- Home
- sports & recreation
- human kinetics
- coaching and officiating
- Successful Coaching
Successful Coaching
Published by: Human Kinetics
As America’s best-selling coaching text, Successful Coaching has helped over a million coaches develop their coaching philosophies; improve their communication, teaching, and management skills; and understand their responsibilities as a coach. The updated fourth edition of Successful Coaching offers students as well as new and veteran coaches a comprehensive guide to every aspect of coaching.
Written by Rainer Martens, a respected and renowned sport psychologist, longtime coach, and lifelong competitive athlete, Successful Coaching, Fourth Edition, details the principles, knowledge, and skills that will help coaches build a foundation for their decisions and actions. Working through the text, coaches will define their philosophy, identify their objectives, and determine their coaching style. Next, coaches will learn how to become skilled communicators and motivators by applying psychological principles and recommendations for positive management of athletes’ behavior. Knowing the skills required for each sport is as important as knowing how to teach and shape those skills. With Successful Coaching, coaches will become more effective instructors as they learn the games approach to teaching technical and tactical skills, a proven method of helping athletes become smart tactical players of their sports.
Successful Coaching also discusses the team management responsibilities of the coach and details how to manage relationships with athletes, other coaches, administrators, medical personnel, officials, parents, and the media. Also addressed are the legal responsibilities of a coach and strategies for reducing risk.
Readers will find the latest research in the fields of physical training and nutrition, including new information on creatine, energy drinks, caffeine, and hydration. Successful Coaching also provides a straightforward discussion of drug abuse among athletes, offering all-new content on methamphetamines, prescription drug abuse, and drug-testing recommendations.
Sidebars provide focused insights on a range of coaching topics and offer personal encouragement and advice for coaches throughout the season. In addition, quotes from well-known coaches provide perspective on what it takes to be a successful coach. Reflection questions at the end of each chapter encourage readers to think critically about the content and apply it to their own current or future coaching situations.
Written by a coach for coaches, Successful Coaching blends the latest research and accepted practices in the sport sciences with practical advice from seasoned coaching veterans. Successful Coaching helps readers think critically about their motivation for being a coach and establish a coaching philosophy and style that pave the way for a fulfilling sport experience for coaches and their athletes.
The fourth edition of Successful Coaching has been carefully revised to meet or exceed the guidelines of the National Council for Accreditation for Coaching Education and the recommendations of the National Standards for Sport Coaches.Successful Coaching is the primary text for the Coaching Principles online or classroom course offered by the American Sport Education Program (ASEP). Coaching Principles is a part of ASEP’s Bronze Level coaching certification, a three-step certification involving coursework essential for coaching any sport, teaching sport first aid, and conveying advanced sport-specific knowledge.
Part I: Principles of Coaching
Chapter 1. Developing Your Coaching Philosophy
Chapter 2. Determining Your Coaching Objectives
Chapter 3. Selecting Your Coaching Style
Chapter 4. Coaching for Character
Chapter 5. Coaching Diverse Athletes
Part II. Principles of Behavior
Chapter 6. Communicating With Your Athletes
Chapter 7. Motivating Your Athletes
Chapter 8. Managing Your Athletes’ Behavior
Part III. Principles of Teaching
Chapter 9. The Games Approach
Chapter 10. Teaching Technical Skills
Chapter 11. Teaching Tactical Skills
Chapter 12. Planning for Teaching
Part IV. Principles of Physical Training
Chapter 13. Training Basics
Chapter 14. Training for Energy Fitness
Chapter 15. Training for Muscular Fitness
Chapter 16. Fueling Your Athletes
Chapter 17. Battling Drugs
Part V. Principles of Management
Chapter 18. Managing Your Team
Chapter 19. Managing Relationships
Chapter 20. Managing Risk
Rainer Martens, PhD, has coached at the youth, high school, and collegiate levels and has studied sport as a research scientist. The founder and president of Human Kinetics, he also started the American Sport Education Program, the largest coaching education program in the United States. An internationally recognized sport psychologist, Martens is the author of more than 80 scholarly articles and 17 books. He has also been a featured speaker at more than 100 conferences around the world and has conducted more than 150 workshops and clinics for coaches and athletes at all levels.
After receiving his PhD in physical education from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1968, Martens was a member of its faculty for 16 years. A past president of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education, he has been recognized for his contribution to sport by the National Recreation and Park Association and by his induction into the National Association for Sport and Physical Education Hall of Fame. He has received Distinguished Alumni awards from Hutchinson High School, Emporia State University in Kansas (where he earned a bachelor's degree), the University of Montana (where he earned a master's degree), and the University of Illinois.
