Coaching Young Athletes is More Than Talking
To be honest, it is very hard for a number of reasons. And, parents and coaches continue to fall short because they do not address these reasons, but bark at young athletes more and more.
First, at ten years old, many young athletes lack the proper movement pattern and leg strength to shoot a shot from distance and almost all ten year olds lack the upper body strength. In order to shoot from distance, they push the ball or twist their body to get it to the basket and build bad habits in the process. Rather than build bad habits, this child actually had pretty good mechanics, but his lack of strength enabled him to shoot from ten feet. His problem had very little to do with a lack of listening. His problem was an undeveloped movement pattern; he could not squat properly. Before starting our shooting lesson in the camp, I asked all the participants to squat; he could not. He bent his knees forward rather than sitting his butt back; from this position, he is off-balanced and not in a good athletic position to shoot the ball. The problem, then, is not bending his knees, as his father suggested, but how he bends his knees. The more he bends his knees, the more off-balanced he gets, and the harder it is for him to shoot the ball.
Second, the verbal instructions miss an important point: the child thinks he IS bending his knees. A verbal instruction to bend one’s knees is vague; how far is good enough to please the coach/parent? When I work with young players, I do a vertical jump test two or three times in a row. I instruct them to jump as high as they can in one spot; on the third or fourth try, I have them dip and stop; this is the body position they should use to shoot the ball. A vertical jump test measures power; for young athletes, the limiting factor is applying power to the ball. When an athlete bends to jump as high as he can, he finds the position where his body believes he can apply the most power. And, that becomes the shooting position. I did this test with a player five months ago, and to this day, when he misses short on a couple shots in a row, he’ll put the ball between his legs and do the dip action from a vertical jump, stop and use the position as his shooting position. The vertical jump “dip” gives the player a real point to reach; the athlete feels where his body should be and adjusts accordingly.
Third, constant yelling fails to demonstrate the proper bending motion. If the athlete lacks a reference point (vertical jump test) and the pattern of movement, no amount of verbal instruction or criticism is going to get the child to bend his knees. The coach/parent must show the athlete how low he needs to get and instruct the proper movement. The best teaching tool is a video camera; with a video camera, the athlete recognizes he really is not low. Without video, two other tools exist. First, show the athlete the proper position and his typical position; point out the difference in the two. Then, ask him to get into his typical position, and then the proper position and ask him to feel the difference. Second, after an athlete shoots, ask him to demonstrate the body position he thinks he used during the shot; invariably, he assumes he is much lower than he really is. If this is the case, show him the difference between where he thought he was and where he actually was. During the next repetition, instruct the athlete to exaggerate the position; to get to where feels low to him and then exaggerate by getting even lower.
Fourth, the biggest issue is a fundamental lack of understanding of learning. When parents/coaches yell and yell, they fail to acknowledge that most people do not learn aurally; many are visual or kinesthetic learners. Continuing to bark instructions without demonstrating the skill or having the athlete attempt different positions is a coaching failure, not an athlete failure. The parent above, besides demeaning his child and his child’s self-confidence, took no responsibility for the poor instructions, though nothing he said was going to impact his child’s success. Instead, the adult heaped all the blame on the ten year old because the ten year old did not immediately perfect a skill as told to him.
On any given team, different athletes learn differently. My favorite players are kinesthetic learners; these athletes typically frustrate other coaches. I work with a girl and after every instruction, she has to walk herself through the steps; she is translating the verbal/visual instructions into instructions she can use; she needs the feel of the drill or skill before attempting it. This frustrates her coach, as it takes time for her to learn something and if she does not have the time to process the instructions and walk through them, she struggles. But, the coach is unwilling to give the player a second to get the feel of the skill or drill. As a visual learner herself, she does not understand why the player cannot pick-up the concept after she has shown her.
Some players hear instructions and immediately understand; some see instructions and immediately understand; some need to feel the instructions before they understand. No way is more right than the other; however, coaches must instruct using all three learning styles (there are more, but most fall into one of these three styles) to maximize ALL players’ learning.
When coaches have a greater understanding of player’s learning styles, and instruct accordingly, finding the solution to a problem or weakness is easy. With the child above, the father completely misses the point, which leaves father and son frustrated; the same occurs daily at dozens of practices with players and coaches. However, the failure is not the players or the coaches individually; players and coaches need to work together and learn to communicate better. This means being receptive to questions, encouraging questions and allowing players some time to process new information and instructions. By varying instructions, coaches help players understand and improve, which is the point of coaching youth athletics.
