A good video form Ontario on becoming a coach, reasons for certification and a coach’s purpose: Read the rest of this entry »
Becoming a Coach
April 8th, 2011Good Coaches, Bad Coaches
March 2nd, 2011The February 2011 Spirit magazine features an article by Bob Sutton, author of Good Boss, Bad Boss who highlights five ways to be a good boss. While coaching is and is not like being a boss, the five concepts offer good advice to coaches:
- Protect your People
- Throw out Bad Apples
- Mind the Spotlight
- Get out of the Way
- Fight Fair Read the rest of this entry »
Coaching by the Book
February 28th, 2011The 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.” Read the rest of this entry »
Assessing your Coaching
February 1st, 2011Last week, I videotaped a lecture that I gave to my Intermediate Weightlifting class to use for an assignment for an Education class on college teaching. I had to watch my teaching, use a self-evaluation form and write about the experience.
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: Read the rest of this entry »
Jiujitsu and Specificity of Language
January 26th, 2011Note: This article originally appeared in Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 5.2.
I took an introductory jiujitsu class this week. Jiujitsu is unlike anything that I have done previously. However, the initial learning curve was made steeper because of unspecific language. Several times, my more experienced partner or the instructor said “put this leg there” or “that arm there.” As a novice trying to imitate an expert’s one or two demonstrations to get a position, the unspecific language made the learning more complex. Which leg is “that one,” my right or my left? When an athlete is confused, “that” or “this” does not simplify the action. When instructing, coaches should use language that is as accurate and specific as possible. Read the rest of this entry »
Kung Fu Panda Delivers “The Secret”
January 18th, 2011Note: This originally appeared in the Hard2Guard Player Development Newsletter 5.1. To read the entire newsletter, go here.
I watched Kung Fu Panda and could not help but think that it was an allegory about coaching today’s generation of children. The panda is chosen as the warrior even though he is fat and out of shape. He has to prove himself to his teacher before he can read the scroll that contains the hidden powers. When he finally reads the scroll, it is a mirror. At first, he is disappointed, as there is no way that he can defeat the more powerful enemy. He feels that it was a mistake that he was chosen. However, he realizes: The secret is that there is no secret. Read the rest of this entry »
Coaching the Individual Player in Team Sports
January 8th, 2011In You Haven’t Taught until They Have Learned, Swen Nater’s book about John Wooden’s coaching style, he emphasizes Wooden’s individual approach to each player. In The Fighter’s Mind, Sam Sheridan interviews wrestling great Dan Gable, and Gable emphasizes the same individualized approach. Sheridan interviews former All-American wrestler and current University of Iowa coach Tom Brands:
Measuring a Coach’s Game Performance
November 19th, 2010Game coaching is only a small part of the overall job of a coach. However, coaches are measured by results as most people only watch the games, not practices. The effort between games goes unnoticed because its is hidden from view.
One popular measure for a coach’s effectiveness during games is performance during close games, usually games decided by one possession (<3 points) or maybe games decided by five points or less.
Is this a fair measure of a coach? Would Butler’s Brad Stevens be a better coach if Gordon Hayward’s half-court heave found the bottom of the net in the NCAA National Championship Game?
In my research design class, we studied observable score and true score. Essentially, your observable score equals your true score plus the error score. From a coaching standpoint, the error score accounts for lucky shots, unlucky shots, bad calls, off-nights, etc.
In the Butler example, the observable score was a two-point loss. If a coach is measured by performance in one-possession games, Stevens would be 0-1. Is that fair? If Hayward’s shot would have fallen, would it be fair for Coach K to fall 0-1 based on a half-court heave?
It is hard to know how much error there is in a given game. Is it the coach’s fault when a 90% free throw shooter misses two free throws at the end of a loss? What about a missed call or a banked in three-pointer or a shot that rolls in and out? It’s easy to say that it’s a part of the game, and it is, but should a coach’s worth be determined, at least in part, by these situations when the margin of victory and defeat is so small?
When I coached a professional team, we lost several close games on the road with an under-manned team. Ultimately, I was fired. However, I felt being competitive on the road against more talented teams was a sign of good coaching, not bad coaching. We were in the game and one or two plays or one break away from stealing a win.
What if we considered the error score when evaluating a coach’s performance? Rather than decide a coach’s value based on games decided by three points or less, what if we set the error score at five and measured a coach’s record in games decided by more than five points?
Would a coach’s record in games decide by five points or more more accurately reflect a coach’s value than a coach’s record in close games?
By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
How to Improve Youth Basketball through Coaching
September 29th, 2010Everyone appears to have a solution to fix youth basketball and skill development. Some believe in the efficacy of a 24-hour second clock. As the thinking goes, players from Europe have better skills, and leagues in Europe use a 24-hour second clock, so therefore using a 24-hour second clock leads to better skills.
Others want to eliminate parents from coaching teams, as if there was a well of certified and interested volunteers willing to take the parents’ places.
In my opinion, the easiest and most painless change that would have the greatest impact is to expect more from the administrators who organize leagues and hire coaches.
At the higher levels, college athletic directors hire coaches and hope for the best. If the coach flounders, the athletic directors fires the coach, eats the salary and hires a new coach at a higher salary. One college cut several varsity sports while at the same time paying two women’s basketball coaches (a non-revenue sport). How can an athletic director justify cutting a varsity sport because it costs too much, while paying a former coach not to coach because the athletic director made a poor hire?
These days, athletic directors are businesspeople who work their way through the athletic administration bureaucracy. Many work their way through marketing and prove their worth through their fundraising efforts and networking. While fundraising is important, is that the primary mission of a college athletic program?
