9 Tips to have Great Practices - Best Stolen Ideas

9 Tips to have Great Practices - Best Stolen Ideas - Part 3

Published: Fri, 10/14/16

"Practice is everything" - Pete Carroll

One of the favorite questions I ask every coach I interview is:

'What is the best thing you have ever learned or stolen from another coach?'

Here are 9 Tips coaches have shared with me on Having Great Practices

Use Mini-games - it’s all about the # of touches
Everything in short bursts – John Wooden would talk in 20 second bursts
Rick Pitino – ‘As I go through practice, I try to make corrections in 7 seconds or less.’ There needs to be a rhythm and pace to your practice. For youth- maybe this needs to be 20 seconds.
Learned from Dave Cisar: Conducting everything at a much faster pace. Teach against air and instead of running a play every 2 or 3 minutes, run 4 plays per minute
Design your practice in 4 quarters – and the energy level builds up throughout the practice
Kids will lose focus as the practice goes on – so when you need their full attention teaching them something – do it early in the practice
Passion and energy as a coach – including sensing when the team just needs a break or some fun – sometimes just play some loud music and have some fun
‘Short lines, lots of repetitions, learning fundamentals’ – In baseball - Instead of having one coach hitting to the infield – have two coaches hit to each side of the infield and players run to the next line
Bill Bellichick – Put 6 hours of preparation into a 1 hour practice

Be organized and have a great system! Next week we'll look at some great ways to build mental toughness.

To see the other posts in this series go to: winningyouthcoaching.com/blog/

My Culture Journey

5 weeks in on my journey to turn around the culture of a team I help coach, you can follow along here: The Culture Journey

Excited about my new venture!

You may have heard me mention running a paid mastermind of other youth sports entrepreneurs on the WYC podcast before. After 3 years of being in and leading paid masterminds, I keep getting approached on how to start one. So I'm taking this advice and starting an A to Z course on how you can start your own paid mastermind. Might not apply to all of you in this group, but check it out and I welcome any feedback. It is great if any of you are trying to build an online presence. Also - as a thank you for being a WYC follower - I'm offering an additional $100 off the already discounted beta course price in October if you are interested, just email me directly if you're interested at craig@entrepreneurlaunchzone.com before checking out and I'll get you the discounted code. Thanks!

Check out the new site

NEW WYC PODCASTS

WYC 094 – State Championship Basketball – Nate Sanderson talks Mistake Recovery & Mental Toughness

Nate Sanderson is the head girls basketball coach of Springville High School in Iowa. He has been coaching girls basketball for 15+ years and has turned around programs that were struggling and most recently was state runner-up in 2015 and state champions in 2016. He also is a speaker with Break Through Basketball.

Go to podcast episode

I love hearing your stories and experiences, both the positive ones and frustrations you're having - just reply to this email and it goes straight to my inbox.

Make winning the right way your habit starting today,
Craig

Craig Haworth is the founder of Winning Youth Coaching, a site dedicated to helping coaches and parents make youth sports an awesome experience for the youth and the parents. He interviews coaches from around the world and posts them on his podcast, which currently has over 90 interviews and has been downloaded over 95,000 times. He writes a weekly note to coaches and parents. He is married to his high-school sweetheart and they share the blessing of 3 children and live in Franklin, TN. You can sign-up for his weekly note here, find him on twitter at @craighaworth1, or visit his website winningyouthcoaching.com.

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men"

- Frederick Douglass