By chance, a coach from Canada named Andrew MacKay emailed this week for a link to my books. He mentioned his role with his organization, and I was intrigued. MacKay is the Director of Coaching Development for Kitchener Waterloo Youth Basketball Association, about an hour from Toronto, Canada. I asked Coach MacKay a few questions to learn more about his role as Director of Coaching Development and to share with others as we push for more coach development in our youth organizations.

BM: What would the league compare to in the U.S.? Is your area club-based? Is it like a recreation-center league or a private league?

MacKay: We are a club.  We have a rep program and a house league program.  One team at each of U19, U17, U16, U15, U14, U13, U12, U11, U10.  The house league program covers same ages.

BM: How many players play in your league? How much does the league cost?

MacKay: In house league, I believe there are about 500 kids in 5 different leagues.  They pay $200 early bird, or $225 after certain date.

BM: How many coaches?

MacKay: House league varies on number of teams.  We will say 35-50 coaches.  Every rep team has head coach and one or two assistants

BM: Is your position a paid position?

MacKay: Not a paid position!

BM: What does your position entail? What are your duties? How many hours per week?

MacKay: I sit on the Board of Directors, so I have some input and votes on direction and decisions we make as a club.  As of right now, I am defining my role.  We start the year with a couple coaching clinics for the house league coaches.  We actually just put one on tonight.  I took them through a number of drills for children.  They received a handout with a page each on dynamic warm up, warm-up games, shooting, dribbling, passing and transition & playing drills.  I then quickly ran the kids through the drills.  I am involved with our house league evaluation night, again running drills and being a role model for both the kids and the coaches.  Showing them the energy I bring to the gym and how to keep kids engaged, make proper corrections and what to focus their teaching on.  Last season I ran a practice for each of our rep teams and invited in the house league coaches from that particular age group to watch.  It was an opportunity to see where the kids were in their development, to show all the coaches some new drills and help them with what they should be focusing on.  I’m planning on a bi-weekly or monthly newsletter this year to offer some tips as well as direct them to good information on the net – sites like yours!  And I’m looking for other ways to help them.

BM: Based on your experience, are there feasible ways for a position like yours to make a bigger impact? Do you have any visions for where you would like to take the position or things you would like to accomplish in the position?

MacKay: Eventually, I would like to control what our coaches are teaching their kids.  Without forcing, I’d like them to have a practice plan template that they can drag and drop drills into easily, so that they all have a plan when they go to the gym, they are spending the right amount of time on specific skills for the appropriate ages and it cuts down on their prep time.  I’d like to be at practices more often and help coaches to learn how to teach the kids and connect with them better.  I’d also like to build an online resource that they can access for tips and info.  All in due time.

BM: Do you have a way to measure the impact of the coach development position?

MacKay: Other than asking for feedback – and making a point of asking for positive and negative – is about it for now.  A survey would probably help increase response, but I haven’t pursued that as of yet.

Key points: The position is something that every youth organization should establish. An experienced coach to mentor coaches through directing coaches to good resources, organizing clinics and running practices for coaches to watch and learn. The next goal should be to find a way to fund these positions to ensure qualified and experienced coaches. Why can’t a local high school coach oversee coach development for a youth league if he or she was compensated for his or her time and effort? The original Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development outlined a plan involving coaches up and down the development stream.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

I just spoke to Allison McNeil, the Head Coach of Canada’s Women’s National Team about a clinic that she ran this weekend. She lamented the same issues of running clinics for volunteer coaches. However, her clinic cost $135, but the coaches paid only $50 due to government grants. Furthermore, she said that the provincial government wants every child to have a certified coach by 2015! While that is an ambitious plan, what an ambition to have!

Such a plan demonstrates a commitment to youth sports; it shows an interest in youth sports as an important element of a balanced childhood. The plan demonstrates a desire to provide the best possible environment for its youth athletes.

