It’s not easy to be a sports coach. Each athlete under the coach is unique in the way they respond to training, instructions, diet and communication. They come from diverse background and everyone has a unique way of responding to a stimuli.
But these super humans need help sometimes. Here are the top areas where they need help:
- Individualisation of Training: Each athlete has unique abilities, needs and goals. The coach has to understand that and design a program accordingly. All this while ensuring the team’s performance is optimal.
- Injury Prevention and Management: how to push athletes without them overtraining, which leads to injury. Balancing training intensity with injury prevention is a significant challenge for the coaches.
- Time to be assigned for individual training and group training: Any training session is a combination of individuals skill training, SnC training and group training and team building. Athletes require different combinations of skill and SnC as per their development plan and performance. The prioritisation of which to be done in what quantity for an individual is often Coaches prerogative.
- Athlete Buy-in and compliance: Athlete may not always appreciate the importance of a program that is designed for them. Each one of them has a different understanding of compliance. This is because they are from different backgrounds and the value system they may have been exposed to. The coach has to use all the interpersonal skills to get a buy-in and compliance.
- Monitoring and adjusting workloads: Prevention of overtraining while the athletes push the bar is a complex balance. Often coaches take help of technology and workload measurement tools to get critical data of the athlete.
- Recovery Management: Balancing intense training with sufficient time for recovery. Each athlete responds to training differently. Their recovery is influenced by their Sleep, Nutrition, Hyderation and external stress they maybe experiencing. The coach needs to have an understanding of the same and give sufficient recovery time. This becomes a challenge especially during peak season time, where peak performance needs to balance recovery needs.
- Nutritional Guidance: Food habits are influenced by regional, cultural and individual preferences. The coach has to identify the situation to where nutrition can influence performance and further get a buy in for the athlete to follow the same.
- Dealing with varied level of experience: Juniors, seniors, Pro, SemiPro, amateur. A coach gets all kinds to athletes. They have to be given appropriate feedback and also programs which suits their abilities and goals.
- Constant upgradation of certification and technology: As if Athletes are not enough, there are constant upgradations of coaching approaches and they require constant upgradation. Even technology is evolving and the coach needs to be updated.
EvolveSport is designed to help coaches focus on building winning teams. Once the coach is part of the environment the app ensures critical information is available with the coach and an objective discussion can happen with key stakeholders. Give it a try.
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