Making it Fun Part 1 - Hidden Conditioning & Icebreakers

Published: Fri, 01/13/17

'You can make more friends in 2 months by becoming interested in other people than you can in 2 years by trying to get other people interested in you' - Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People

Today we'll share 2 different types of ideas you can use in your practices:

1 - Icebreakers

2 - Hidden Conditioning

Icebreakers

Don't underestimate the value of starting your practice with some type of activity to switch your athletes' mindset from school, friends, homelife, etc. to being on this team. Here are some great ideas (thanks to Will Drumright and James Leath for sharing some of these):

Rock, paper, scissors, cheerleader - Everyone pairs off and plays best 2 out of 3. The winner moves on and finds another winner, the person who lost becomes cheerleader (or entourage if you want a more masculine word) for whoever beat them. Continue until down to 2 people. Make a big deal about who has the best entourage before the championship match. You can have coaches watching the entourages throughout the whole process and give award to the final 2 players and also the 2 best cheerleaders.
Clumps - Start by everyone running around then leader yells out a number and the players have to form clumps with that number of people.
1,2, 3 - Partner up. One person starts with 1 the other says 2, then the first says 3, and so on. (try to mess up your partner, different voice inflections, etc.) After a couple rounds change 3 to a clap. Finally, change 1 and 2 to Yee and Haw.
The Pigeon Game: You start telling a story, when the kids hear ‘Pigeon’- they race to the other side. You make it fun by trying to fake them out, i.e.: ‘there was a boy name PETER who really liked PICKLES…’

Hidden Conditioning Games

Starting or ending your practice with hidden conditioning games instead of wind sprints can improve the 'funness' of your practices immensely. Remember - it's a game and the #1 reason kids play sports is to have fun! Here a few great ideas:

Play your sport with a different ball. Way bigger or way smaller than the normal one.
Ultimate frisbee is a great game for conditioning for any outdoor sport
Dodgeball and tag are classics that kids always like. Instead of kids standing around after they are knocked out make them jog around the outside perimeter of your game.
Fox and hound – Hounds have the ball, foxes chase them, if fox tags you, you have to give them ball
Relay races
Four-corner tag – 4 players at a time - each kid starts in a corner and runs to the middle, then you yell out a corner number, and the kid from that corner has to tag the other 3 kids in 10 seconds. You see some great open-field juke moves with this.

I'm always interested in learning more of these types of games - if you have a good one reply to this email and I'll add it to the list, thanks!

Next week we'll dive into the meat of this series - where we'll look at 12 different games you can play while teaching skills simultaneously.

My Culture Journey

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

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.

Excited to be on this ride with you for an #Epic2017,
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 100 interviews and has been downloaded over 100,000 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