Since I wrote Cross Over: The New Model for Youth Basketball Development, I have written frequently about the basketball system in the United States and elsewhere. My biggest contention is not that the U.S. system does not work or is broken, but that it is not as good as it can be. With the money invested in basketball in the United States, I do not understand the apathy for searching for and building an improved system that meets the needs of all youth basketball players.

Volunteer coaches are the lifeblood of most youth sports organizations. However, as much as we value youth sports (and look at the attendance at the Little League World Series), and especially youth basketball, there should be an effort to create a better environment.

I spoke to a local recreation center recently. They have over 2400 children involved in basketball every year. Why not offer the opportunity for parents to add $1 to their registration fee to go toward coach development? Even if only one-quarter of the parents opt in, $600 is sufficient to pay for most one-day clinics. The organization could pay the clinician a $500 fee and have a raffle for coaches who participate for a $100 gift certificate to a local restaurant. This pays for the clinic through volunteer contributions and provides an incentive for coaches to attend.

Obviously, government grants or funding from the NBA, NCAA or USA Basketball would be ideal. However, without this funding, which does not appear to be coming any time soon, organizations have a responsibility to make efforts to improve their programming.

Imagine if all 2400 parents contributed $1. The organization could pay a mentor coach to assist dozens of coaches by attending practices and offering pointers and evaluations. The organization could purchase coaching materials for the coaches. There are many ways the money could be spent.

Alternatively, the YBCA offers a FREE online coach education course. Is it too much to ask of volunteers to work through a one to two-hour course on basic concepts of coaching?

If our government is uninterested in providing an ambitious plan or funding like in British Columbia; if the NBA, NCAA and ihoops are uninterested in leading reforms, including coach education; and if local organizations appear unwilling to use creative methods to finance better programming or efforts to improve coaching, what does that say about the way that we value youth sports?

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

In reality, coaches like Hurley and Keller are the outliers; most coaches, and in fact the average coach if there is such a thing, falls on a spectrum somewhere between Hurley and Keller. The average coach, if you were able to quantify every coach who works with 6-18 year olds in the United States, is more likely to be a volunteer mom or dad or a semi-volunteer high school teacher than a could-be professional coach like Hurley or a money-sucking child exploiter like Keller (based on the depiction in George Dohrmann’s Play Their Hearts Out).

The need for reform or more coach development has nothing to do with intentions. I firmly believe that 99% of coaches start coaching for the right reasons. I do not believe that anyone signs up to coach thinking that they are going to ruin a child’s life or intentionally teach the wrong things. However, that happens. Often, it happens because the coach does not know better. They have vague memories of their childhood experiences playing sports, and they emulate those. Of course, we remember emotional experiences far more than the mundane, so many people remember their coaches as yellers and screamers even if it happened infrequently because those are the emotional experiences etched into their memories, while the daily activities which more typified the experience are long forgotten.

While learning from a mentor is valuable, blindly doing what someone did 20 years ago is not. If I ate the food that I ate as a child, there is no way that I would maintain my current weight. Food recommendations have changed. When I was young, Gatorade was viewed as a health beverage, while chocolate milk was deemed bad because of the sugar. Now, many in sports recommend skipping the Gatorade, but drinking chocolate milk as a post-exercise recovery beverage. When I was young, pasta and cereal were health foods; now, many suggest moderate intakes of each because of the carbohydrates. When I was young, fat was evil. Now, there are good fats and bad fats. If I fed my son as I was fed, and my parents had every intention of providing healthy, nutritious food, I would violate many of the new ideas on healthy eating and food consumption.

In coaching, things that were standard procedures when I was a young player are no longer viewed as best practices. Few if any sports scientists would recommend that basketball players run long distances at a slow jog as pre-season training or static stretch before practice, but that was conventional wisdom when I played. Because it was conventional wisdom, and every coach did it, those who coach today without any additional education or exposure to new ideas and training methodologies perpetuate these practices from a bygone era. They are not intentionally coaching poorly; they simply are not professional coaches and do not spend hours researching sports science because they teach history, raise families, etc.

