How Coaches Can Promote Learning, Progress, and Confidence

This week, I had the pleasure of attending a coaching seminar with Dr. Stefan Lottermann on the campus of our academy, TSG Wieseck. The former Bundesliga player and current coach, consultant, and instructor sat with us for three hours to nail down a few key points about coaching, training, and (motor) learning for success over the next ten years of player development. As a scientist, I appreciated his data-driven look at sport-specific coaching, but also how he values regeneration and physical fitness during the season as vital measures for limiting injury and maximizing player availability throughout the career. He also emphasized exactly how much the game is moving toward much more speed in play and more cognitive requirements, such as scanning and decision-making speed.

These points, however, are not limited to coaching in global football. They are relevant to strength and conditioning coaches, sport scientists, and any other coach who finds themselves working with developmental players - and professionals!

Coach as the role model

It is well-known in sport science and psychology that coaches play a critical role in players’ lives, especially as they move into late teen years and early adulthood, when the parents becomes “less important” as primary influences (Dr. Sophia Jowett has done valuable research here).

Players look to their coach for instruction and, in competition, security. Coaches who react chaotically or unexpectedly, especially by pulling trust from players and/or systems or changing plans at the last second, risk making their players insecure and potentially tanking their collective confidence as a team. When coaches become frantic, begin yelling and gesticulating, and/or start overreacting with quick decisions on the sidelines, players can sense the lack of security, preparation, and focus.

Lottermann emphasized that the coach’s job is to 1) deliver information and 2) give the team what they need to succeed. This often means putting on a viciously neutral poker face or positive voice, not pointing out mistakes (expert players absolutely know when they’ve made mistakes, so no need to further criticize or waste time here), and making decisions/sharing the information that players need in order to see success - even if the coach feels like screaming, criticizing, or panicking. Players need the trust of the coach and the security that their coach is not, indeed, in Freak-Out-Mode. That helps no one. Give them confidence.

Another factor in the Role Model Function is that coaches practice what they preach. Players should be mentally and physically fit before training? So should the coach. Players should self-reflect between sessions so that they are more concentrated in training? So should the coach. The expectation is that players be punctual or even early? So should the coach.

Coaches owe their players respect

Lottermann hit the nail on the head and spoke directly to my heart with this point. Coaches owe their players respect: physical, mental, emotional respect and at all times. Respect is central to the efficient, effective, positive coach-athlete relationship. Anything less than respect leads to blame, to devaluing, to lack of motivation and investment.

Coaches, of course, do want to be respected, as they are leaders and, in youth sport, authorities. As such, each player deserves respect from their coach too.

Laughing accelerates learning

“If you laugh at something, you will likely remember it more easily.”

All coaches, teachers, and instructors of any kind know that learning, not just mimicking or doing enough to get by in a drill, is the key to making long-term progress in a given area. But how can we learn more efficiently?

Lottermann was very clear that having fun is absolutely foundational to efficient, effective training. While Deliberate Play vs. Deliberate Practice can be a difficult balance to strike - how much “play” and how much “practice” in a session or week? - laughing, passion, and fun can be parts of deliberate practice as well. When players have fun, literally everything becomes easier. When they’re laughing, they’re more likely to remember too. Don’t throw out the fun, because it is valuable - yes, even for adults and professional players!

Keep intensity up over the training week

From a sport science perspective, I loved this point. When we play twice a week, it can be tempting to drop training intensity between games dramatically. However, because the competitive season in most of the world is so long (at least nine months of the year in Germany, for example), this leads to undertraining over time. Players lack the resilience to recover quickly, to put out intensity while tired. Matches are also not sufficient in and of themselves to keep player’s fitness capacity and tactical skills at a high level. For that, we need regular high-intensity training.

(Keep in mind that high-intensity training sessions do not have to be 2-4hrs long to be adequate. We do not need mass casualties after these sessions.)

Of course, this cannot be done at the risk of player health. Regeneration has to take place, as well as fitness training to manage injury risks and keep players available and capacity high. This means maximizing sleep, nutrition, and time off, but also getting the strength and speed work in - when capacity drops, everything becomes more intense than necessary.

Then - hit the pitch for high-intensity, focused sessions that mirror or exceed match play.

Think ten years ahead too

What will global football look like in a decade? That is the million dollar question in youth development academies like ours. That should be what we are training for, preparing our players for. Teaching them what they need to play well in football now in the 2020s only is doing them quite the disservice.

So - what will football require in ten years at the top level? Likely more speed in the game, which requires more athleticism, but certainly more cognitive factors, which are slowly becoming normalized in professional training environments. It is critical that we, as coaches, always have the future in the back of our minds as we plan and execute training sessions, as what is “adequate” in football right now will be obsolete by the time our youth players reach adulthood.

You can find out more about Dr. Stefan Lottermann and his work in international football and business here.