Author: Vernon Gambetta
Possibilities
I find it counterproductive to focus on what an athlete can’t do, what their deficiencies and dysfunctions are. Do I need to know that to be an effective coach? Sure I do. But it is most productive to focus on possibilities, what the athlete can. Accentuate the strengths and minimize the weaknesses. That does not mean to ignore weaknesses just don’t make correcting weaknesses the sole focus. I have done that and then effectively taken away the athletes strength. Build on the strengths especially at the developmental stages of an athletes career.
Role of Free Play in Developing Athletes
In children free play is all about testing boundaries and pushing limits – there is no fear rather there is pure joy of discovery and enjoyment. There are no rules, at least prescribed by adults; they make up their own rules as they go along and they change frequently. Through unstructured free play they learn the wisdom of their bodies through exploration. It is unsupervised improvisation. They figure it out. So-called experts have questioned this – the concern is that will learn bad habits and poor technique. My answer is that this is the foundation. Kids at beginning ages do not need to be taught skills in a formal manner, they learn through discovery, through solving movement problems. The best athlete development strategy is to reintroduce recess with playground equipment so they can – jump, run, throw, lift push, pull, and play tag – JUST PLAY! There is plenty of time to teach skills lets let them experience the pure joy of movement. Free play is the basis of long-term athlete development because it will provide the foundation for an anti-fragile adaptable athlete ready to play any sport they choose.
Practice – Make it better
Don’t try to replicate the game in practice instead distort the game. Use varied constraints and restraints to get the players out of their comfort zone, force faster decision making. Never allow the players to get comfortable or into set predictable patterns. This will effectively make the game slow down. Shift the focus from perfect practice to perfect effort. Encourage risk taking; mindful mistakes are learning opportunities all in pursuit of the perfect game.
Meditations on Teaching and Practice
I have been thinking a lot lately about what constitutes good teaching (Coaching) and practice. Yesterday after sitting through another long pointless sermon at mass and then going for a long walk afterward to think more about this here are some thoughts: Teach don’t preach – Know your message, keep it short, sharp and punctuated. Show don’t tell – Demonstrate and use video to show skills. Make it visual. Move – Get em moving to feel it. Make it a dance. The eyes don’t have it – Too often we see what we want to see “confirmation bias” not what is really happening. Coach the corrections – Give them an action to correct the fault. Drills do not equal skills – Less drills and more emphasis on the actual skills will improve skill the most. Teach to your strengths – Know your strengths and use them. Be yourself. Watch Karate Kid Part One – Best work on implicit learning I have ever seen! Wax on, wax off! Read Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds – Learn how to get the message across like great presenters do.
True North
Keep your compass oriented to true north – true north is a strong guiding force, no hype, no false prophets, no guruism, and no quick fixes – Just straight facts. What is true north? It is quite simple, nothing fancy or especially trendy, it is the basics. It is fundamental movements progressing to more complex movements as the fundamental movement skills are mastered. It is sound training principles guiding the training. It is training connections, rhythm, coordination and movement problem solving ability. Just the basics repeated in as many different iterations as is appropriate for your athletes. Keep it simple and if in doubt make simpler because I have said many times simplicity yields complexity.
Injury Prevention – A Transparent Process
Injury prevention is implicit in a sound comprehensive training program. The program must address all components and dimensions of training in a balanced manner. (The key here is multilateral unbiased training) Train the athlete in a program that addresses sport demands and meets the athletes individual needs and 99% of injury prevention will be taken care of. Simple in concept but complex in application but it can and should be done.
Youth Sport Today – How We Got There
Where we are today in youth sport today with the “pay to play” model did not happen overnight. This post is meant give some historical context for why we are where we are today. This is excerpted from my new book that I am working on called “Developing Athletes.” 1969 when I started coaching was probably the height of the school based sport system in the US. For many reasons into the 1970’s and definitely by the early 1980’s much changed. Perhaps the biggest change was the gradual erosion of the mandatory daily physical requirement in the schools. There was more time devoted to academic subjects. The first subjects cut were physical education, then arts, then music and then theater arts because they were deemed non-academic. With cuts in physical education there were no longer jobs for specialist physical education teachers, consequently fewer and fewer PE teachers where hired. This quickly affected sports coaching, as the physical education teachers who had been the pool of sport coaches had their jobs eliminated. Schools now had to go outside the faculty to hire coaches. Many of these coaches had no background in pedagogy or any actual coaching experience; it was not long before a noticeable drop off in the quality of coaching in the schools occurred. In addition there was little continuity in the coaching from year to year because coaching stipends were minimal. Certainly it was not long before you began to see the effects in the young developing athlete. Those teachers that had entered the profession on completion of their schooling through the GI Bill were retiring and were not replaced as they retired. Over the forty plus years since I started coaching we have arrived at the point where today only two states have mandatory K-12 physical education and that requirement is somewhat watered down. In sports we are at the point where the majority of coaches in the schools are not faculty members. This has many implications that I will go into detail on later. This resulted in the rise of outside sport teams that began in the late 1980’s grew in the 1990’s and has exploded in the new millennium. In basketball, baseball, soccer, softball, volleyball, lacrosse and to some extent track & Field and swimming sports outside the schools has taken precedence. Competition is no longer local but national in scope. Seasons are extended to mimic adult competition seasons with youngsters as young as 12 years old playing 100 plus baseball games a year, competing for national championships and youth world championships.
The Secret – The Way – The Answer
There are no secrets. There is no one-way. The answer is that there is no answer. So stop looking for secrets, stick with the basics and build on them. Don’t look for one way to do things, equip yourself with a variety of tools and methods. Learn to ask smart questions. Follow the words of William James and recognize that "Truth is what works." Find what works for you and keep refining and fine-tuning it to make it better.