Making it Fun Part 4 - 4 Additional Ideas to build Positive Energy into your practices

Published: Fri, 02/03/17

Lead with optimism, enthusiasm and positive energy, guard against pessimism and weed out negativity. - Jon Gordon

This has been a great series for me to remember the importance of having kids love the sport they play. Sure there will be times where the kids need to learn the value of grinding out tough workouts, but there is no reason we can't bring the energy levels up in our practices by incorporating fun competitive elements into most of what we do.

This week we will wrap up the series with 4 additional ideas for building positive energy into your practices:

Freeplay

This past summer my friend John, who coaches lacrosse, had parents drop off their kids from 4 to 6 every Saturday and had pick-up games. Their was 2 or 3 coaches there to make sure everyone stayed safe, but other than that the coaches stayed out of the way and let the kids figure out teams, resolve arguments, pretty much do everything themselves. This is great not only for developing their skills, but it also teaches them conflict resolution and many other great life skills.

Positive Conditioning - The winners get to run!

During competitions within your practice, instead of punishing the losers by making them do some type of conditioning, you tell the winners they have earned the right to get stronger while the losers watch. You have to put all your attention/effort into recognizing the kids who are earning the right to run.

Small area games like Futsal

Kids that play futsal touch the ball 12x vs. traditional soccer. Simulate these type of small area games with lots of touches for each kid by breaking into small teams and play within a small confined space.

Involving the parents

Tell your parents: ‘Come ready and dressed to participate at practice’ – They can help you coach, but also kids love competing against the adults, so have competitions and scrimmages against their parents or with the parents mixed into the teams.

Next week we'll be launching a new series (See details below), and for the next 8 weeks we'll be switching things up a bit and will send out our weekly coaching notes on Monday mornings instead of Fridays.

My Culture Journey

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

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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 125,000 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