Martens continues to enjoy sport today, especially senior softball. He has been playing slowpitch softball for 45 years and currently plays for and coaches the most successful senior slowpitch team in the United States, the Florida Legends. In 2009, he was inducted into the National Senior Softball Hall of Fame. Martens and his wife, Julie, live in Ormond Beach, Florida.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
The differences between bullying and hazing and how you can prevent it
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically.
Bullying and Hazing
Bullying is an act of aggression by someone or a group with the intent of harming a person either physically or psychologically. Bullying may occur by hitting, threatening, intimidating, teasing and taunting, and name-calling, or by more subtle attacks such as spreading rumors or encouraging others to reject the person. Bullies target individuals whom they perceive are weaker or more vulnerable.
Hazing is any action or situation created by a group to intentionally produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule among those wishing to join the group. Hazing is a form of bullying, but the two differ in the following ways:
- Bullying excludes the victim from a group whereas hazing is a ritual imposed on a person who wants to join a group.
- Bullies often act alone or in small groups, but hazing commonly involves an entire group or team.
Hazing can take many forms, including the following:
- To make victims act in embarrassing or humiliating ways
- To swear and yell insults at victims
- To deprive individuals of sleep or restrict personal hygiene
- To force victims to eat vile substances
- To physically beat individuals
- To force binge drinking
- To sexually assault victims
You've likely heard a lot about bullying and hazing in the media of late. In one survey, 42 percent of 6th graders reported being bullied, with 14 percent being injured from bullying. Today the Internet is frequently used to embarrass, humiliate, or harass individuals through messages or video—what's called cyberbullying. Hazing is no less frequent: 48 percent of high school students report some form of hazing. Many experts suspect that the occurrence of bullying and hazing is far more pervasive than reported because victims are embarrassed to report what occurred or are fearful of retaliation should they do so.
Some coaches tolerate bullying by older or more prominent athletes on the team. “Boys will be boys” is their attitude, and we should add that “girls will be girls” because hazing is common among girls, although less so than with boys. But even mild bullying may result in unseen but substantial harm to the victim. Bullying often leads to depression when a victim can't see a way out, and depression can lead to suicide in extreme cases. As a coach of character you must have zero tolerance for any bullying on your team.
You should also have no tolerance for hazing. After decades of darkness, hazing of athletes by athletes is being recognized as serious misbehavior. In the past, coaches often saw hazing as part of a ritual to build team cohesiveness, and condoned or even encouraged such practices. But hazing is contrary to the moral values of the Athletes' Character Code we have considered in this chapter. As a coach you should recognize subtle and outrageous hazing practices for what they are—the mistreatment of fellow human beings. Incidents such as the following are demanding that coaches take an active role in preventing hazing:
- New York—Four members of a high school football team sodomized members of the junior varsity. The players were charged with a crime, and the coaches were
fired. - California—The senior girls of a high school soccer team forced four freshman girls to drink alcohol until the girls vomited or collapsed.
- New Jersey—Freshman soccer players were abused physically and thrown in the mud as part of an annual hazing event. The head coach and two assistants were dismissed because they allowed it to happen.
So what can you do to prevent bullying and hazing among your team members? See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven action steps.
Using social media to communicate positively
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television.
Coaching and Social Media
When we think of coaching, we think of face-to-face interaction, but of course coaches communicate by phone, through written messages, and by appearances on such media as radio and television. And today you have more ways of communicating thanks to an array of social media, which is defined as any type of shared social interaction between individuals, groups, and companies via the Internet. It includes blogging and podcasting, using social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube and photos on Flickr, and using e-mail to send and receive messages. You and your athletes might also use instant messaging, online chatting, or texting on cell phones to communicate.
Another way to communicate with your team is to set up a team website. Companies make it easy for you by providing the structure to create your own website. Using a provider's templates, you can post your schedules, rosters, player profiles, and team and individual statistics. You can communicate other information to your team such as team policies, playbooks, and athlete codes of conduct. You control the content and access to the site. For examples of these website services, go to www.hometeamsonline.com/sportswebsites and http://oneplaybook.com/pub/home.aspx.
Facebook and Twitter have become major ways of communicating with athletes and fans. Coaches are using these social media to
- keep in touch with their fans, seeking to strengthen their fan loyalty,
- keep themselves informed about the public perception of their team,
- communicate with donors, sponsors, and the media,
- recruit athletes to their program,
- keep members of the team informed, and
- monitor what their athletes are communicating through social media.
