3 COMMON MISTAKES COACHES MAKE WITH VIDEO AND HOW TO AVOID THEM

Mistakes are par for the course when tak­ing on any new skill — watch­ing video is no excep­tion. Check out these coach­es’ sug­ges­tions to avoid the com­mon missteps.

Driving is an essen­tial part of near­ly every life. Unless you’re lucky enough to live in a city with effi­cient pub­lic trans­porta­tion or have the finan­cial means to pay some­one else to dri­ve, it’s almost impos­si­ble for an adult to live with­out get­ting behind the wheel.

At this point, you’ve done it so much you don’t even have to think about it. But look back to the first few times you got in the driver’s seat and the over­whelm­ing feel­ing of respon­si­bil­i­ty that brought. Between rapid stops and starts with the ped­als, curb checks and sim­ply under­stand­ing the rules of the road, few are proud of their first few weeks as a driver.

The same can be said of video use. Once coach­es see its pow­er, they’re typ­i­cal­ly gid­dy to get start­ed and improve their teams. But as with any new skill, there’s a learn­ing curve. We talked to some coach­es about their first expe­ri­ences with video and what they’ve learned to improve their processes.

Don’t Go Overboard

So much can be learned from video and there’s a temp­ta­tion to share every­thing. Coaches want to help their ath­letes improve, so why not give all the infor­ma­tion they can?

Unfortunately, this results in over­load for play­ers’ minds. At best, they take in some of the con­cepts (but not all). At worst, they start over­think­ing and freeze up dur­ing games. Robi Coker, the head coach at Plainview High School (Ala.), regrets over­whelm­ing his play­ers at first.

“I showed way too much video at a sin­gle sit­ting,” he said. ​“We now try to keep it less than 10 min­utes so they can focus for the entire session.”

Video pro­vides so many poten­tial solu­tions, but you have to care­ful­ly choose which strate­gies to employ. Pick only the most impact­ful oppo­nent ten­den­cies or ways to improve your squad and real­ly focus on those areas when shar­ing video with your players.

“Obviously you can’t take away every­thing. You don’t want to over­whelm your team,” Andre Noble, the head coach at Imhotep High School (Penn.), said. ​“So you look for the key empha­sis points. We know things as a staff, but we try to get things down to our kids in small phras­es. We don’t want them think­ing about 50 things. We want them to be small, sim­ple phrases.”

Trust Your Assistants

Players aren’t the only ones that can suf­fer from infor­ma­tion over­load. Coaches can become so locked in on find­ing the next insight, they suf­fer from burnout.

That’s where your assis­tants come in. Lean on them to not only gut check you on what you took from the video, but encour­age them to watch as well. Several pairs of eyes are bet­ter than one, and their per­spec­tive will catch things you may have missed.

“I’ve tried to take on a lit­tle too much myself at times,” Paul Romanczuk, the head coach at Archbishop John Carr (Penn.), said. ​“I should put a lit­tle more onto the assis­tant coach­es help­ing. If I don’t have them do it, how are they going to get any bet­ter mov­ing for­ward? That’s some­thing that I have a head coach under­stand now more than I did. It’s tough giv­ing up con­trol, but you can’t be every­where at once. You only have lim­it­ed time in the day as far as scout­ing goes.”

Focus on Your Team Too

The term ​“scout­ing” gen­er­al­ly con­jures up thoughts about the oppo­nent, dis­cov­er­ing their strengths and weak­ness­es and find­ing ways to chip away at them. But scout­ing your own team can be just as, if not more, important.

Because they see their team every day in prac­tice and watch every game mul­ti­ple times, coach­es believe they have a good han­dle on their own squad. This is true for the most part, but there’s always more to learn. Stats pro­vide a great way of using the video to find one’s own faults and look for ways to improve.

Check the shot charts to see where your team is strug­gling and devel­op ways to improve from that area. Take a look at line­up data to see if there are cer­tain groups of play­ers who real­ly mesh togeth­er on the court.

“Worry more about your team than the oppo­nent,” Coker said. ​“Do more self scout­ing and use video to help your play­ers become better.

Source: Hudl