Coaching Articles

Coaching Styles
In a previous article, I discussed the need to look at the personality traits of your young athletes when considering a coaching style. I do not believe in a ‘one size fits all’ approach to coaching and work to make Trainers and Coaches understand that within every training session and team setting exists the need to conform and streamline your delivery style to fit the situation or athlete(s) - indeed, respect the ART of coaching.

Teaching Technique
Demonstrating good technique from a sporting perspective involves applying optimal movement ability in order to accomplish or solve a particular task effectively. A young athlete, for instance, who demonstrates sound technical ability while running is getting from point A to point B in an effective manner.

Creating Long Term Plans
An amazing thing happens when you create objectives and critical plans like this. You will start seeing results in your athletes and teams beyond what you ever-dreamed possible. Failing to plan is one of the biggest concerns facing this industry.

Global Development vs. Sport Specific Training
The goals of any trainer or coach working with a young athlete (pre-pubescent) should include increasing proficiency of motor ability, developing functional versatility (from a strength, movement and biomechanical standpoint) and lastly, inhibiting the potential negative effects of specialized training ... the mandate should be one of global, all-encompassing development rather than specialized ventures into a single sport.

Goal Confusion
You really could open an interesting debate with respect to teaching sporting skills to kids. Some trainers and coaches have decided that the skills required to achieve a certain task should be taught from the beginning. Others believe in the concept of motor patterning – allowing the young athlete to find their own style of achieving a task.
Where do you sit on this debate?

Goal Confusion, part 2 - Still Confused
My article on ‘Goal Confusion’ seemed to have sparked a great deal of debate and, well… confusion! So… let me try to explain the whole Goal Confusion concept again…
Coaches and Trainers must learn how and when to apply certain teaching techniques and when to let kids 'learn' things for themselves - and that is especially true when we design drills in which we tell our players that the success of a drill is based on the outcome rather than the form

My Rant...
A colleague of mine gave me the link to an article that was printed today in an online sports publication. The article started out discussing the tragic and unfortunate death of a young high school athlete who collapsed during a training session in his school’s weight room.
Reader Beware… I am hot and angry at the content of this article and am pulling no punches with my commentary.

Outside the Box
The Art of Coaching infers that it is not what you know as a coach that matters... It’s how you can relay it to young athletes. In that, I want to discuss today, a coaching strategy that I have used that truly enables young athletes to master a given technique.

Kids and Exercise Machines
Many studies done the world over have concluded that strength based training programs done on this kind of fitness equipment is very safe for young children (again under appropriate guidelines). My issue is not whether or not kids CAN perform this kind of training, my question is WHY they need to

The Importance of Play
A common misconception within the North American youth sporting world is the concept of 'play' for conditioning purposes. All too often, well intentioned youth sport coaches or trainers follow the leads established by the elite members of there respective sports and configure training programs and sessions into hard-droving or 'endless repetitions of one exercise' type affairs.

Did you Know?
In lieu of an article or interview, I thought that I would hit you guys with some great information and solid insight into the training & development of young athletes...