After several instances of college athletes communicating negative information about their coaches and fellow teammates, sports programs are placing restrictions on student-athletes' use of social media to comment about the team. We should anticipate that the inappropriate use of social media by athletes will not be confined to the college level. Thus high school and club coaches, as well as college coaches, will need to establish policies and educate their athletes about the use of social media.
Some coaches are choosing to ignore social media, dismissing it as simply an electronic version of neighborhood gossiping, but that is a mistake. Your athletes are frequent users of social media, and you need to be prepared to help them use social media wisely when communicating about your team, in the same way you would help them in learning how to talk with the press.
And don't overlook the value of these social media in helping you fulfill all your duties as a coach. If your team relies on parental, corporate, and community support, you need to become informed about the use of social media to help you communicate with your public. Pete Carroll of the Seattle Seahawks is a skillful user of social media to build fan loyalty, and John Calipari of the University of Kentucky has over a million Twitter fans with whom he communicates.
Social media gives you a powerful way to interact efficiently with your public. E-mail is a great way to communicate directly with your team and other individuals involved with the team. However, some young people do not check their e-mail often, so you might find Facebook and group texting more effective ways to communicate with your athletes. When you want to be more personable, when how you say something is really important, use the phone or meet face to face to communicate. Some people avoid speaking directly with individuals by using e-mail or instant messaging when they anticipate a difficult conversation, such as a confrontation or conflict. That's almost always a mistake. Face-to-face conversations allow you to see facial expressions and hear tone of voice, important aspects of working through conflict. So not only do you need to be skillful in what you communicate with your athletes, you need to be wise in what medium or media you use to communicate your messages. See Successful Coaching, 4th edition, for seven guidelines you should consider in developing policies regarding the use of social media for your team.
When to teach whole versus part practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
Whole Versus Part Practice
The whole method of practice is obvious: The whole technique is practiced intact. The part method is actually the whole-part-whole method. You teach the whole method as just outlined, practice it in parts, and then recombine the parts back into the whole via practice.
What's the best method to use? When possible, it's best to practice the whole technique; this avoids spending time combining the parts back into the whole and helps your athletes learn how to use the technique in the context of a contest. However, if the technique is so complex that athletes can't develop a good mental plan (the first stage of learning), then you should break the technique into parts.
When to Break Techniques Into Parts
To decide whether to break a technical skill into parts, you need to evaluate the task on two dimensions: its complexity and the interdependence of the parts. Two questions will help you determine task complexity, or how difficult it may be for athletes to develop a good mental plan:
- How many parts are there to the task?
- How mentally demanding is the task?
Next you need to evaluate how interdependent or independent the parts of the task are. That is, how closely is one part of the technique related to the next? For example, in the tennis serve, you can fairly easily separate the ball toss from the swing of the racket, but you really can't separate the racket swing and contact with the ball from the follow-through.
When the task is low in complexity and high in interdependence, have your athletes practice the whole technique. By contrast, part practice is better when the task is high in complexity and low in interdependence. I've illustrated this in figure 10.3, indicating how I would apply these rules for certain sport skills. You will notice that I've listed only one technique in the part method category. This is because few technical skills are low in interdependence. However, a great many technical skills can be taught by using a combination of the part and whole methods.
Where to Break Techniques Into Parts
Now you have some guidance as to when to break a technique into parts, but how do you know where to make the breaks in the sequence of movements? This is another judgment you must learn to make, perhaps with help from more experienced coaches. In general, the more interdependent the movement, the more it should be left intact. When you analyze a technique, look for points in the movement at which there is less interdependence, or where there is a transition from one type of movement to another. Most technical skills have a preparation phase, an action phase, and a follow-through phase. Often you can break between the preparation and action phases; it's usually not easy to break between the action and follow-through phases.
Integrating Parts Back Into the Whole
You can teach technical skills many different ways. Just because you are breaking a technique into parts, for example, doesn't mean that you must teach each part independently. If an athlete has mastered a few parts of a technique but still needs work on others, or if an athlete needs work on putting parts together, you might select the progressive-part method. Start by having an athlete practice the first part of a technique. Then move on to the next part by having the athlete practice it together with the first part. Continue by progressing through each part of the technique until the athlete is finally practicing the entire technique.
Attention focus is an approach that involves practicing the entire technique but concentrating on only one aspect of the technique. You might instruct discus throwers, for example, to practice the entire throw but to focus only on keeping the discus as far as possible from the body as they pull. This method tends to work best with higher-skilled athletes. Athletes who are still trying to learn the fundamentals of a technique may have difficulty focusing on only one aspect.
Related Books
