#095 Planning Valuable Team Talks

We had great feedback to last week’s episode on checking your shoulder. The combination of the description, diagrams and actual training video really helped to paint the picture and show how the exercises are organized. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that one or see the videos in the show notes I would check it out. This has been a crazy spring break week in the midwest. Our training sessions were canceled on Monday and Tuesday because of the extreme cold we’ve been experiencing. It’s probably happening at a good time since many of our players are enjoying trips to warmer climates. Hopefully we’ll get back to normal spring weather as the players return to training next week. This week’s question is from Adam and he asks an interesting question. He tells the story of an opposing player getting emotional about some physical play and receiving a yellow card. Then he asks: “So, as for my questions. I personally would have removed my player from the game if they had made such a gesture against an opponent, I would have hoped/expected the opposing coach would have done so as well. How would you have handled the situation? Would you have addressed the topic with the opposing coach or is a shoulder-shrug, head nod response all we have in our bag?” I told him at that given the  description of the events I probably would have subbed the player and given him time to cool off but as the opposing coach that really isn’t up to you.  If I knew the other coach I might say something but otherwise I would just focus on my players and help them manage the situation. I found myself using TeamSnap a lot this last week as so many of my players were going to be missing training and game. Checking the, ‘Availability’ tab for each of my teams has let me know what to expect so that I can plan to combine groups for training or look for guest players for games. It’s taken the guesswork out of managing the number of players I’ll have. Whether you coach or manage a single team or organize a whole club, league TeamSnap makes organizing every aspect of active sports life easier. You can sign up for a demo and start your free 21-Day Trial today and find out why people rely on TeamSnap by going to teamsnap.com/csw Players can learn a lot from the games that they play but it’s up to us to find the right teachable moments. It’s usually tough to do it during the flow of the game so how we prepare them before, at half time and what we say after the match is our best chance to impact our players. Today I’ll look at what should and shouldn’t go into these key times during a game and how you can best plan for them so that you are able to get the most out of these opportunities. Here’s a link to a great article looking at how to deal with different post game situations that I mentioned in the episode: Guidelines for effective postgame talks Remember! Make sure you subscribe to Coaching Soccer Weekly through iTunes, or your podcast provider of choice, to be sure you never miss an episode. We would appreciate it if you would leave us a 5 star rating and/or a written review on iTunes to help spread the word about the show and ensure that we can continue to bring you top notch guests in the future. Next Week I’m working on a number of ideas for next week’s show but haven’t settled on one yet. You’ll have to check back next week to hear what I decided on.