Coaching is teaching and no one epitomizes that more than John Wooden. He was a teacher of basketball and life; his classroom was the basketball court. It is no coincidence that many of his ideas about coaching were forged in the classroom as a high school English teacher. He was not a complexifier, he kept things basic and fundamental. The emphasis was on repetition and mastery of basics. He carefully planed his practices down to the minute, spending up to two hours a day planning the training sessions. In a study done on his coaching by two psychologists, Ronald Gallimore & Roland Tharp originally done in 1975 and updated in 2004 (Read more at http://tinyurl.com/mhskpr9) they observed 2,636 acts of coaching: 6.9% were compliments, 6.6% were expressions of discipline, and most importantly 75% was pure information! The comments were short, punctuated, numerous and rarely longer that 20 seconds – no lectures! John Wooden was Twitter coach before Twitter. Coach like John Wooden coached, know your message, communicate the message and do it in 140 characters maximum.
BasketballHQ.com
I really like how it says, “teacher of basketball and life.” Too many coaches don’t invest in their players enough outside of the sport that they are coaching. Coaches need to not only teach their players how to better play their sport, but also how to be successful at life.