While these coaches should not be criticized for their volunteer efforts, we also should not stand by idly as they perpetuate poor practices for another generation. Rather than allow coaches to languish on their own, and face the wrath of parents who expect professional coaching at recreational-league prices, leagues and governing bodies should attempt to assist these coaches through coaching materials, affordable clinics, mentoring and more.

Parents will not send their child to an unlicensed barber, yet they will drop off their son or daughter and leave them with a coach who in all likelihood has no formal training as a coach. Bars require bartenders to be licensed mixologists and to have a certificate in handling food, yet we expect nothing from those who play such an important role in the development of our children at young and impressionable ages.

Youth sport is when athletes need the best coaching. Initially, athletes need coaches who inspire or ignite a passion for the game and for improving. After playing for a year or two, players need good instructors who can enhance players fundamental skill development. Players who fail to develop the interest in playing at a young age and/or who do not develop good skills by the early teens are much less likely to continue playing either by choice or by cut. These coaches are tasked with teaching the basics and establishing the right practice habits and attitude for the sport and training. By comparison, teaching plays to experienced, knowledgeable, motivated college players is a much less complex job. College coaching has its complexities and challenges, but they are reduced from an on-court perspective when they are able to recruit players who have been well-coached as youths and high school players.

It would be ideal if we had a system to pay youth coaches to make youth coaching a full-time job. This would raise expectations, and it would make coach education and development a mandatory requirement for aspiring coaches. As it is, however, we rely on the generosity of volunteers to sustain our youth sports, and we should never forget that. My youth coaches were a real estate broker, an accountant, a couple doctors, a call center manager, a history teacher, a 5th grade teacher, a construction worker and a Gap manager. They went to work early or worked weekends to be able to coach my teams. I thoroughly enjoyed all of them and appreciate everything that they did for my teams.

I was lucky. On the spectrum of coaches from Hurley to Keller, my coaches were far closer to Hurley than Keller. Unfortunately, it seems like every student who took my Introduction to Coaching course this summer had a coach who was much closer to Keller than Hurley. Some coaches were poor because of their treatment of athletes, and some were poor because of their lack of knowledge. My coaches made up for a lack of knowledge, especially in soccer as it was a fairly new sport in the early 80s, with their enthusiasm and ability to create a great team environment. I may not have learned to “Ben it like Beckham” or even to juggle a soccer ball, but I had fun, stayed in shape and made friends, and have nothing but good memories.

Could my coaches have better? Sure. They coached in an era before the Internet and when ESPN was one very new channel, not an ubiquitous sports enterprise. I never saw “real” soccer until late in high school. Finding new and current information and connecting with other coaches was more difficult then. However, after we developed an interest in the game, we could have used more technical and tactical instruction to improve our fundamentals and game understanding.

This is the need for coach education. Well-meaning coaches who want to develop their players, but who lack the time to search through the Internet or bookstores to decipher the good information from the bad. Leagues and governing bodies need to do the searching and sorting for the coaches.

While we need to appreciate our volunteer coaches, we also need to raise the expectations. Being a warm body should not be enough to coach youth sports. A 1-3-hour coach training should not be too much to expect, even from a volunteer. According to the Duracell commercial, something like 50-60% of firemen are volunteers: do they simply show up at a fire? They are volunteers, yet I assume that they go through training and are required to sustain some sort of fitness level as well as a working knowledge of firefighting procedures. Do our homes deserve greater protection and commitment than our children?

Leagues and governing bodies have a responsibility to create a convenient, painless coach development program for their volunteer coaches, and coaches – whether teachers or volunteers – have a responsibility to do more than show up on time. This isn’t about winning and losing games; it’s about creating great experiences for children, much like those that I was lucky to have as a child.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

The epidemic boils down to two issues: (1) Lack of education and dissemination of information to coaches and (2) the Peak by Friday mentality.

The female body differs from the male body, especially after puberty. These differences, according to most experts, affect or even cause the disparity of injury rates between males and females. To suggest otherwise is foolish based on what is known currently.

