Coaching Newsletter #5 – The best way to increase athlete engagement

If you are going to take anything away from reading this article, I want it to be this: Learn more about your participants. Learn more about the people around you. Learn more about what they like, what makes them tick, and where they want to go.

How I optimize video analysis for professional players

I'll tell you right off the top, nothing I say here will be groundbreaking. This article is meant to show you how simple video analysis can be, even at the high-end level of sport. Yes, you have to know the game. Yes, you should know how to positively promote other people. It even helps to know how to game-ify conversations in order to make them more intriguing. But ultimately, you can easily follow my steps here for conducting optimal video analysis for professional players. Steal it. Take it with you. It's yours. Here is my process for creating actionable insights for pros (or semi-pro players) to take back into their own environments.

Coaching Newsletter #4 – Essential traits of a successful coach, mentor or leader

Truth be told, there are millions of checklist items that help to form a successful coach, mentor, or leader. But at the bare bones of it all, successful leadership ultimately comes down to a focus on social relationships.

Coaching Newsletter #3 – Merging repetition & game-realism together

There's often a conflict between the old-school coaches who design "drills" focused on repetition, and the new-school coaches who provide actual education toward what players will encounter in a game. But in reality, the two can easily be merged together. You see, game-realistic activities around a specific session topic naturally allow for repetition toward the patterns our players will encounter in the game. In this coaching newsletter, I use my personal experiences as a part-time professional athlete in the sport of trail running to detail how game-realism and repetition can be easily combined together.

Attention to detail when coaching at the elite level

While coaching ideologies can generally apply across a myriad of ages and abilities, there are a few distinct differences. This includes: a greater attention to detail at the high-performance level; a greater attention to position-specific training; and more complexity when adapting activities to add challenge/intensity. I break this down in Coaching Craft – Newsletter #2 – Coaching high-performance athletes. Here is a preview of how you can focus on the finer details in high-performance environments.

Coaching Craft – Newsletter #2 – Coaching high-performance athletes

While coaching ideologies can generally apply across a myriad of ages and abilities, there are a few distinct differences. This includes: A greater attention to detail at the high-performance level. A greater attention to position-specific training. More complexity when adapting activities to add challenge/intensity.

Coaching Craft – Newsletter #1 – Building Logical Session Flow & Rewards

Today I returned to the classroom for my Coaching & Leadership course for eighty+ undergraduate students. For the first class of the new semester, I facilitated a European Handball session on 'switching play', which is a session plan I've done plenty of times in the soccer world. Here were some of the key reflections: