As I prepare this weeks Expert Advantage Recommended Reads from my base in Toronto, Canada, the Coaches Association of Ontario is celebrating Ontario Coaches Week. Ontario Coaches Week is “a week long campaign that aims to recruit, develop and celebrate community coaches around the province”.
For my contribution to Ontario Coaches Week, I thought I would devote a Recommended Reads list entirely to coach education. I realise that many of our Recommended Reads are useful for coach development, but this week all five articles are targeted towards helping coaches enhance your own performance in order to enhance the performance of your athletes.
Do your bit for Ontario Coaches Week and share these links with all the hard working coaches you know!
1. First up, a short and sweet message from Coach Vern Gambetta (@coachgambetta) on teaching athletes ‘what to do’ not ‘how to do it’. Click here to read the article on Coach Gambetta’s blog Functional Path Training.
2. Here is an interesting report from the Ohio Youth Soccer Association North quantifying how much time soccer players spend in possession of the ball during matches compared to games. To wet your appetite, here is a great quote from the report: “attending well planned training sessions for six months can produce the same number of ball possessions as six years of playing 100 games per season”. Click here to read the full report. Thanks to Pavl Williams (@CoachManualPav) for directing me to this report.
3. Ever had multiple players on your team wanting to play the same position? Baseball coach Dan Clemens (@coachclemens) provides tips for how to deal with situation on his great blog. The blog is baseball specific, but the messages can be applied to a variety of youth sports. Click here to read “Players Learning Several Positions Solves Many Coaching Dilemmas” on Coach Clemens blog.
4. Want to help your athletes learn faster? Try raising the stakes. Author of the Talent Code Daniel Coyle (@DanielCoyle) shares an idea that can be adapted to any environment to challenge learners and maximise practice time. Click here to view “To learn faster, raise the stakes”.
5. Last but not least, here is a blog post from Stuart Armstrong (@stu_arm), Development Lead Officer for Talent at Sports Coach UK. In this post Stuart recounts a recent Sports Coach UK ‘Talent Coaches Breakfast Club’ (doesn’t that sound awesome!) in which England Women’s Cricket Coach Mark Lane shared some of his experiences throughout his journey to becoming a World Class coach, as well as some of his current coaching practices. Click here to read the article on Stuart’s blog Developing Sporting Talent.
Happy reading!
The Expert Advantage 