However, researchers have amassed plenty of evidence to suggest that anatomy is not the sole reason for the disparity. I am uninterested in the arguments of the male vs. female body because there is little that I can do to change someone’s anatomy. The other issues, however, can be impacted by training and skill development and therefore interest me.

Are injuries a result of poor coaching? Yes. Are they a result of poor parenting? Often. However, in most cases, these coaches and parents are not malicious. There is no intent to harm. There is ignorance. There is a void in the education of coaches, especially in terms of movement-related skills. As I wrote recently, basketball coaches, even at the NCAA or WNBA (or should I say especially at the NCAA and WNBA levels), are not movement experts.

Youth coaches typically volunteer their time and are not Coaches, but parents who work, raise children and coach as a hobby or to spend time with their sons or daughters.  Rather than blaming these coaches, as a semi-recent New York Times article appeared to imply, we need to cherish these parents who volunteer, as there would be far less opportunity for children, especially females, to play sports without the volunteer coaches. Rather than chastising these coaches, we need to nurture and provide them with resources. If we are to place blame, the blame should fall on the organizations who sponsor and generate income from the leagues, camps and tournaments that fail to nurture coaches and provide coaching resources.

At the high school level, we also have part-time coaches. They teach or work another job and coach for a small stipend. Even if they had the interest, the stipend they receive would barely cover the cost of attending a great conference to learn more (and I am not talking about Nike Clinics).

These are our coaches at the developmental levels: volunteers, amateurs and part-time coaches. However, these are the years of growth and development. The developmental years are the time when athletes develop practice habits, techniques, skills and mechanics. If these are developed incorrectly or inefficiently, these athletes must re-learn their habits, techniques or skills at a later age or they simply fall out of the competitive stream because they can no longer compensate for their deficiencies.

In the United States, our professional coaches, for the most part, coach at in the NCAA and WNBA. We should place higher demands on these coaches, as they earn an income commiserate with high expectations. However, to my knowledge, not one women’s college basketball coach attended the Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group conference despite it falling during a relatively dead period (first weekend of June). How many colleges are within a two-hour drive of Northeastern University? There were no fewer than three presentations directly related to ACL injury prevention, and several others that were relevant, yet nobody attended. Why? Because basketball coaches specialize in basketball. They are hired to win games, not to keep their players safe.

The second problem is that this mentality seeps into the lower levels, and our expectations for coaches at every level center on winning. Good coaches win; bad coaches lose. We cannot differentiate one’s coaching ability from their record.

Therefore, coaches take a Peak by Friday approach to their teams; they concentrate on the next game, not on their athletes’ development. If you ask most coaches to spend 10-15 per minutes at practice on movement skills – skills that enhance performance as well as reduce injury risk – they will say that they are too busy. No coach is fired because he or she has too many players suffer ACL injuries, but plenty are fired for losing too many games.

To make inroads into the ACL epidemic, and to improve the quality of coaching and play in general, we need to raise our expectations of our coaches. At the grassroots, recreation levels, this is difficult because most organizations are thankful to have anyone without a criminal record offer to coach. However, if this is our expectation when finding or recruiting new coaches, what should we expect? Finding coaches is often a difficult process, and volunteering for a youth team can be a thankless task as every parent in the stands suddenly knows more than the coach. However, what can leagues and organizations do to improve the coaching experience? When a league finds a great coach, how can it keep the coach rather than watching him or her leave when his or her daughter or son finish playing in the league? These are the questions that need to be asked.

When a league finds a great coach, why not offer him a position overseeing other coaches? As a volunteer position, he or she may not be able to invest many hours, but why not create a mentor system for experienced and novice coaches?

These questions do not address ACL injuries specifically. However, ACL injuries are a symptom of a larger problem. If we do not raise our expectations of leagues, and leagues fail to nurture and retain good coaches, how can we expect these leagues to implement the available neuromuscular training programs? If we do not address the Peak by Friday mentality first, how do we ensure the adherence to these programs once introduced?

