On what makes a good (sports) coach
Up to a year ago, I was running in a track-team. It was fun, but I was already feeling my age and stopped in the summer of 2007. Yesterday, I decided, for the second time this summer, to join my former team in one of their infamous 2-3 hour training-sessions.
What made this team great was its coach. He was recruited a few years ago, is in his 40s, and is a master of his sport. What made him great is that he was somehow able to target all of us: the quick 18 year olds and the slower 30 year olds and above. He planned the route well, placed us into fitness-categories 1-3, did an extremely slow warm-up to get us all ready, and used “vacuuming” to keep us all together. It is a term we use over here, meaning that the quickest, once reaching a certain distance, turn around and dribble back to the slower ones.
That’s all excellent, but there is one flaw in placing to much faith in a coach: he’s just one person. Last night, another co-runner of mine took over the training. He planned the route well, warmed us up slowly, used vacuuming, and made us run 13 km (ca. 10 miles)! You should know that my top mileage is usually about half that, and hadn’t trained much the weeks before. We even had a girl, whose knees gave out after 10 km, and were still able to train around her, while she walked. Somehow, we all came away satisfied.
In my opinion, the important qualities of sports-coaches are these three things, and I hope they translate to other disciplines as well:
- Knowing your craft really well;
- Planning for different abilities in your team;
- Making your craft transparent so others can take over.
More tech coming this weekend, I promise!
Vincent
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Tags: coach, management, sports, training
Hi Vincent,
Great sharing about your coach and it’s leadership/management implications. I agree with you the three points on why I would also think he’s a great coach.
Applying it to our corporate life, I also would expect something similar in my managers. I hope too that I’ve the same impact on my team so that they wouldn’t miss me when I leave. Then that would indeed be a lasting legacy (success!).
Many thanks,
-Lui
Funnily enough, I’ve been thinking about posting on the topic.
My 8 years son has started footy last year, and I have been asked a couple of time by the club to coach his team when doing the saturday morning games.
This is an amazing experience and I LOVE it. What I get out of it :
- set up strong principles : commitment, team spirit, never give up, cheer up team partners when they did something wrong, never argue during the game, focus on one objective : to play forward
- always encourage and cheer up good initiative : commitment, defensive duties, taking risk in attacking position, etc …
- always be fair : player doing wrong thing should be told so calmly (i’m not so good on that last thing)
- teach player to watch other team and ask them what they thought of it .. was their passing good ? were they commited ? did they help eachother while in trouble ?
I particularly remember this game : the team was 2 nil down and quite desperate : upset, shoe gazing etc … Up to then they were playing badly, against the principles (selfish, arguing with each others, not defending as a team) etc … I kept on cheering them up, telling them to go back to basic principles and to believe in themselves.
They came back 2-1 on a dodgy free kick and started to play well again. They were getting momentum and on the very last second they equalized. I thought I was in an Hollywood movie : they were jumping around as if they had won the world cup.
That was a great moment to see self-belief in kids that proved themselves they were able to change the curse of things.
Thanks Lui and Cecil for your insights!
I can’t imagine a better job than coaching people to reach their full potential.
Thanks for the tips. These should be able to help aspiring coaches and people looking for one.