8 WAYS TO DEVELOP YOUR COACHING

Chris Oliver’s Basketball Podcast

8 Ways to Develop Your Coaching

Guy Molloy (New Zealand Women’s National Team Coach)

  1. Have a Personal Philosophy. ● We ask our players to improve, but we must also improve as coaches! ● Ask yourself, What is your Personal Philosophy? Is how you would like to coach and interact with other people. ● Your personal philosophy of how you define your life should match your approach to being a coach as well. They need to match, because you won’t be able to deceive your players for long. ● Chris Oliver – Competition Changes us, how can we deal with this? ● Control the Controllables. ● Be Self-Reflective during Practices, Games, and examine our actions and our language during these moments and towards other people. ● Stop letting irrelevant things distract you. ● There is a difference in being an amateur and being a professional and it is all in the mindset. ● You are the leader as the coach, and how can we ask our players to be in the moment if we are “losing our mind?” ● Chris Oliver – not enough coaches leave practice asking or reflecting on their influence on the players around them (language and action). Guy Molloy – talks about he mics himself up in every practice in order to examine the language he uses, and the corrections he makes. ● Chris Oliver – suggests having another person evaluate your performance at practice. ● Get rid of repetitive phrases, wasted language and meaningless phrases. Be more precise your language and your corrections. ● You can “Say a lot more by Talking Less”.

2. Leadership & Culture. ● ABC 123 Philosophy: “Always Build Culture” or “Always Build Confidence” ● You must make hard decisions and difficult talks if the issue stresses the culture of the team. ● It plays an important part in recruitment of players. ● Culture, “Is the Water you live in”. You want to walk into your workplace and love being there, you should walk in with a bounce in your step each day. ● Mike Dunlap says another way of saying culture is using the word “Standards”. ● The 123 means “Know your Priorities” – You can not do it all! There are lots of great ideas out there, but you can’t do it all. ● The hardest coach to play for is the one that changes plans every 3-4 weeks. ● Chris Oliver – A great question to ask yourself is “Do the players love being there?” – Guy Molloy “Do they want to come back to the gym the next day?”

3. Have a Signature Style of Play. ● It constrains the game for you. ● You don’t want to be different every year, every month. You need to find consistency in your coaching beliefs. ● It is much better to cut deeply rather than broadly with your coaching. He would rather teach 3-4 things extremely well rather than 50 things in a mediocre way. ● Once you are able to define this, you will be challenged by other philosophies that say this is better than that. But there is no one singular style that is “better” than another.
● Another challenge that emerges that others will poke holes in your style of play. Therefore you become better and more clever at doing what you do. ● Mike Herbert, “Thinking Volleyball” is recommended reading for the Signature Style of Play concept.

4. What’s Your Game Knowledge Like? ● Need to be aware of the defensive and tactics you will face from opponents. Also what approaches are on the horizon. ● Educate yourself technically. ● In Youth Sports do a better job in teaching Athletic Movement. ● Need for countries to develop a Coaching Accreditation Program. ● If you can’t coach the Physical Development aspect then go out and find someone who does. Learn from others and improvement that knowledge. ● John Wooden Approach – Take one aspect of the game that you are deficient in and really attack and learn that aspect of the game. ● Chris Oliver: You need to not only know your system, but how to stop your opponents’ systems as well. It’s not enough to just know your own. ● Teach Youth Players – perhaps once a week go to the youth level and teach practices. Helps to reconnect you to teaching the fundamentals of the game. Chris Oliver – use youth camps as a means to teach the basics, and even experiment with drills and concepts.

5. Your Teaching Method. ● Again, he tapes every practice as a means to evaluate his own teaching. ● Are you a Motivator, Teacher, CEO Leader, etc. – which one are you? ● You need to have a teaching Method: – Wooden’s Model – Whole, Part, Whole – Pete Newell Model – Part, Whole ● Mike Dunlap “Prompt-Praise-Leave” in order to make corrections directly and then quickly move on. ● Correction is not Criticism. Need to make this clear early in the season – it’s about making everybody better.

6. Practice Planning. ● It is an Art Form, so you will be writing a draft. ● Should be able to fit your plan on one side of a paper. ● Try to have a great flow to your practices, Should be able to back after 6 months and understand the theme of practice. ● Be flexible. Perhaps the practice doesn’t go as planned, be able to adapt and still get value out of the time. ● Use your “Core Curriculum” as your guide. You want to cut more deeply than broadly with your practice approach.

7. Game Coaching. ● Everybody has a “Plan A” but what is your “Plan “B”. ● Default “Plan C” is to simply turn up the pressure. How can you change the momentum of the game? ● Have to have an element of adaptability and adjustability to your in game coaching. ● Don’t waste your Asst Coaches. Give them roles and responsibilities on game day. Make them into an advantage. ● Chris Oliver – get more aggressive in Plan B. Use that as a way to change the mindset of the players. ● Have a call in your defense to turn up the pressure. “Red” to start denying passes

8. Scouting. ● Keep the focus on yourself. ● 80/20 approach. 20% of the game prep on the opponents. ● Too much can perhaps becomes counterproductive. ● Chris Oliver – questioning the importance of detailed scouting reports and the usefulness of Coaches’ use of halftime speeches. ● Limit the fluff, and limit it to what is truly important. ● Get to the aspects of the scout that can really make a difference. ● You can really give your team an edge on SLOB and BLOB scenarios. Prepare for the concepts you’ll see. ● Play 3/3 with with a flex cut involved – in preparation for a team that will introduce that as part of their offense. Rather than walking through excessive sets. ● Chris Oliver – tell them they “are the most prepared” team. Give them this psychological edge. Guy Molloy – John Wooden story about being the “most well conditioned team” in the nation.