Writing about ACL injuries is a hot-button topic now, so articles attract eyes, and eyes translate to dollars. Writing about coach education or the win-at-all-costs mentality lacks the same hotness. ACL injuries are the acute injury, but the coach education and preparedness is the chronic problem. When a player injures her ACL, the injury sparks new interest and articles. However, there is no event to spark the same interest in general coach training.

If we really want to make a difference, we need to start young. Sport coaches need to look beyond sport-specific skills to the general movement skills that form the foundation of all sports skills. With physical education cuts and a reduction in free, spontaneous play, sport coaches must fill the void and ensure the proper execution and training of these general skills.

Will this help win games? At 7 or 8 years-old, who cares?

These sport coaches need the tools to change their approach, and developing and disseminating these tools fall to the organizations and leagues. I am amazed that leagues do employ a Technical Director or some other position to oversee the quality of the coaching. In Europe, I was the Head Coach of a professional team, but in that capacity, I was also in charge of the underage coaches. We met about philosophy and drills and teaching concepts. I attended practices.

Of course, this was a professional position – I was doing my job. However, why is there no quality control? On TV, I hear advertisements for the Jr. Jazz and their 10,000 players. If you raise the cost of the league $3, you could pay a Technical Director $30,000/year to attend practices, lead clinics, mentor coaches, identify mentor coaches, etc. What if each league gave a Coach of the Year award based not on record, but a professional’s objective evaluation of the coach’s teaching style, feedback, learning environment, etc.?

These ideas appear impossible to implement. Why? The reason that leagues do not implement these ideas is because they derive no benefit. Parents are not choosing leagues based on the coach training that the coaches receive. Parents generally do not know what to look for or what questions to ask. Leagues thrive based on marketing like most businesses. If people thought critically about their beverage choices, would Coke be a thriving international company? No. Instead, we buy the easiest product to find, the one with which we are most familiar, regardless of its effect on our health.

We make the same choices when we choose leagues, teams, etc. Since familiarity trumps effectiveness in our choices, leagues derive no benefit from adding expenditures to improve the league.

Youth sports is a business. Ultimately, parents dictate the business through their choices. Business will chase the dollars. If parents insist on quality coaching, leagues that can demonstrate the quality of their coaching through certifications, mentorships, etc. will derive benefit from these efforts.

What if a league, rather than charging coaches to attend a Saturday clinic or asking them to volunteer more of their time to attend the clinic, paid the coaches to attend or gave the coaches free gear or products to assist with their coaching? Would more coaches be interested in coaching clinics if they were paid to attend or given gifts for attending? Rather than creating another impediment in finding coaches, use the clinics as a reward for volunteering. Change the narrative.

Eventually, when we see some of these changes implemented with recreation leagues, YMCAs, middle school leagues, AAU, NJB, BCI, etc., we will create the environment where the neuromuscular training programs which have been shown to be effective in reducing the incident rate of ACL injuries can have an effect. Before we shift the philosophy or mentality of the coaches and establish long term development and coach preparedness as the expectation not the exception, these neuromuscular training programs will remain sporadic and the injury rate will remain the same.

YBCA tentatively has scheduled a clinic on October 11 at the University of Utah. More information to follow.

 By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Here are some of the responses:

