HOW IM GOING TO IMPROVE AS A COACH IN 2025
So to start off the year I thought it would be good to talk about how I plan to get better this year but also just in general. I also hope that other coaches will share some of the ways they look to improve as well. Of course we all do the basics of running sessions, watching games etc but even within that there is a lot of nuance. There are also then the out of the box activities you might do that you think have had a formative impact on how you coach.
Coaching
I think rather obviously the main way is to coach. At the halfway point through my current season the reason the first half has gone so much better is I’ve kept things simple and been a lot better at planning and reviewing. If you tell me to chop down a tree in 8 hours I’ll spend 3.5 hours sharpening my axe (planning) 1.5 cutting (doing the session) and another 3.5 reviewing how I cut the tree down (reviewing duhh).
It wasn’t that I was lazy before but my planning had been slacking out of cockiness, which is very dumb on my part. This year I plan my session throughout the week and constantly make tweaks. Some common ones are the ways a team might score or the value of that score, numbers on each team and size of the area. Most of my best tweaks are the last 10% when you think the session is done then I do a little bit more and it makes a big difference. Doing the sessions I’ve always felt confident, bar my first one in 2016 when I was kakking it. Reviewing as well helps a lot with planning. Straight after my games on Saturday I pick my expected team for the next week based on performances. This season coaching an A and B team has been a big help for this as players have been able to drop down and work their way back up. For example a winger who can’t defend it’s a lot easier to put them in defence for the B team ‘til they learn or a defender who needs to work on their dribble putting them as a winger. The team will of course change based then on training performance and availability but this has helped me make small tweaks every week to keep people in the B team hungry and the A team on their toes without making so many changes to be called the tinkerman. Then after this process I spend from Sunday to Friday planning and going over the session and rinse and repeat.
Video analysis
Video analysis or sideline analysis and making tweaks I think is my favourite part of football. Again a new change this season is having video of our games thanks to a parent buying a sideline camera that follows the ball. I also am then able to use the Sunday to Thursday to leave notes on the video of good moments and bad or maybe where it was neither but a good lesson. As they say ‘film don’t lie’ so maybe myself or a player misremembers a situation and it helps then to go back to the video. With the ball the main thing for me is what I call ‘missed passes’, as the field we play on is suited to through balls more so than crosses I always ask players to go back and see where they might have played a through ball. Defensively then as a team our main focus is not getting split, if we do then I can go back to the video and tell them what to do next time, other times I will ask what they saw or thought at the time and what they would do next time.
