Developing a Coaching Philosophy

One of the first things you may find when you start coaching is that it is impossible to please everybody. Many parents have their own ideas of what a coach should be and what he should have to offer for their children. The players themselves may also have a completely different idea of how they want to be coached by you. You will run into conflicts over decisions involving playing time, team selection, style of play, focus of training, intensity of training and so forth. For this reason it is crucial for a coach to have a well defined coaching philosophy that the players and parents on his team can understand and accept.

Your coaching philosophy is a reflection of what you most highly value for your players. It includes what objectives you want to accomplish with them and how you plan to go about accomplishing those objectives.

In developing a coaching philosophy, it is important to understand why your players are playing on your team. You will find that there are three basic reasons why any player participates in organized sports. They are to 1.) compete at a suitable and challenging level, 2.) develop as players, and 3.) to have fun. Every other reason for playing sports should fit into one of these categories.

Sometimes these objectives can come into conflict when certain coaching decisions must be made. For example, you may decide to keep an under-developed player on the bench for more time in order to have a better chance of winning a game. In this decision, you are choosing competition over player development. In another situation you may decide to have a fun, laid-back training session instead of pushing your players to work hard with challenging drills. In this case you are choosing fun over competition. None of these coaching decisions are necessarily wrong, however it is important that they fit within an over-all philosophy and plan.

It's important to understand which objectives your particular team values most highly. A recreational team will likely value fun over competition with an "everyone plays" philosophy, while a more competitive team will tend to value competition over fun with more of a philosophy that favors the higher impact players. One of the bigger challenges comes when you form a team that includes players coming from either philosophy.

This is where you have to put your foot down as a coach. You have to outline how you prioritize the three objectives and how you intend to accomplish all three.

Consider that the number one objective in youth sports should always be player development. The development of each and every player is always more important than wins or fun. When you have that down, most things should fall in place for you.

Be open with your team on how you intend to prioritize and execute these objectives. Convince them to buy in to your philosophy and support you in your efforts. You will almost always have a few people that you just can't please, but remain strong in your philosophy and the majority will follow.

Warmup: Benefits of Dynamic Stretching

If you grew up playing sports, you're probably more used to more traditional warm-up methods. These usually involve the team running a few laps and then sitting down in a circle to stretch. The point of this is to increase blood flow and muscle temperature in order to prepare the body for more strenuous physical activity. Recently, however, I have begun to use a much more effective method.

Static vs. Dynamic Stretching

The old method of sitting down in a circle to stretch after running a couple laps is referred to as static stretching. The body remains static while each stretch is held for about ten seconds each. Dynamic stretching involves actively moving limbs through their natural range of motion. The advantage to this is that you can stretch the muscles by replicating natural sport-specific movement while at the same time maintaining increased muscle temperature and blood flow. Dynamic stretching is not to be confused with ballistic stretching, which involves bouncing past a range of motion in order to increase flexibility. It moves the joints to the limits of their range of motion rather than past them. Dynamic stretching is becoming more widely used by athletes as part of a warmup routine in place of static stretching.

The problem with static stretching is it doesn't adequately prepare the body for the strenuous physical activity that comes in training or game play. Blood flow is increased when you run your laps beforehand, but is brought back down when you sit down to stretch. Static stretching should not be used as part of a warm-up, but should be used at the end of a training session as a conditioning exercise for increasing joint range of motion as a form of long-term injury prevention.

Dynamic Stretching is better for your warmup

For a warmup routine, dynamic stretching is much more effective in preparing the body for intense physical activity. A dynamic stretching routine should last about 10 minutes and should involve gradual increases in motion throughout the routine. When done properly, such a routine will likely reduce injuries and muscle soreness.

Here is a good example of a dynamic stretching routine:

Dynamic Warm-Up and Stretching for Soccer Training - kewego Video from hockeyman7

In a soccer training session, I often like to precede the dynamic stretching with some basic ball handling exercises such as toe taps or scissor steps. You can really taylor it to whatever your team needs at the time.

Here are a few more good articles on dynamic stretching:

flexibility training

dynamic stretching

Team Selection: A Few Guidelines for Making Cuts

It's that time of year when clubs are holding tryouts, selecting teams and making cuts. Cutting players can be a really difficult thing. (Here I speak of the cuts you make among returning team members rather than new-coming players at tryouts.) On one hand, you want everyone to keep playing, but on the other hand you don't want to take players to your team that will prevent everyone else from really progressing and advancing. Sometimes it's necessary to make some cuts. Here are a few guidelines I've learned from my own experience.

• Don't cut players unless they really have a negative effect on the team reaching its goals.
Some players may just be a little behind on their skills and abilities or a little less committed. In this case it may be tempting to take new-coming players at tryouts over some of the returning players. Be very careful with this. If you have a team that's moved up a division in the last year and every single player contributed to this success, then keep every single player you can. The decision really depends on what the overall goals of the team are. Only when you have a few players that are incapable of helping the team reach it's goals should you make cuts.

• Maintain open communication long before the occasion arises where cuts need to be made.
Communicate with players and parents throughout the season about team goals and expectations to be met to avoid being cut. If you're a new coach coming into a team that's been together for a while, it's probably best not to make any cuts at all. Especially in the club setting, parents are putting good money and time into the development of their kids. They want to know how well their kids are doing long before the time comes where they might be cut. Measures should be taken throughout the season to help players get in line with the team's goals so the decision for their involvement can be in their own hands rather than yours.