Where are the expert coaches to mentor and nurture new coaches? Imagine if a college athletic department had an expert coach position to mentor the athletic department’s hires? Would we have better coaches? Would coaches have a better opportunity to succeed if they had a mentor on campus to lean on for advice?
At the youth levels, in a typical recreation program, the league coordinator hires or recruits volunteer coaches and assigns these coaches to the teams. The league may run a coaching certification program, but it typically is a safety program to ensure that there is no child abuse, and to teach basic injury procedures. Once the league starts, the league administrator tracks winners and losers, schedules games, assigns referees, works the clock, etc.
However, the league administrator generally does not ensure the effectiveness of the league’s coaches. Why should leagues view administrators simply as office personnel? Why not require these leagues to hire administrators with extensive coaching experience who can assist teams and coaches?
In a local Asian league, the league director does not coach a team. However, he is in the gym whenever a team practices. He ensures that each coach writes out a practice plan before practice. A practice plan does not ensure a great coach, but it does provide a certain measure of quality control, as the coach must think about the upcoming practice and organize his thoughts and goals. The pre-practice organization often creates better in-practice organization.
The league director mentors all the league coaches. He offers suggestions and advice. Coaches can approach him if they have an issue or if they need a drill to teach a specific skill or if they are unsure of the proper teaching points for a skill.
In this way, the league director insures a certain measure of quality for the coaches at each practice and game, and his mentorship assists with the coach’s development, meaning that the coach likely improves during the season to become a better coach the following season.
While most coaches improve from season to season, especially novice coaches, due to experience, having the additional guidance of an expert r experienced coach enhances the development and adds to the experience. We don’t ask our players to develop without a coach or our students to learn material strictly through trial-and-error without a teacher; why ask coaches to learn simply through trial-and-error without a mentor present to guide the coach’s development?
Every league has a league director or administrator. Why not encourage leagues to use this position as a mentor for coaches rather than just a scheduler of games? While this will not solve every problem, assisting new coaches and mentoring these coaches so they become experienced coaches who remain with the league will elevate the level of instruction.
Changing the philosophy or role of one league director impacts 20-30 coaches who each impacts 8-10 players, which means improving the league for 160-300 players through one relatively simple change.
A 24-hour second clock does not improve instruction at practice and it does not eliminate the Peak by Friday mentality. Eliminating parent-coaches would leave a shortage of coaches and eliminate many of the best coaches who happen to also coach their sons or daughters. While there are many subtle changes that can improve a league, club or team, using the league director as a mentor to control and elevate the quality of instruction and create some consistency among coaches is one painless opportunity for leagues to improve and offer a better product to coaches, players and parents.
By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
The Intellectual and Moral Virtue of Coaching Basketball
August 10th, 2010Last week, I saw Shop Class as Soulcraft recommended for incoming college students. As I prepare to re-enter academia, I picked up a copy. Author, philosopher and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford includes an extended excerpt from Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
The excerpt starts with Pirsig taking his motorcycle to a shop. He sets the scene and says that the mechanic barely listens to the piston slap before diagnosing a problem. When Pirsig returns to pick up his motorcycle, now he hears a bigger problem. He points out the problem to the mechanic who manages to create a bigger problem. When he eventually gets on to the road, “the shop had neglected to bolt the engine back into frame; it was hanging on by a single bolt.”
Pirsig writes:
I found the cause of the seizures a few weeks later, waiting to happen again. It was a little twenty-five-cent pin in the internal oil delivery system that had been sheared…
Why did they butcher it so?…They sat down to do a job and they performed it like chimpanzees. Nothing personal in it.
…But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easy-going – and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job. No saying, ‘I am a mechanic.’
In reflecting upon Pirsig’s tale, Crwaford points out that the problem (the sheared-off pin) was the same for any mechanic.
But finding this truth requires a certain disposition in the individual: attentiveness, enlivened by a sense of responsibility to the motorcycle. He has to internalize the well working of the motorcycle as an object of passionate concern. The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.
A coach is, in a sense, a craftsmen. Unfortunately, many coaches and trainers are like Pirsig’s mechanic: idle spectators. They are inattentive. I watched one trainer this summer run a workout and commented to him that he could record his instructions and feedback and simply hit play before each drill or workout because his feedback was impersonal and unspecific.
He touched on simple generalizations: faster, harder, lower, etc. It’s not that his comments were incorrect; most players need to work faster, harder and in a better body position. However, his feedback was ineffectual: it became like white noise in the background of the workout as it lacked meaning to any individual.
Before a coach or trainer can reach a player, he has to understand the player. He has to pay attention. There are some vague generalities that any coach or trainer can utter to sound knowledgeable: bend your knees, hold your follow-through, etc.
However, to impact the player, the feedback must be specific and meaningful. If a player bends his knees, and the trainer sees a shot missed short and instructs the player to bend his knees, is he identifying the problem or is he making an idle assumption based on the result, like Pirsig’s mechanic who barely listened to his motorcycle before reaching his (incorrect) conclusion?
Coaching is more than pontificating to illustrate one’s mastery of basketball terms and concepts. Coaching is a personal profession that depends heavily on one’s ability to analyze and assess an individual’s psyche as much as his biomechanics or sport-skill technique. Once one understands the player (or team), he must have the ability to communicate with the player in a way that impacts the player.
By Brian McCormick
Author, Cross Over: The New Model of Youth Basketball Development
Director of Coaching, Playmakers Basketball Development League
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