Over Coaching at the End

As a young coach I remember how I used to talk to kids at meets. I remember throwing the kitchen sink at them. I also remembering trying my best to go over all the details in the weeks leading up to a big meet. Its like cramming for a test the night before; it doesn't all get taken in, and tends to just overwhelm.

I remember being a young Head Age-Coach at RCA and going to the ASCA Age-Group Clinic put on by John Leonard. He noted about not over-coaching at meets, and many of the coaches there seemed to already understand that you don't do this. I recall evaluating myself truthfully and seeing that I had this tendency. I fixed this, and have had much better culmination meets, and less stressed about big meets.

John Wooden talked about how being successful is preparing successfully. The success to prepare that is the true accomplishment not the result of the competition. Looking at how I approach culmination meets now, is that the preparation has been done and I trust that I prepared successfully therefore you don't need to do a whole lot of coaching towards the end.

I'll admit that I have had a hard time with sticking to this discipline as I want to just review and teach some more. I think I did well for the Holiday Meet, and now on to the week before WAG where I plan to just keep the bodies active and repeat the importance of doing the little things, and not trying to adjust strokes and skills too much this week.

I trust in my plan and believe that I have taught the things that I needed to teach. I coach Age-Groupers, so of course they might not have grasped everything that I wanted them to grasp, but I put it out there, and hopefully they picked up most of it.