• A good coach needs to understand the needs of his players, and to use individual strengths in different ways to get the job done. A good coach will make goals with the players that are specific, not just “I want to win”. He will condition them in many different ways, so they’ll be ready for anything. And he will understand the game more than when he simply played it.
• I have met many people like this, where they were pretty good players when they were younger or continued playing but didn’t make it to college ball or the pros and just took up coaching. They think they know everything but there is so much more to coaching then just knowing how to play. A coach should be someone with knowledge, of course, but knowledge of how to teach, instruct, demonstrate, be clear, know how to work with individuals and groups, and so much more. Yelling and screaming may work at certain places but for the most part, yelling doesn’t work like most people would think. Running only made people more frustrating.
• A coach should be someone who takes the players on his/her team and teaches them, not only about how to become a better player, but how to be better off the court. This involves academics, character, and basically any other issues in their lives that they may need help with. Knowing plays and understanding the game thoroughly is a huge part of being a coach. That said, if you do not have good relationships with your players and staff, you will have poor team chemistry and success will be much harder to achieve.
• Yelling, “thats what coaches do.” I love it! This is typical of many coaches who believe they can coach because they played the sport. They do not know how to coach, but are certain they know how. I’m sure we all have had a coach like this. Little is communicated from the coach to the player because of the misinterpretation of the yelling and or “punishment” of running.
• It’s funny because as you watch it you are thinking to yourself that a person would have to be crazy to believe that the things this character says is terrible, but then realize that there are actually coaches who have this mind set.
• The video is classic depiction of some of the coaches i’ve had throughout my sports career. I had a football coach in high school that was exactly this way. He knew the game quite well but did not know how to coach (teach) it to the players.
• Many coaches think that the best way to motivate players is to yell at them. My football coaches liked to yell a lot. It really upset a lot of my teammates. Many of them stopped playing up to their full potential because they didn’t like how they were treated. I think that a good coach motivates their team by building confidence.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Here are the slides for the presentation:

1. Protect your People
2. Throw out Bad Apples
3. Mind the Spotlight
4. Get out of the Way
5. Fight Fair

Protect your People

Sutton writes that the best bosses evoke a feeling of “my boss has my back.” Unfortunately, many coaches do not evoke that same feeling in their players. Players perform better when trusted, but when the coach yanks a player out of the game for a mistake or calls out a player in the media, they lose the trust factor. I have picked up technical fouls intentionally just to show a player that I had his back so he could concentrate on performance and know that I would fight for him with officials.

Throw out Bad Apples

Sutton describes a study that characterizes three types of destructive personalities:

1. Jerks: violate norms of respect
2. Deadbeats: slack off
3. Downers: pessimistic

The study found that teams with just one of these types suffered a performance loss of 30 to 40 percent. This is the old adage – “Addition by subtraction.” Cutting a more talented player who is a “bad apple” often leads to a better team. The first goal should be to meet with a player and attempt to correct the behavior, but if the behavior persists, often eliminating the player is a better strategy than spending so much time managing the problems that the player creates.

Mind the Spotlight

Sutton says that being in a position of leadership “is the most reliable way to become oblivious and emotionally insensitive.” Many coaches create distance from their players as a means of showing their authority. However, the ability to relate to players and gain their trust is an important quality of a coach. Too many coaches forget what it’s like to learn new things during a socially awkward period of their lives in a high stress (high school) environment.

Get out of the Way

Sutton quotes former 3M vice president William Coyne who said:

“After you plant a seed, you don’t dig it up every week to see how it’s doing.”

Players, like plants, need the right environment to grow. When you plant a seed, you do not water the seed constantly or flood the garden with water. Similarly, players need an appropriate amount of feedback, but not too much. At some point, there is diminishing returns. The right environment requires a careful mix of feedback and repetitions. Players need space to try things on their own, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. If the coach is there to correct every mistake, the player’s growth stagnates.

Fight Fair

This often pertains to relationship with assistant coaches more so than players. Coaches must be willing to discuss and debate with their staff. when a consensus is reached, one coach cannot hold a grudge against another. The discussion should not be personal.

I coached with a guy who often ended arguments by threatening physical violence if I disagreed with his opinions. Needless to say, I quit the day after the last game. I know other coaches who give their assistants the silent treatment if the assistant suggested something that worked. These issues illustrate a coach’s immaturity, but also undermine the staff’s ability. Rather than working together, coaches work on their own agenda, regardless of what is best for the team.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

]]> http://learntocoachbasketball.com/good-coaches-bad-coaches/feed 0 http://learntocoachbasketball.com/coaching-by-the-book http://learntocoachbasketball.com/coaching-by-the-book#comments Mon, 28 Feb 2011 08:02:41 +0000 Brian McCormick http://learntocoachbasketball.com/?p=1189 The March 2011 Wired features an article title “Mad Science” about former Microsoft CTO and current cookbook author Nathan Myhrvold. In the article Myhrvold says:

“If all you want to do is follow recipes, you don’t need insights…if you want to do new things, you have to understand what the hell you’re doing.”

