How to not over coach baseball players

Coaching to the limits

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• a serving attitude

1. Forget everything you thought was right in coaching. Forget the yelling, Forget the criticism, Forget the negative attitude, Forget the thought that you can still play, Remember you are there to teach a game to kids. Remember this is a game that has been around along time and the best coaches are ones that can identify good talent and develop that talent as it is needed.

2. Pay attention. Whether you are coaching your on blood or you are coaching a team of players, understand their differences and protect those, as it is about directing the child not making you the best coach in the league, because at the end of the day We as coaches and should give the credit to the players and be excited when they perform.
   Pay attention to different abilities.
   To start you may have a short session where you can test speed, while making a player or players run while timing them. This will give you a good understanding of athletic ability. Remember that speed is a gift that is tough to gain and tough to lose and is usually a good indicator of athletic ability.
   Pay attention to arm strength as compared to other players again this is another great way to understand strength and muscle formation at young ages.
   Pay attention timidness and aggressive players. Some players take longer to catch on but when they do may surprise you.
   Remember you are there to set them up to succeed and not to fail.
   All of these just mentioned will help you identify players, now your job is to put them in drills where they will not feel confidence in what they are doing. For Example; do not put the slowest runner in a position where they are constantly competing against faster players, he/she will never win and may even quit shortly.

3. Find drills that every child will be able to do with some regularity, do not be scared to event your own drills, as I have invented the most ridicules drills to build strength of one player, just so that player could do something well.

4. Check your ego. IT IS NOT ABOUT YOU. Do not be that coach. your time as come and gone. It is okay to be competitive but some kids will never be as good as their coach or as good as their coach thinks they should be, so let them figure that when the time comes, because it will come. If you are a parent read the previous sentence. I am by no means a softy when it comes to winning but I have been very successful by stick to certain truths.

5. I am working on some books with instructions, coaching, understanding players, and loving the game that I assume most of us grew up loving. If you did not then you might have missed out. These are based on years of coaching and many lessons given to all ages. If you are interested please give some response.

[mofrazier]

on 6/26/2009 Thank you for your interest. I am putting together a series on istructions for young players. I also will be posting more articles on EHOW. I have been around many young players and have seen wrong, bad, and sometimes terrible techniques to coaching. If you have any specific questions please feel free.

[lovebaseball42]

on 6/23/2009 I would love to read what you have to say and learn from all your experiences. I want to be a baseball coach. I love the game, and I love working with kids.