Coach Improvement in the Offseason
How to get better this offseason
There’s a lot of information out there for player improvement over their offseasons but not much for coaching. So here’s an attempt to fill in that gap.
Being from a small community with very few full time coaches before me I’ve really had squeeze out every drop of self-improvement from limited resources and support. A lot of trial and error went into that and it took me a long time to become a good coach. If you want to it’s not hard to speed up that process - I’ve given the best tips I’ve learned below. If you have advice of your own or want to hear from others then I’d recommend joining in on my discord
Reflect on feedback
Gathering feedback from your team is the most crucial step. You need this. Hopefully your team is organised and does some opinion gathering at the end of a season so you can include this as part of it. I like a number/10, a free text box and searing honesty.
The feedback that hurts the most is the mistakes that I’ve made before, or knew myself that I made during the season and I’m embarrassed about.
There’s never been a season, no matter how successful or unsuccessful, where I haven’t been given feedback from the team that enabled me to significantly improve myself as a coach. Did some of that feedback hurt? Hell yes it did. Did some of that feedback feel unfair? Absolutely, players only have a limited understanding of why decisions are made.
The biggest mistake I see coaches (or any leaders) make with the feedback is self-justification and/or dismissal.
We won so nothing matters
The player didn’t show up every week so their opinion doesn’t count
The feedback wasn’t written in a constructive way so I can ignore it
This isn’t to say that you have to implement every bit of feedback - even if you wanted to it’s probably impossible - but you do need to meaningfully engage with what it is asking from you.
Expand your technical and strategic Ultimate knowledge
If you’re anything like me then the season is too busy to really pay deep attention to what’s happening outside the division your team is competing in. Personally I’m still watching plenty of Ultimate outside my division throughout the season but purely for enjoyment and I’m at most making mental notes of teams or games I want to look at further.
The offseason then begins my time to dig into film from all those areas of interest and figure out what’s going on.
There’s a burgeoning scene of ultimate content both here on substack and on youtube so there’s plenty of people providing sources for you to engage with. But as you’d expect, passively reading or watching these isn’t going to do much.
Take yourself back to school and write structured responses to what you read or watched - what are 3 things you agree with and 3 you don’t?
Engage with the creators. Ask them a follow up. If you’re engaged with the content fully you’ll probably have at least one thing you’d like to know more about.
Share games or content you find interesting with groups for discussion. If that group is always in agreement with each other it’s probably the wrong place for discussion.
Hopefully this goes without saying but just in case: if you’re only watching and reading things you already understand and agree with then you’re not learning anything. Challenge your beliefs. If you think a particular team or player or strategy is overrated and you don’t understand the general acclaim - that’s a great sign that you have a lack of understanding and you should figure that out.
I think we’re all guilty to some extent of having a version of ultimate in our heads that is the ‘correct’ one and seeing the rest of it through that prism. Well, that prism is a prison so free yourself this offseason.
Expand your coaching knowledge
This goes hand in hand with the section above but it is concerned with the how of coaching which isn’t ultimate specific. Unfortunately this isn’t such a straightforward task because you’re mostly going to be limited to expanding your knowledge of theories of how you can be a better coach. Actually getting some hands-on experience with new approaches can be a significant challenge.
OK but you can and should at least find some new theoretical frameworks to try out the next season. Some suggestions on how you can do this below:
Governing bodies may run coaching courses. Don’t dismiss introductory courses: I’ve written and rewritten these courses myself and there are always elements that I know are important and work but I’ve either forgotten or gotten sloppy about implementing.
Any coaching conventions that are available to you consider a must
Shadow other coaches
Read, listen and watch as much coaching content as you can find. As with the above section you need to actuallly engage with the material. Don’t limit yourself to Ultimate specific coaching sources either, there’s really not that much out there.
Connect with other coaches
Find a coaching mentor or a coaching community (like on my discord) to ask questions about handling the feedback you’ve received and how you can improve on what was there is probably the best shortcut you can take to better performance.
Outside of competition most coaches are more than happy to share and give opinions so there’s no need to be shy. Talking about coaching is the second most enjoyable thing after actually coaching!
Run Sessions
Offseason doesn’t have to mean that you do no coaching after all. Particularly if you want to experiment with some new thoughts or techniques in an unpressurised environment you can probably find an outlet for that somewhere. It could be a school or a university or a particularly keen club team or even a pod of players that want to keep improving themselves over their own offseason.
If you have any suggestions on what type of content or discussions would be a good resource for you and others to learn as a coach from please do let me know with a comment below or email me at bettereverydaycoaching@gmail.com