Many coaches are happy to follow others – they do what their coaches did or what they did as a player. They do not have to understand. They do not need insight.

I wrote about traditions vs. truths last week. When a coach justifies his teaching concepts by copying a more well-known coach, he is following recipes. Many coaches follow recipes, especially novice or inexperienced coaches.

However, to do something new or to improve your coaching, you have to understand. Often, the understanding required has nothing to do with basketball, yet it has everything to do with basketball.

Myhrvold uses physics to explain cooking. Basketball coaching depends on a number of different fields from psychology to biomechanics to motor learning. If one wants to improve his coaching beyond following other’s recipes, he needs to expand his understanding of these other related subjects.

If you understand movement, physics and biomechanics, you look at defensive movement with a different perspective than when you follow a recipe for teaching defensive movement.

For a beginning coach, following recipes is a good place to start. However, as one progresses as a coach, understanding the basic concepts underlying basketball performance enhance one’s insight into the game and the teaching of the game.

By Brian McCormick
Brian McCormick Basketball
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League

Simply looking at the self-evaluation form reminded me of several things that I like about other coaches that I often forget to do myself:

I follow an agenda (posted on blackboard, handouts, projector).

U.C. Irvine Men’s Volleyball Head Coach John Speraw uses this idea brilliantly. He writes the practice plan on a white board and starts practice by reviewing the plan with the team. He has teams chosen, groups assigned, drills organized, etc. Players know what to expect. They mentally prepare for practice.

I am a poor planner. This is both a weakness and a strength. My strength is my ability to think on my feet and remain flexible to use situations as teaching points. I prefer to see players perform and then move to new activities based on the performance and/or the needs. However, I really like the idea of writing the plan on a whiteboard for the team to see.

Clearly state day’s objectives to students.

I do this occasionally, but I am not consistent enough. I like the idea of gathering the players before practice to go over the day’s objective. Often, especially with new or younger players, there are so many things involved in each drill or scrimmage. My stating the objectives, the players can concentrate more specifically on those goals. Your objective might be effort, but the players are taking their time trying to get every repetition correct. The players and the coach have different objectives, and often these differing objectives cause conflict. However, without stating the objective, how does a player know that in this drill, you are concentrating on effort and not execution?

Regularly define new terms, concepts and principles.

Often, coaches assume too much. We assume players understand the traveling rule, even though college coaches and officials constantly illustrate a misunderstanding of the nuances of the rule. Therefore, to show a move and gloss over the traveling rule does a disservice to the players. When introducing new material, we need to explain terms to players. Part of developing as a basketball player is learning the terminology. This may not be important with 8-year-olds, but as players progress, they need to understand the definitions of terms and the correct terminology. If I demonstrate a flare screen for a drill, I need to explain a flare screen. What makes it a flare screen? Is it something that I do? Is it the direction of the cut? Is it the location of the screen? How is the flare screen different than a down screen or a cross screen? If we define terms, players and coaches will have an easier time understanding each other.

Use many concrete examples to explain concepts.

Some players learn verbally, while some learn visually or kinesthetically. As a coach, we cannot assume that all players understand the instructions just because we said them aloud. We need to use specific examples, and these examples need to be accurate to the task. If you are demonstrating a shooting drill, and you want a 1-2-step, do not demonstrate a jump stop when doing the drill. While our performance of the skill may be irrelevant to the execution of the drill, some may focus more on your execution than the drill. They may think your demonstration was to show the correct skill execution, not the correct drill execution. Always be specific with your demonstrations.

These are just a few of the statements on the self-evaluation form, and some things to think about when planning practice. Also, the idea of videotaping an watching your practices is a good practice, as you learn about things that you do or do not do that can inform your coaching and help you improve.

By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League