It is no coincidence that the most organized coaches are also the most success with their youth and high school sports teams. Below you will find specific strategies for the practice season, monthly, weekly and daily planning, to help you stay organized and focused throughout the year.
Implementation of some of these tips will reduce your practice planning stress, a lot of credibility and greatly improve the flow of your practice and performanceTheir athletes.
Plans of the season
Start your year of coaching in 4 phases: Off-Season, Pre-season, preseason and the season. Next develop a high level "at a glance" In view of what is to be realized in each of these periods.
Be sure to consider:
Technical, tactical and physical training: What skills do you generally have to want to focus your athletes during different parts of the 'year? For example, you might want to improve your team freethrow shooting, swimming, or working on is to flip, or practice penalty shots, etc.
Objectives of the team: your team is trying to develop speed in low season? You are perfect the routines in front of a big cheerleading competition? You're learning a new offense before the season?
Fundraising goals: How much money did the team needs to increase to cover costs for the season. When to collect the money from her? What types of fundraising events
Coaching Focus: You are focusedon recruiting during the off-season? Are you focused on improving your coaching knowledge by attending conferences and clinics during pre-season?
Tournaments, Seminars, Clinics: Make note of any upcoming events you or your team will be participating in. Is there an out-of-state tournament that you would like your team to participate in? Is there a coaching clinic about a topic you're interested in?
Workout Schedule: Is your team practicing 6 days a week during the early season? Do you expect your athletes to train 3 days a week during the off-season when there aren't regularly schedules practices?
Monthly Plans
Once your season plan is in place, consider creating a month by month planner on the office bulletin board to serve as a useful reminder about the year's objectives, goals, and events. This is the time to get a little more specific about the objectives you and your team would like to accomplish, and the exact timing for individual events.
For example, what's the date and location for the first tryout? Are you planning a car wash on March 15th that will raise 0 to pay for your summer tournament? When does the first round of the playoffs begin?
Weekly Plans
At the beginning of each week, it's wise to take 10 minutes to plan out a rough outline of your practices. What time does practice start and end? What gym will it be held in? Will players arrange their own transportation to the field, or will a school bus be provided?
You'll also want to consider some more specific practice and team objectives you'd like to accomplish. Are you preparing to face a particular opponent? Are you working on developing speed or strength? Are you trying to improve your team's communication skills?
Do you have a meeting with a parent or administrator? Do you need to check in with a particular teacher about an athletes performance in the classroom, etc? These are all items appropriate for your weekly plan.
Daily Plans
This is the nitty gritty portion of your practice planning sequence. You'll want to make note of the EXACT activities and drills you want to perform, how long to do them for, and what order to do them in. It's best to get all of this down in an easy-to-read template that you can keep on your clipboard and refer to throughout practice.
Before each practice, sit down and outline your top three primary goals for the day. Do you want to master a play that you will run in an upcoming game, do you want to work on building speed or strength, do you want to help your athletes improve a technical skill critical to your sport?
Next, make note of any equipment that might be required for the day's practice. Do you need pylons, jump ropes, extra balls, etc?
When you're ready to plan your drills and activities, start with the team warm-up. Structure your warm-up into 3 phases: Aerobic Warm-up, Stretching, and Technical Skills Warm-Up. Many coaches find that three 5-minute phases work well. During the aerobic warm-up you may decide to have you athletes complete a light jog, jumprope, or perform some other kind of gentle aerobic activity to increase their heart rate and warm up their body.
Once your athletes are sufficiently warm, you can transition into the stretching phase of your warm-up. Focus on stretching the muscles that are used most often in your sport.
We recommend completing your warm-up with a technical skills tune-up where athletes practice specific athletic skills required by their sport (i.e.- basketball free-throw shooting, volleyball serves, etc).
Now you can move onto the "core" of your practice, first list the skills you would like to work on with your team (place this in the first column under "skills to improve"). Next, assign a drill to each skill that specifically targets the area you are seeking to improve.
Finally, note any coaching points you'd like to remember during the practice (i.e. keep head up, make sure players bend their knees, make sure Andy keeps his elbow back, etc.)
Complete your practice with a cool down that lasts at least 10 minutes. Slowly bring your athletes' heart rates down with gentle aerobic activity (do not abruptly stop practice or aerobic activity as this may cause injury). Once your athletes are breathing normally, lead your team in a thorough stretching session.
Make sure you allow athletes water breaks every 15 minutes to ensure they remain hydrated throughout your practice. It's best to schedule these into your planner so that you don't forget.
After practice, make notes on how the day went at the bottom of the practice planner. Are there any areas you'd like to focus on for the next practice? Did a particular drill work well (or not work well)?
Follow this simple formula and your practices will run much smoother, you'll get more accomplished in each practice and you'll see an exponential increase in your athlete's performance!
If you'd like to put your practice planning system on the "fast track", we highly recommend the sports team website builder at Sportata.com. Even if you know nothing about computers, you can create a dazzling website for your basketball, football, softball, baseball, volleyball, hockey (or any other) team in just 3 easy steps. With just a few clicks, you can post practice schedules, send broadcast emails, and deliver workout plans to your athletes. Go to Sportata.com to learn more.
