Join me & SAVI coaching for a month long cohort.

I am excited to joining with Tyler Coston, and Mark Cascio of SAVI coaching for a month long cohort on infusing mental performance skills in your coaching.

Topics include:

• Utilizing the 4 E's framework to effectively teach Mental Performance Skills to your Athletes
• Understanding the power of Self-talk
• Building Routines for Peak Performance
• Helping athletes handle the ups and downs of competition

The cohort includes all the teaching materials and handouts you'll need to teach these skills to your teams

It also includes a month of access to the full catalog of the SAVI system. Some of my favourite parts include:

• The Lock Left Defense
• The Race and Space Offense
• A community of like minded coaches

Tyler Coston is a master teacher and a great communicator. He does a wonderful job creating sticky language to help explain and label concepts. I enjoying being part of the SAVI community

All for $147.00

Click here to Sign up for the Cohort

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Communication:

A Great Coaches Superpower- Part 3 of 3

Part one of this series focused on how coaches can benefit by becoming a better communicator. It explored the importance of clear communication as well as techniques to help athletes feel validated.

You can read it here:

Read issue #93 here.

Part two explored the skill of listening and the obstacles that impact our ability to listen. It also includes techniques to help coaches improve their listening skills.

You can read it here:

Read Issue #94 here.

The first two parts of this series were focused on the aspects of communication which are crucial for building and maintaining great relationships with your athletes. Part three of this series explores how coaches can improve their teaching.

For me personally, great teams are built on relationships. I consistently see coaches with unreal tactical and technical knowledge struggle to connect with their players and their teams struggle as a result.

Coaching is teaching, and all coaches need to be effective teachers.

Coaching and teaching require two types of specific communication; instruction and feedback.

There is not a teacher or coach alive who can't become a more effective teacher

Just writing about it has been a great reminder for me on the areas I need to work on (being more concise).

Subscribe to the Competitive Advantage

Instruction

There is no question that focus has been under attack at an unprecedented level.

This means they have less time to communicate what their athletes need to know.

Coaches will need to become more efficient communicators and avoid long monologues. Practice is not story time and the less time coaches spend talking the more time athletes they are working to get better.

There are a few reminders for coaches to develop this important skill:

1.) Use Sticky Language

Developing common terminology that is tied to your team's game model allows coaches to say more with fewer words.

This can be simple things like a name for a defensive coverage or a set. It can also be aspects of culture or any other aspect of the game model. They key is to ensure that all team members know what the sticky language represents witht clear understanding confusion will reign supreme.

2.) Be Concise and Precise

Make sure that you have planned out what you want to teach and what are the main teaching points that athletes need to know.

If they don't know what the main teaching points it is unlikely they will be able to execute it when required in the heat of competition.

Anything that distracts athletes from the focal point distracts them and will impact their learning.

3.) Only one Focal Point

The most common mistake made by coaches and teachers is overwhelming the cognitive load of learners.

Most people struggle to learn more than one thing at a time. Humans can only focus on one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth. It is switching attentional focus from one thing to another and the more we switch the less we retain.

** This is only partly a reminder to my daughter who is studying for her nursing certification and swears she can study and watch movies at the same time (and read the subtitles).**

When an athletes working memory gets overloaded they will shut down and their focus will drift to other things. The challenge is that every athlete has a different cognitive threshold and it is impacted by a multitude of factors including how rested they are and how much energy they have.

Their skill level and knowldge will also impact how much they can process. An NBA player and a novice player have very a different working knowledge on their sport.

This presents real challenges for coaches.

The best way to engage learners is to focus on one concept at a time.

4.) Review & Recall

Athletes need opportunities for review and recall.

No one learns and masters a skill in one practice session. Everyone needs to recall and review what they have learned in previous practices. This goes for both concepts and skills.

When athletes learn new skills and concepts it creates new neural pathways in their brains. Those pathways get insulated with more repetitions and recall, which speeds up decision making and accuracy of the decisions.

Without opportunities to recall and review those neural pathways degrade and disappear.

5.) Checking for Understanding

As John Wooden loved to remark there is a big difference between "I taught them" & "They have learned".

Great coaches effectively check to see if their athletes have learned what they want them to learn. Coaches need to ask themselves what does it look like when the athletes have learned. They need to know specifically what to look for. They also need to use data and observations to inform their decisions.

For instance, a team giving up too many points per possession against the spread pick & roll demonstrates that they need to continue to work on coverage.

Questions are vital to check for understanding. Do not use vague, & general questions. Instead, ask specific questions which show understanding. A question I have really tried to use more is "what are you seeing"? It helps me understand what they are perceiving in that moment. Here are some other ways to improve your ability to check for understanding:

• Stay emotionally constant- It's important to avoid becoming angry when checking for understanding, (even though it can be frustrating when they don't get it). When coaches get angry in these situations it tells athletes it isn't safe to get the answers wrong, so they will not take risks.
• ABC Question framework- Agree, Build, or challenge. This is a great way to get teammates to explore topics more deeply.
• Know what the common errors are- When teaching something new, what are the common errors? Know what mistakes athletes make that show they don't have clear understanding yet.
• Frame mistakes in training as a positive- We refer to practice as the Sandbox. It's ok to make mistakes in the sandbox. Letting athletes know that mistakes are ok in training and prevent mistakes in competition helps them play freely, experiment and ask questions.

Feedback

Coaches all give feedback but is it effective?

Does it inform on performance or diagnose what needs fixing? Or is it a stream of generic feedback like "good job" or "nice work"?

Providing feedback that helps athletes understand what they are specifically doing well, or need to improve on is imperative. Athletes tune out generic feedback because it is not improving their performance.

Here are a few tips to help provide more effective & specific feedback:

• Make one point at a time - Feedback on more than one thing at a time overloads the working memory of athletes. Stick to one thing and allow the athlete to process your feedback . Flooding their working memory with too much information overwhelm theirs focus.
• Judge the action not the player- "You never sprint in transition" versus "you must sprint hard every possession". Avoid broad judgements about the player and instead be specific about what needs to be corrected.
• Don't host story time- Athletes know when they have made an error. They don't need their coach to revisit every aspect. Help them find a better solution and move on.
• Provide specific actionable advice- Help the understand what needs to be done and help them see the steps needed to accomplish it.

Effective feedback in competition requires an even more nuanced approach.

During games, adrenaline is much higher, there are far more distractions and the desire to win adds a dimension to learning that no classroom teacher has to deal with.

In competition, it is important that feedback uses the vocabulary of your team.

Introducing new words and concepts in a stressful environment will lead athletes to question their actions. When athletes receive constructive, & specific feedback from their coach and see a bump in performance it leads them to trust their coach.

It also increases their motivation and self-confidence.

Overloading an already busy mind in competition can significantly derail performance.

The Best Book I Have Ever Read on Coaching

The Coaches Guide to Teaching- Doug Lemov

If you are serious about coaching this needs to be on your bookshelf. I have read 100's of coaching books and this one had far and away the most impact on me as a teacher and coach. Lemov explores four areas where coaches can improve their craft:

1.) Training Decsion Making

2.) Effective Feedback

3.) Assessing for learning

4.) Building Culture

It's a book I revisit often.

Buy the book here

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Can I help you on your coaching journey?

Let's work together.

I would love to help you or your team build a competitive advantage. Here are a few ways I can help:

• Consult with your team
• Teach mental skills via Zoom
• Work 1 on 1 with coaches
• Work 1 on 1 with athletes

Shoot me an email I love to talk coaching and see how I can help you. Coaching is hard, let's make it easier. Send me an email at jasonpayne@evolutionmpc.com

Thanks for reading and have a great week.