Just a short time ago, high school strength and conditioning coach was not a job. Now, across the US, more schools are hiring strength coaches. What makes a good program and how can coaches make the biggest impact at the youth level? On this week’s episode NHSSCA co-founder Gary Schofield joins us to look at these topics and more.
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Words create images and images create action. This is an axiom that I learned over 50 years ago. It has stood the test of time.
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Coaching is about meeting the needs of your athletes, and micro adjustments to meet special needs of individual athletes can make all the difference. What is described as the art of coaching is often just how we make decisions to individualize or not individualize a program. On this week’s episode Dan Noble and James Gardiner from GRIT Athletics Toronto explain some of the factors that go into their decision making, along with examples of individualization in practice.
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The expression ‘there is no I in team’ is often used in team sports to suggest that no individual’s needs, abilities or ideas should take precedence over the combined skills and efforts of the entire group. From a team culture perspective, I would tend to agree with this saying. However, the core principle of individualization also suggests that coaching and training should be based on the athlete’s actual state of training, experience, athletic potential, and characteristics. Research has clearly shown standardized training program will produce a wide range of adaptive responses, with the same training producing large, small or negative responses among different athletes. How is a coach to deal with these seemingly contradictory points?
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What skills does a good coach need to have? Is there a universal measure to help us find these? Do we even care?
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Anatoliy Bondarchuk’s success record as a coach can match any coach from any sport. The former hammer throw world record holder and Olympic champion has coached dozens of Olympic medalists over five decades. What is the key to his success? On this week’s podcast six of his former athletes get back together to discuss their first impressions of the coach, what made him so successful, and the role of language in coaching.
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The site theme in December was communication in coaching. Throughout the month we put together 5 new articles, 2 new videos, and a new podcast from 8 contributors with ideas on how to improve communication with athletes. You’ll find all the links below, as well as highlights from our archive on the topic.
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Wade Gilbert is the coach of coaches. He has dedicated his career to studying coaching and his book Getting Better Every Season is a must read for coaches of all levels. This month on HMMR Media we are looking at communication in coaching, so it is only appropriate that we end with a few insights from Gilbert.
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If you are like me, you spend more time each day with your athlete than your spouse. As they say, good communication is the bedrock of any successful marriage. Why is it then that in coaching, where we spend even more time with our athletes, communication is always an afterthought? We prioritize biomechanics and physiology and even psychology before we begin to focus on communication. Most coaching courses do not even spend one minute on the topic.
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Communication is critical to coaching. You might be the smartest coach in the world, but if you can’t convey your message to the athlete, you aren’t going to get very far.
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