More is Often Less

Listening to coaches at tournaments (yes, basically eavesdropping, but if I can hear you thru earplugs...you’re talking loud) and reading on social media, a lot of coaches believe that the secret to improving a team is more days of work, longer work, more commitment.

I think this is promoted from stories about football coaches who sleep in their office, only sleep 3 hrs/night during the season and demand their assistants do that as well. Once someone has success with that, you KNOW someone’s going to only sleep two hours, do whatever to go past the already silly bar that has been set. When that’s a team that is in the national media, people not at Alabama, Texas et al. are bound to imitate what they see.

Think this isn’t true? Watch old basketball videos from before 1971. Coaches aren’t yelling at players, screaming at officials. So what changed? Bobby Knight. At that point, it had been a dozen years since Indiana was ranked at the end of a year. Knight came in and two years later was in the Final Four and over 29 years, made 26 tourney appearances (context–the field was smaller in the 70s when IU didn’t qualify those three times). Add in his success with USA Basketball, the TV/media coverage, and EVERYONE started coaching like Knight rather than past greats. Is the coaching from coaches who yell superior to those who don’t? Nope. Research shows that clearly. (Studies suggest athletes who play for yelling coaches get PTSD/struggle emotionally for years afterwards.)

Think about your program. Are kids better off with physical rest, emotional health, if they are forced* to be at volleyball four times/week for 2-4 hours?

*It’s forced…kids understand coaches who say something’s voluntary don’t mean that…that attendance is mandatory if you want playing time in the upcoming season..

We’ll switch to baseball for a sec…there are more individuals under the age of 23 having UCL/Tommy John surgery now on a weekly basis than had it at all from 1974-1985…more in a week than 11 years!! More is not better. Think about this stat–what happens when we have games, practices, specialist coaches, private lessons…then add in research from the Aspen Institute that asserts only 29% of youth coaches in any sport have education/training in doing what they do.

So physically–what is all that extra practice accomplishing? Are you setting kids up for elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle surgeries? (Don’t go looking at joint replacement surgery rates for women…and if you do, don’t go looking at the rate for women who played travel sports 25-35 years prior…don’t look at the same arc of the graphs or what it means for the future…because what it means is there’s never been a better time to be an orthopedic surgeon.)

Mentally–where is the break for them? Kids are now asked to commit to a sport 12-months/year. Where is the time for band, theater, other sports, or *gasp* academic work? Regardless of sport, fewer than 1-in-a-1,000 kids are going to have a career in sports, fewer still past college, so why demand they put so much into a sport that, frankly, is irrelevant to the next 50-90 years of their life? –Yes, sports teaches values like teamwork, but is that really going on with extra practices and weekly tournaments? –because it’s taking away opportunities for life skills beyond a gymnasium.

A large majority of kids drop out of sports before age 14 because of the pressure applied by adults (they turn to video games BECAUSE parents don’t understand them). They are taught that playing sports is not about enjoyment, it is about working to win and/or ‘win a scholarship’. That’s a serious distortion–but it parallels elsewhere…when’s the last time you saw kids playing a sport adults weren’t busy organizing?

Just as bad–how many kids never take up sports because they weren’t enrolled in the Travel Super-Elite Select Star Club program at age 5? Those parents/kids are outright told they are behind/have no chance–and if the travel coaches are involved, they WILL make an example of that kid…see what happens if you don’t play travel-ball?*

*I lived this with a son–he didn’t play travel basketball, went out for it in 8th grade anyways, was never put in even in blowouts…he never played again. –this is a kid who has gone on to be a D-1 track athlete and has competed in hurdles, javelin, and pole vault, then turned around and started a men’s club VB team at his school…in addition to spending time as a gymnastic instructor. They turned away a D1 athlete because he didn’t play travel-basketball from age 10-12.

So–more is less. As a coach, you have passion for your sport, but you’re adult–you’ve made YOUR OWN life choices–you can’t impose those on kids…not directly, at least. Why not consider a different path–why not focus on developing passion and curiosity? How do you do that?

• No activity goes more than 15 minutes…end things before boredom sets in

• Limit the length of training to no more than two hours. With 14u, probably better still to go with 90 minutes as a limit.

• Only have sessions once or twice per week. Let kids enjoy other activities.

• NEVER have penalties for not showing.

• Don’t focus on technical instruction–let them explore the game on their own terms.

  • Leave instruction for when they ask you questions–then answer the question they asked, no more or less.

• Set up the activities with the question “Is this fun?” in mind, NOT “Is this making them better?” –if they are doing something they enjoy, they’ll work harder which means they get better faster…they’ll enjoy that which drives them onwards…and that’s INTERNAL motivation, not EXTERNAL–so they can carry that over to everything else they do beyond your sport.

• Limiting time limits repetition–which means you reduce overwork injuries. You give them time to rest and recover–because these kids also have other sports plus PE classes. Rest is the absolute most underutilized activity for improving teams.