Five Things Every Youth Sports Coach Must Understand Article

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Five Things Every Youth Sports Coach Must Understand

The importance of little league sports and the way that we develop our programs need a new paradigm. The old ways of coaching will not work with today's young athlete. Our children are the least active generation in history and the first to be in danger of not living longer than their parents.

Author: Michael Clapier

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Plato said that the most important part of any work is its beginning.

Coaching kids is no different because youth athletics is a continually renewing process.

The crucial art of coaching kids takes its strength many separate openings, yet we often fail to respect the power of sport’s commencement, particularly when evaluating physical skills. Too often coaches, new to the task, expect young players to perform as if they already possess the physical and intellectual skills required to play a game.

If we disregard the import of underpinnings we must not be surprised when our kids are less capable than we want.

From the moment we first take the assignment to coach a team of children, until those wonderful moments years later when we watch them as high school athletes or meet them in casual settings, the relationship between you, the coach, and your little league athlete is a distinctive one. The glory of the coach/athlete relationship can be improved in today’s coaching environment if you recognize five important things.

5 Things Every Youth Coach Must Understand

1) Yesterday's coaching styles are old news.

We are compelled to talk to athletes today differently than we did a few years ago. I will get into those influences another time. During a wrestling tournament last winter, I was leaving the mat with one of my boys and we passed an old-school coach who was letting his athlete know how poorly he thought of the kids’ performance. He was direct and he was coarse. There was no mistaking his message. He was not pleased with how his boy wrestled. I would never speak the way he spoke but I heard that kind of coaching many years ago. It will not work today.

2) The success of your team requires new ways of doing things.

You must think in new ways if you are to be an effective youth coach. Not only are you working to improve their ability to play a game but you are also bringing them along emotionally. Social interaction, ability to play with kids, to engage in team play, to exercise their large muscles and cardio vascular systems are all part of your job. You must address these issues because they affect what happens in your team and during their games. You must learn to place emphasis everywhere. Not just on the score of the game.

3) The evolution of sports technology is revolutionary.

Video tape is just one of the ways that technology changes coaching. I would love to see myself wrestle or play football but that tape does not exist. You can use video tape to show the skills of your athletes, help them improve, and watch accomplished players in action. Youtube and the internet allow you to let grandma and grandpa see the great plays as well. Use technology to help your athletes.

4) The equipment used twenty years ago is laughable today.

Safety is more assured than ever before through helmets and padding. Pick up an old wooden bat and hit a few pitches then pick up an aluminum one and swing away. Every piece of sports equipment has changed as much as titanium bats versus wood ones. You must understand those changes and know that equipment. Become a student of it.

5) Sports nutrition and what your children eat are not the same things.

Teach your children what to eat on game day and what to do to overcome the action of sugar and sedentary living. Here are six ways to help them now.

1) Challenge them to eat colors; red in apples, green in grapes, yellow in bananas, etc.
2) Stop drinking soda.
3) Eliminate energy drinks.
4) Analyze their diet.
5) Help their parents start reading food labels.
6) Become a student of nutrition yourself.

You can make no assumptions about where your students are in terms of their physical capacity, knowledge of the game or ability to be part of the team. Your role as youth coach must include all of the above recommendations and more. It is a continuing process.

Stay in touch.

About Author

Michael Clapier is a coach, sports official, media producer and author. In "Coaching Young Couch Potatoes" he explores the challenges of today's young athlete and offers effective methods to coach kids. His current blog http://www.wrestlingtrainingmedia.com introduces foundational messages for the development of core muscles groups in young athletes.

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