This list has made me reflect on my coaching style and try to be a better coach the next time I step onto the coaching field.
Hopefully, it will do the same job for you!
- The coach boring the group with long-winded speeches.
- The coach complicating the exercise by offering too much information and by elaborating on the chosen theme by involving too many phases of play.
- Skills practices becoming endurance work.
- Forgetting to agree ground rules with the players.
- Not planning a coaching session in advance.
- Sticking too rigidly to a session plan!
- The coach following the ball around instead of observing from a detached position.
- The coach acting as ball-boy.
- The coach failing to demonstrate.
- Ball-boys taking part in the exercise.
- Poor organization of the footballs.
- Not having a football per player at training sessions.
- The coach offering instructions while running.
- Criticizing a child (rather than the behaviour).
- Not discussing or involving parents/carers.
- Lack of awareness of space required for a particular exercise – forgetting that lines and bodies limit the area.
- The coach failing to communicate the purpose of the exercise to each player.
- The coach speaking in generalizations.
- Failing to consider the health and safety of the players.
- The coach offering a running commentary.
- Spectators and additional players encroaching on the field.
- The coach trying to demonstrate something which he cannot do (Steve: I do this a lot!!)
- Using drills that involve children standing in lines for more than a few seconds.
- The coach failing to spot flaws in the practice and subsequently neglecting to make appropriate corrections.
Forgetting that the teaching process involves:
a. communicating the instructions;
b. organizing the practice;
c. offering the key teaching points.