Designing Effective Practices for Team Sports: Teach To Win Series

By Kevin Sivils

Success in team sports depends on many factors with preparation being at the top of the list of elements that can be controlled by the coach. In order to insure a team in any sport is prepared as well as possible, effective practice sessions are essential.

For many coaches designing effective well-planned practices is one of the most difficult tasks involved in teaching sports. Putting it all together to craft a single effective practice can seem daunting to any coach.

Coaching legend John Wooden spent nearly two hours planning his daily practice sessions during his tenure as the Wizard of Westwood at UCLA. Considering the skill Coach Wooden possessed in conducting practices, this single example shows the importance of being able to plan effective practices. Wooden was not alone in his attention to detail in planning practices. The Showtime Lakers coach Pat Riley was known to spend 3-5 hours in preparing for a ten minute meeting with his team.

Football coaches are legendary for the time spent in preparing for practices. This seemingly mysterious process is not that hard. It simply takes time and some knowledge of what must happen in order for practice sessions to be effective, both for a single practice session and over the course of an entire season.

Planning practices is both an art and a science. Based on both research by experts in the fields of sport psychology, motor control and motor learning and the nearly 30 years of the author’s experience as a varsity coach, Designing Effective Practices for Team Sports examines a wide range of factors essential to designing effective practices.

Planning effective practices is requires more than just effective teaching of team sports skills. There is so much more that goes into a great sports practice than just teaching sports skills.

Just a few of the factors to be planned for on both an individual practice session and the entire sports season include some of the following:

• Crafting an overriding purpose for the program and team
• Creating a culture of success • Goal setting
• Effective teaching strategies and tactics
• Maximizing the use of time, facilities, staff and space available
• Preventing burnout
• Drill selection
• Theories of learning motor skills

The author takes a look at all of these issues and more in the more than 20 chapters in the book. Mixing research with practical experience, the author addresses issues rookie and veteran coaches, regardless of the sport face in practice. These include:

• Setting the tone of practice
• Dealing with difficult to motivate athletes
• Avoiding common practice planning mistakes
• Building intensity in practice
• The role of confidence in sports

Designing Effective Practices for Team Sports was written for coaches who would rather develop their coaching skills and design their own effective sports practices than purchase a book with sample practice sessions for their sport.

Designing great practices is on of the most important elements in sports coaching. Not only do effective and efficient practice sessions play an important role in preparing teams to win, these types of practices are much more fun for everyone involved!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Kevin Sivils
• Release date: Dec 16, 2013
• ISBN: 9781497736030

Kevin Sivils

A 25 year veteran of the coaching profession, with twenty-two of those years spent as a varsity head coach, Coach Kevin Sivils amassed 479 wins and his teams earned berths in the state play-offs 19 out of 22 seasons with his teams advancing to the state semi-finals three times.  An eight time Coach of the Year Award winner, Coach Sivils has traveled as far as the Central African Republic to conduct coaching clinics.  Coach Sivils first coaching stint was as an assistant coach for his college alma mater, Greenville College, located in Greenville, Illinois. Coach Sivils holds a BA with a major in physical education and a minor in social studies from Greenville College and a MS in Kinesiology with a specialization in Sport Psychology from Louisiana State University.  He also holds a Sport Management certification from the United States Sports Academy. In addition to being a basketball coach, Coach Sivils is a classroom instructor and has taught U.S. Government, U.S. History, the History of WW II, and Physical Education and has won awards for excellence in teaching and Teacher of the Year. He has served as an Athletic Director and Assistant Athletic Director and has also been involved in numerous professional athletic organizations. Sivils is married to the former Lisa Green of Jackson, Michigan, and the happy couple are the proud parents of three children, Danny, Katie, and Emily.  Rounding out the Sivils family are three dogs, Angel, Berkeley, and Al.  A native of Louisiana, Coach Sivils currently resides in the Great State of Texas.

Book preview

Teach to Win: Skill Building for Coaches

Designing Effective Practices for Team Sports

KEVIN SIVILS

A Southern Family Publishing

Katy, Texas

Designing Effective Practices

for Team Sports

Teach to Win: Skill Building for Coaches

Copyright 2012 Kevin Sivils

All Rights Reserved

ISBN: 1477600272 (Print)

ISBN-13: 978-1477600276 (ePub)

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

Published by A Southern Family Publishing

www.teachtowin.com

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This book is dedicated to my family. No coach can succeed without the commitment and support of his or her family. Mine have been great! To Lisa, Danny, Katie and Emily, thanks for your love and support.

