One of the biggest challenges of being a coach is convincing all of your athletes to stay committed on a daily basis. There is a fine line between demanding too much focus and not giving enough attention to detail in your practices, but that line can be walked seamlessly with good planning. Just as practice is preparation for players in games, preparing for practice is essential to a coach’s success.
The perfect practice plan is a subjective prospect, but keeping it simple is a good rule of thumb for all to follow. Building an organized plan for each lesson or team practice—based in the basics of your philosophy—will help to build a routine that players can rely on, while allowing you, the coach, to mix in the details that your athletes need to work on that day.
Organizing a physical practice plan can help coaches maintain athlete’s focus through lessons
Details of the practice plan are significant.
For instance, the warmup for practice can be fluid and ever-evolving, but assigning a time frame for it will help your athletes to understand both its importance and the focus you want to place on the rest of the day. If you have 90 minutes for a lesson or practice, and your athletes can see that you allocated a specific amount of time for stretching and getting loose, it will be clear to them that they must maximize that portion of practice, as it is essential to achieving the primary goal of the day.
As far as the prioritized part of the plan goes—the thing you would like to improve upon that day—breaking it down into timed segments will be a huge help as well. Again, with simplicity in mind, hitting different drills hard for an allotted time period will help to keep an emphasis on focus, without draining or boring athletes.
Focusing on your athlete’s most pressing needs for improvement through organizing a physical practice plan for them to see will help to keep your job simple as a coach, while clearly outlining your expectations on a daily basis.
