It's no coincidence that the most organized coaches are also the most successful with their youth and high school sports teams. Below, you'll find specific strategies for Seasonal, Monthly, Weekly, and Daily practice planning that will help you stay organized and goal-focused throughout the year.
Implementing just a few of these tips will reduce your practice planning stress, give you loads of credibility, and dramatically improve the flow of your practices and the performance of your athletes.
Season Plans
Begin by dividing your year into 4 coaching phases: Off-Season, Pre-Season, Early Season, and Peak Season. Next develop a high-level "at a glance" view of what you want to accomplish during each one of those periods.
Make sure you consider:
Technical, Tactical, Physical Training Skills: What general skills are you wanting your athletes to focus on during different portions of the year? For example, you might want to improve your team's free throw shooting, or work on swimming flip turns, or practice penalty shots, etc.
Team Goals: Is your team looking to develop speed in the off-season? Are you fine-tuning your routines prior to a big cheerleading competition? Are you learning a new offense before the season begins?
Fundraising Goals: How much cash does the team need to raise to cover the costs of the season. When does that money to be raised by? What types of fundraising events
Coaching Emphasis: Are you focused on recruiting during the off-season? Are you focused on improving your coaching knowledge by attending conferences and clinics during pre-season?
Tournaments, Seminars, Clinics: Make note of any upcoming events you or your team will be participating in. Is there an out-of-state tournament that you would like your team to participate in? Is there a coaching clinic about a topic you're interested in?
Workout Schedule: Is your team practicing 6 days a week during the early season? Do you expect your athletes to train 3 days a week during the off-season when there aren't regularly schedules practices?
Monthly Plans
Once your season plan is in place, consider creating a month by month planner on the office bulletin board to serve as a useful reminder about the year's objectives, goals, and events. This is the time to get a little more specific about the objectives you and your team would like to accomplish, and the exact timing for individual events.
For example, what's the date and location for the first tryout? Are you planning a car wash on March 15th that will raise $500 to pay for your summer tournament? When does the first round of the playoffs begin?
Weekly Plans
At the beginning of each week, it's wise to take 10 minutes to plan out a rough outline of your practices. What time does practice start and end? What gym will it be held in? Will players arrange their own transportation to the field, or will a school bus be provided?
You'll also want to consider some more specific practice and team objectives you'd like to accomplish. Are you preparing to face a particular opponent? Are you working on developing speed or strength? Are you trying to improve your team's communication skills?
Do you have a meeting with a parent or administrator? Do you need to check in with a particular teacher about an athletes performance in the classroom, etc? These are all items appropriate for your weekly plan.
Daily Plans
This is the nitty gritty portion of your practice planning sequence. You'll want to make note of the EXACT activities and drills you want to perform, how long to do them for, and what order to do them in. It's best to get all of this down in an easy-to-read template that you can keep on your clipboard and refer to throughout practice.
Before each practice, sit down and outline your top three primary goals for the day. Do you want to master a play that you will run in an upcoming game, do you want to work on building speed or strength, do you want to help your athletes improve a technical skill critical to your sport?
Next, make note of any equipment that might be required for the day's practice. Do you need pylons, jump ropes, extra balls, etc?
When you're ready to plan your drills and activities, start with the team warm-up. Structure your warm-up into 3 phases: Aerobic Warm-up, Stretching, and Technical Skills Warm-Up. Many coaches find that three 5-minute phases work well. During the aerobic warm-up you may decide to have you athletes complete a light jog, jumprope, or perform some other kind of gentle aerobic activity to increase their heart rate and warm up their body.
Once your athletes are sufficiently warm, you can transition into the stretching phase of your warm-up. Focus on stretching the muscles that are used most often in your sport.
We recommend completing your warm-up with a technical skills tune-up where athletes practice specific athletic skills required by their sport (i.e.- basketball free-throw shooting, volleyball serves, etc).
Now you can move onto the "core" of your practice, first list the skills you would like to work on with your team (place this in the first column under "skills to improve"). Next, assign a drill to each skill that specifically targets the area you are seeking to improve.
Finally, note any coaching points you'd like to remember during the practice (i.e. keep head up, make sure players bend their knees, make sure Andy keeps his elbow back, etc.)
Complete your practice with a cool down that lasts at least 10 minutes. Slowly bring your athletes' heart rates down with gentle aerobic activity (do not abruptly stop practice or aerobic activity as this may cause injury). Once your athletes are breathing normally, lead your team in a thorough stretching session.
Make sure you allow athletes water breaks every 15 minutes to ensure they remain hydrated throughout your practice. It's best to schedule these into your planner so that you don't forget.
After practice, make notes on how the day went at the bottom of the practice planner. Are there any areas you'd like to focus on for the next practice? Did a particular drill work well (or not work well)?
Follow this simple formula and your practices will run much smoother, you'll get more accomplished in each practice and you'll see an exponential increase in your athlete's performance!
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