The information contained in this book is for informational purposes only. The author makes no guarantee or warranty that use of this information will directly result in winning more games. Be sure to use caution, common sense and comply with any possible standard of avoiding liability when conducting an athletic or sports related practice. Take all possible precautions to prevent injury of any kind.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1.  Overriding Purpose: The Key to Building a Winning Program

2.  Creating a Culture of Success in Team Sports

Part I: The Nonnegotiables

3.  Creating a Culture of Success in Team Sports

Part II: The Nonnegotiables: Team Concept

4.  Creating a Culture of Success in Team Sports

Part III: The Nonnegotiables: Mastery of Fundamentals

5.  Creating a Culture of Success in Team Sports

Part IV: The Nonnegotiables: Playing Hard

6.  Creating a Culture of Success in Team Sports

Part V: The Nonnegotiables: Discipline

7.  Control What You Can Control

8.  Negative Thinking, Positive Thinking, and Confidence in Sports

9.  How Do Athletes Learn?

10.  Review of the Main Teaching Theories/Models of Teaching Physical Skills

11.  The Three Phases of Learning Skills

12.  Allotting Time in Practice: Thoughts on Pedagogical Principles of Practice Planning

13.  Providing Quality Feedback

14.  How Do Goals Influence Athletes?

15.  Guidelines for Goal Setting

16.  Common Goal-Setting Errors

17.  Motivating Difficult-to-Motivate Athletes

18.  Burnout, Staleness, and Ideas on Preventing Both

19.  Setting the Tone for Practice

20.  Creating Organized, Efficient, and Productive Practices

21.  Building Intensity in Practice

22.  Improve Your Team by Selecting the Right Drills

23.  Designing Custom-Tailored Drills for Your Team

24.  Common Coaching Mistakes in Planning Practice

25.  Putting It All Together

About the Author

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Introduction

Since my beginnings as a coach almost thirty years ago, I have learned that practice is where coaches do their real work. Games are fun and receive the most attention from fans, but success in games is determined by preparation during the long hours of practice.

I experienced first hand the immense value of preparation in practice as a young head coach in a key state playoff game. Down by three points with just over 22 seconds remaining and with possession of the ball, I called timeout.

As my players hustled over to the bench, my mind went completely blank. I had not idea what to tell my players. Fortunately, I had spent considerable time over the course of the entire season practicing end of the game scenarios.

As my players calmly drank water and rested, my mind raced thinking of what to say. With about 15 seconds remaining in the timeout, my point guard finished off the last of his water and calmly asked me, Coach, run 3 with six seconds left? I was off the hook. My players remembered what to do.

We went on to send the game into overtime and win, setting the stage for our advance in the state play-offs to the state semi-finals. That moment was a pivotal one for me and I am glad my players had been paying attention in practice and felt confident they were prepared. It also taught me the extreme importance of quality planning for practice, not just the session for that day, but for the entire season.

Coaches invest a huge amount of time and effort in mastering the content of what their players will learn, constantly look for and collect drills to use in practice—and yet they often overlook essential information concerning the best ways to teach skills and concepts, organize effective practice sessions, and motivate players for effective practice.

Regardless of the sport or the system of play, the great master coaches were effective teachers who regarded practice and the opportunity to teach as critical to the success of the team. The great innovators in sport, those who created simple or complex systems of play that allowed their teams to win games and championships, ran superbly organized practice sessions. The best system of play is of little value if the players who are expected to execute the system in game competition neither understand the system nor have mastered the essential fundamentals required to execute the system.

This short book is meant to be an easy-to-use reference and guide for veteran and new coaches alike in the art and science of creating and running effective practice sessions. The material presented is based both on scientific research by experts in the field of kinesiology and the nearly thirty years of my practical coaching experience, and that of the mentors I learned from.

This book is meant to be of use to coaches of any team sport, and therefore it does not include sample practice plans. In my mind, providing samples of practices defeats the purpose of the book. Rather, it is meant to be a guide to help coaches learn to carefully craft their own effective practices.

If you are a coach taking the time and effort to read this book and refer to the information contained, it is my hope that you will apply it to craft better practice sessions for your teams and players. It is also my hope you will continue to invest in your coaching ability by constantly seeking more information about crafting better, and more effective, practice sessions.

One quick disclaimer: I am a basketball coach, think like a basketball coach, and talk like one. I have tried as much as possible to truly make the content oriented for any coach regardless of sport.

CHAPTER 1

Overriding Purpose: The Key to Building a Winning Program

Everyone has an overriding purpose. Some individuals and teams have an overriding purpose and are completely unaware of the fact. Others have a carefully crafted overriding purpose and adhere to it with considerable discipline and diligence.

What is an overriding purpose? Why is it an important part of the process of teaching a team how to win? An easy answer to these questions starts with defining overriding purpose as being similar to a mission statement, though this is not a completely accurate answer.

While the two are definitely similar, a mission statement simply defines the purpose of an organization, in this instance, a sports team. An overriding purpose not only defines the mission, the purpose of the team, but it also defines how the team will go about its tasks. It drives the mission of