"How do I coach a game?" A great coaching article!

Hadley Winthrop | BEcorp     

Sometimes the question is “how do I coach a game”? but why is it not ,“should I coach a game”?  I am going to try and set forth some objective arguments to both questions and I welcome your feedback to this discussion.

Our last newsletter spoke about the importance of “visual cues” while coaching. The importance being that everything in training (or as much as possible), should be as close to a game or match environment as possible. Our coaching points should therefore be the same, meaning that the athlete must react to an opponent’s foot movement, rotation of the trunk, displacement of the hip and so on… So what about if the athlete cannot see you? Is an audio cue enough? Can the athlete know exactly what you are talking about when you call out across the field/court/arena to them? What about if they make the same mistake again? Will they get told again? What about on game day? Does this change?

Scenario 1: You have been coaching a team for 10 years, you feel as though they should know the material and know the plays but they get it wrong on game day… What do you do? Do you call out the plays/flaws in their technique and assume they know what you mean?

Scenario 2: You have been coaching a team for 5 years and the players are no older than 12, does that make a difference in your coaching technique on game day? You have still been coaching them for a long period of time, should they know the material by now?

Scenario 3: You have 1 player on the field that keeps making a mistake, the same mistake you have been working to correct in training. Do you call across the field/court/arena to communicate in front of the other teammates? Do you call commands to the player to help?

Let me help your thoughts to the above scenarios by adding some pepper to the salt with the following extremely objective comment I heard the other day… “If your player doesn’t know how to do it by game day then there’s no point coaching it now”.

A human is a cognitive learner by habit and trade. We learn by thought process, evaluation, study, repetition and analysis. Most importantly, we learn by encouragement and self efficacy – meaning that we judge ourselves based on our interpretation on what happened.

Next time you call out to a player, have this in your mind and think to yourself; Am I motivating my player? Will my player learn from my comment if he hasn’t got it right so far? Will my player respond well to my tone of voice? How else could I address the situation?  

How about we wait until the break, half time, end of the round, quarter or time out to pull a player out to the side and show them what we would like so that they can become a cognitive learner once more?

A coach never stops learning – Even during a game!

Please feel free to contact us with any questions, queries or comments. You can reach us at

Web: www.becorp.org.

Email: info@becorp.org / hadley.winthrop@becorp.org.    

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