Coaching: Approaches and Techniques 1

Its game time, the competitiveness is in the air, your players are nervous...its time to play and most importantly, its time to win.

A good coach knows how to mentally prepare his/her team right before a game. The kind of tone you set in these early moments can dictate how well your team plays...and whether you've outscored your opponent when the game's over.

Before the game, you don't want to over-coach. Its better to stress 2 to 3 key points and drive them home, rather than mention 10 different things that your players won't remember. When your players have fewer things in their mind, they will focus on these few things and do them to the best of their ability. Most teams, in
general, perform better a little under-coached than over-coached.

The coach should be calm and confident before the game, showing no nervousness, no anxiety, and most of all, no weakness. Your players turn to you as their leader. If your behavior is right, their behavior will be right. If you're confident in them, they will be confident in themselves.

You do want to instill some emotion in your players, because basketball is an emotional game and players perform better under the power of certain emotions. Positive emotions, such as the strong desire to win, desire to "crush" the competition, feeling of unity, and even a little bit of anger, can go a long way in helping your team win. As the coach, it is your responsibility to provide
this emotional charge to your players, but don't overdo it.

Even under stressful and threatening conditions, the coach must remain poised at all times. This means to keep a calm, confident look on your face, a neutral pitch in your voice, and uprightness in your posture. Body language is a very important indicator of confidence.

At the same time, over-confidence can kill your team, leading to a lack of aggressiveness and initiative. By highlighting the other team's strengths, and by giving the opposition their due credit, you will remind your players that the competition is not going to be easy. Basically, you want to arouse a fear of defeat and then immediately provide the solution for winning.

If your team is the under-dog, its time to inspire them with stories and profound language. You can even lookup some famous quotes and say them out loud to inspire your players. Words of encouragement and strength are needed in this situation, and let your players know that the outcome of the game is in their hands, not in the opposition's hand.

>> At Half-Time

Okay, so the game is underway and its half-time. Its time to make some adjustments, but more importantly, its a time of relaxation.

Take 5-7 minutes for complete relaxation, without a word, without any emotion. Let your players relax and cleanse their minds. Have someone provide towels and water immediately, and set the environment for relaxation.

Then, once every player looks to be settled in, start off by encouraging them and pointing out the good things, and then go into the negatives. At this point, explain the strategy of the second half but only choose 2 key points and drive them home. Keep it simple. Drill a couple of concepts in your player's minds and let them focus on that. You may have 20 things in your mind, but your players cannot handle that much information. Pick 2 things...Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!

Remind your players at this point that no matter what happens, you will judge whether they won or lost by their effort. If they play hard and give it everything they've got, you should judge that as a victory. Tell them to focus on the process, not on the outcome. "Just Play" is the motto you need to drill in their heads at
half-time.

>> After the Game

Once again, right after a game, let your players relax for 5-10 minutes and clear their minds. You can only deliver the proper message if they have come down from their emotional high. Once they've relaxed, tell them honestly how they performed. If they played well and lost, let them know that you will get the win next
time. If they played bad and won, tell them they got lucky and there's a lot of things that need to be worked on.

Don't get into much detail right after the game, wait until the following day or practice.

Now, as the coach, you should take notes right after the game and write down everything you noticed about your team, strengths and weaknesses.

Then, in the next practice you may need to work on certain drills and introduce new plays to address those weaknesses and to further strengthen your team.

Winning is about adjustments from game to game. If you're not ready to adjust and adapt, then victory is going to be hard to come by.