• When you make cuts, make sure the player finds another team to play for.
For players that get cut from high-level teams, it's usually pretty easy to find another team. In this case, provide contact information of other coaches and clubs. If your team plays at a lower level though, where there really isn't anywhere a player can go down, it's better to keep all the players that want to keep playing. In this case it's better also to encourage the stars of the team to go and find better teams to play for. Every kid that loves to play should play. If they love to play enough they will get better. Encourage them to work hard to improve their skills so they can contribute more to the team.

Remember that the team is there for the players and your team selection should reflect the collective goals and intentions of the players more than your own. Coaching youth soccer isn't about winning. It's about developing players. Team selection should be focused on putting players of similar skill levels together in order to create the optimal environment for them to develop.

Do you have any advice to give from your own experience with cuts and team selection?

this is now a blog about soccer coaching

I've had this soccer blog for a while now, but I've had a hard time gaining traction in terms of followers and finding the motivation to post consistently. I think I'm deciding now I want to target a more specific audience with a more specialized expertise. I want to focus more on soccer coaching.

I have been coaching for 4 years now and have gained tons of valuable experience that I would like to share with other soccer coaches. My hope is that other coaches will read this blog and contribute to the discussion on the various topics I address. I value the input of all experienced coaches and hope to learn a great deal from them.

I will still make commentary on things going on in the professional soccer arena, but I want Norm's Soccer Blog to be largely focused on coaching.

Real Salt Lake Home Opener This Weekend

Tomorrow I'll be putting on my red and blue shirt and going to the long awaited home opener of the MLS champions Real Salt Lake. I'm proud to say I'm now a season ticket holder for the first time and I'll be in the front row of section 8 standing up and making noise all season long. I'll be with the guys I drove to Seattle with, which will be pretty sweet as well. In addition to this there are a number of things I'm super excited about with the upcoming season.

One thing I'm really excited about is RSL's new efforts in getting college students out to the games. If you read my letter I wrote to RSL a few months ago, you'll know I'll be taking a lot of credit for this idea. What they're doing is this week they've been visiting college campuses and selling $50 punch cards to students with student ID's. The cards are good for 10 games and kind of work as flex vouchers for the south end.

I'm really looking forward to how well this does. The idea is to fill the south end with fans that will get up on their feet and make some noise so the stadium atmosphere will improve a bit. I've always been a bit disappointed with the atmosphere at Rio Tinto so I'm hoping this season it will get better.

Another thing I'm excited about with this season is the improved TV coverage RSL has. In the past when I have wanted to become a better supporter of RSL, I've been disappointed when I couldn't watch the games on TV. Now all games but two home games this season are scheduled to air on either Fox Soccer Channel, ESPN2, Telefutura or CBS. The local CBS station picked up most of the remaining games this season that would have normally been unviewable on TV. I'm hoping this will give an added boost to RSL's support. A big part of becoming a real fan of a team is being able to watch them on TV.

The main thing I'm excited about though is to see the MLS champions defend their title. Seeing them win it all in Seattle last November was incredible. Now they have most of the same guys they had last year and a goal to win more games on the road. Javier Morales had a killer season opener in San Jose. I'm anxious to see more players step up and deliver top class performances. We'll be looking to Robbie Findley and Fabian Espindola to step up and fill the gap left by Movsisyan. It will also be interesting to see what new players will step up and deliver. Let's go Real!

What are you looking forward to seeing with Real Salt Lake this season?

USA vs. Netherlands

The US Mens National Team's match against the Netherlands was their last friendly before Coach Bob Bradley picks the official 23 man roster for the World Cup. Little surprise was found in the result of the match. I think most American fans were happy that we scored against them at all. There are a few new assessments we can take from this match though about what the WC squad will look like.

The main assessment I gathered was that Robbie Findley just isn't an international caliber player yet. We saw it in the last two matches and now this one continues to confirm that. He just looks far too timid and poses no real threat to the opposing team's back line. I was really hoping he would shine, but maybe he'll be there in a few years.

I really like what DeMarcus Beasley brought to the table when he came in. He hadn't been seen in the red, white and blue since his egg laying in the Confederation's Cup last year, but yesterday he demonstrated some great skill on the ball. He brings a little bit of improvisation and creativity that we could really use.

I think Spector, Demerit, and Bocanegra all had a fantastic game in the back. Bornstein could have done without a few huge mistakes, but he's shown to be good in other games. I think he'll still be in WC squad. Goodson definitely made a mark when he came in and nearly scored off an over-head kick.

Altidore definitely made his case for the position of striker. If only we had a few more quality strikers.

Bob Bradley is expected to announce his 23 man roster soon, though the deadline isn't until May. Let's hope all our injured players make their timely recoveries.

Robbie Findley called up to the Netherlands

I'll have to take back my thoughts about Robbie Findley's WC tryout being over. Bob Bradley named him as part of the 20 man squad to go face the Netherlands next Wednesday in a friendly. I was really impressed that he's included in this squad as it consists mostly of european based players. It's also surprising that Ching and Kljestan are not included in this squad. I think this says that Bradley sees something in Findley and is seriously considering him for the World Cup squad. Also since only 3 forwards have been called up, Findley's almost sure to play in the Netherlands match. I'm extremely excited to see how he does with a more experienced side behind him.

What are you looking forward to seeing in this match?