Psychological Principles for Football Coaches

I decided to re-read The Delaware Wing-T: an Order of Football recently, looking to glean new insight into our base offense I prepared for the coming season. Even though I’d read it before, I forgot how good some of the front matter is in that book, particularly the section on “A Psychology of Coaching”. In a season where I’m more focused on the leadership and experience aspects of the team than on Xs and Os, this resonated with me. I’ll share a small section of this chapter with you and give my commentary. This is Tubby Raymond’s review of the psychological principles for football coaches:

1. The ability to communicate with the players is the most important attribute a coach can have. Be honest and be yourself! As coaches we can’t place ourselves above the players, and we can’t be afraid to be vulnerable and honest. At times we have to role play the part of a tough coach, but if you have a softer side don’t be afraid to show it from time to time.
2. Two things motivate: Fear of failure and anticipation of reward. Not sure what to say about this other than “I agree”. Perhaps his key point is that motivation will be more intrinsic for players, and simply yelling or imploring about “caring” is unlikely to get you far as a coach.
3. View motivation from the players’ standpoint—be subtle, no one wants to be manipulated. Give your players credit to reason out choices you make as a coach. What comes to mind here is depth chart or position changes – if you haven’t been good at giving feedback to your players on a continuous basis, conversations like this will be harder to have.
4. Be sensitive to individual needs even though football is a team sport. The most successful motivating technique may be to help each player get what he wants! How do you know what each player wants? You have to ask them. As soon as our team is formed next week will be doing a goal-setting session with the players and parents. Each player will fill out their personal and team goals independently, and as coaches we will be able to extract common themes while preparing ourselves for 1x1 conversations with each player. From these goals we can have each player outline some steps in a plan to achieve them.
5. Answer questions before they are asked. A well-informed team doesn’t ask why. I love this one. One great application is when doing a quick explanation of a drill you are teaching: you must start with why, then what, then how. Anticipate challenging questions ahead of time.
6. Create an atmosphere of “ownership”. The team belongs to the players, not the coaches. This can be a bit more of a challenge in youth football, but there are a few things you can do. We will have players self-nominate for team captain roles, and prepare a brief speech to give in front of the team. We will give some ownership of practice routine to these players. Additionally, we will have players self organize for many of our routine everyday drills (EDDs).
7. Self-esteem begins with a sense of autonomy. Make the players responsible. This goes hand-in-hand with ownership. Autonomy needs to be earned, and still must be monitored by the coaches.
8. Successful pep talks are the result of certain circumstances and are not staged. You can’t fake this sort of thing. Sometimes the best pep talk is no talk at all, or a quick “you know what you need to do – let’s do it”.
9. Save your team’s emotional energy. Create stability. To me the right normal state for a team is a calm, workman-like demeanor. This includes the players and coaches. The more consistently loud and angry you are, the less your players will respond to you when you need them to. Contrast will get the players attention. Sometimes this means lowering your voice to make a point, drawing the players into you. Other times you may need to get animated.
10. Avoid the use of trite phrases. We’ve heard these before - “hit somebody”, “wrap up”, etc. Tubby makes fun of these with a joke example: “it isn’t the fish in the barrel, but the number of rungs on the ladder”. Clichés are a cop out for a coach. Use words that convey a very specific meaning, with a goal of achieving a specific outcome.
11. Help your players develop a plan. Again, this goes back to ownership. Tubby is a bit dismissive of “goal setting”, but what I think he really means is that goals without an action plan are useless. I agree with this. Have your players apply next action thinking for each goal they have: what is the next physical action I can take to bring me closer to this goal?