late, we interpret these data to show that basketball skills are impaired after getting less sleep,” Jason Jones, PhD, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook, said in a statement that was covered by SportTechie.

Sleep disturbances are also related to an increased likelihood of substance abuse among college student-athletes, says researchers from the University of Arizona. They examined data from the National College Health Assessment, focusing on the survey responses of 8,683 student-athletes that were collected from 2011 to 2014. The survey was conducted by the American College Health Association and asked students about sleep problems that had been difficult to handle in the past 12 months. The survey respondents were also asked about specific substances they had used in the past 30 days.

In an article from ScienceDaily, the study’s findings showed that student-athletes who reported sleep difficulties were 151 percent more likely to use cigarettes, 66 percent more likely to smoke marijuana, and 36 percent more likely to drink alcohol than those without sleep difficulties. On top of that, the student-athletes who reported sleep difficulties were 349 percent more likely to use cocaine, 317 percent more likely to use methamphetamines, and 175 percent more likely to use steroids.

“Knowing this association between sleeping difficulty and substance abuse could be beneficial for coaches, physical therapists, and physicians,” Michael Grander, PhD, Director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at Arizona, told ScienceDaily. “These findings could provide important insight when treating sleep disturbances or attempting to improve athletic performance.”