Accelerate Your Coaching: Insights from Top Coaches In The Country

Are you ready to improve your coaching approach with insights from the nation’s top coaching minds? Learn how to elevate your game with practical strategies from legends like Les Spellman, Tony Villani, Tony Holler, CiCi Murray, Alan Bishop, and more. Over the past 12 years, we’ve distilled their wisdom into key principles we want to share with you! Discover how to build a strong foundation for your athletes, avoid the pitfalls of overcoaching, and focus on what truly works. 

By fostering a collaborative community and supporting fellow coaches, you’ll find that the more you give, the more you receive. Tune in for actionable advice and proven strategies to help you become a more effective and respected coach in your community.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:27

What is up, guys? Today I'm going to be covering some tips that I've picked up from being around some of the top coaches in the country. I'm very fortunate in the opportunities that I've had to spend around some of these coaches Les Spellman, tony Villani, tony Haller, cc Murray, alan Bishop and many, many others that I just feel fortunate to have had the opportunity to do so and I wanted to give you guys some insights that I've got over the last 12 years from those experiences so that you guys can take those tips and get ahead in your coaching game. So number one is going to be mastering your craft. That one is obvious to a lot of you, but the thought to me, as I've watched these coaches working with their athletes, is the more that you understand and the more effort you put into the actual education piece inside of this, you're going to be able to convey that information in a more simple way to your athletes. So the more you understand, the easier that communication is and the more you're gonna be able to dumb down a concept and get the results that you want. So that's why I talk about okay, let's master our craft, be dedicated to education and continue to learn, and that way you know that information coming from you to somebody else is much more deliverable and it makes a lot of sense because you've already worked through the kinks of that.

Speaker 1: 1:50

Number two it's going to be the basics always prevail. This one is super easy to get, especially as a new coach to get ahead of yourself and start to do things that you see on the internet or you see athletes being shared doing. A lot of times they just don't line up with what your population needs. The basics will always prevail. So creating that foundation for your athletes and focusing on the repetitives. The best athletes in the world have always said get very, very good at the basics and that's how you become an elite athlete. So don't put the cart in front of the horse. Don't just see something on Instagram and think you need to implement it directly into your athletes. Think about what's going to work best, go through rhyme and reason and from there you can actually give the right exercises to your athletes, as well as the right experience.

Speaker 1: 2:42

Number three say limit your feedback. This one was huge for me because I'm a coach. That is super excited, brings a lot of energy to the floor and I had a tendency to overcoach athletes and confuse them. It's important to let your athletes athlete Okay, simple concept, but limit your feedback. Make sure it's very precise and something that's going to affect them at that moment and, uh, always consider that you can revisit with that athlete after the session is done or via all the different apps social media, video. There's a lot of ways to give feedback and, uh, it doesn't need to be all on the floor, because when you get an athlete thinking too much, they're not going to be able to perform as well.

Speaker 1: 3:23

Number four cut the fluff. As you work with higher level athletes or I have found myself, you know, getting opportunities to work with these higher level athletes it's really easy again to want to add in a bunch of different stuff and make it so packed and random and full because you're trying to prove yourself as a coach. You need to stick with what works and the basics and the principles, like we just talked about. There's a reason you're there with those athletes and that you've gotten to that level. So, as you do expand your clientele and get into higher level athletes, don't think that you need to jump into doing something different or crazy. They need the same stuff that a lot of the younger athletes need as well.

Speaker 1: 4:04

Number five get out of the scarcity mindset. So I think it's important for coaches to go beyond our ego and to think about helping other coaches, growing your network and giving as much as you can to the community. What I've found is the more you give, the more you receive, and there are plenty of athletes and youth that need help out there and in your community. Make sure that you are supporting other facilities and supporting other business owners and coaches, and I promise you that that will come back to you in the future and they'll speak praises of your name and, you know, give credit where credit's due. So definitely try to to give out as much as you can and don't get into that scarcity mindset and think that you have to to to make it necessarily a negative relationship with other gym owners or coaches. And then, lastly, I kind of wanted to get into something beyond that Um, when it comes to working with your athletes, one tip I would have is definitely track metrics.

Speaker 1: 5:07

A lot of times you hear about this in the industry, but not all coaches are doing it. It's important for your facility to be tracking, not only for feedback to you as a coach on where we can get better and those metrics can be whatever they can be whatever makes the most sense for your facility. But the tracking allows for competition, drive with the athletes and gives them a sense of accountability for their progress because they can see where they're at week to week. That's going to help them get in line to some of the other things that they're doing outside of the gym sleep, nutrition. It's going to open up those conversations when they're not performing the way that they want to. So for us, being a part of universal speed rating, being a speed lab, being able to track speeds and they can compare them not only to our facility but across the world, and then our internal tracking, that we do. We test our whole population every three months and this allows us to see where we're trending and where we need to get better. So those are a couple of things that I've picked up from coaches around the country as I've spent time with them.

Speaker 1: 6:08

I would add one bonus tip, and that's just make sure it's the best hour of their day. It's really easy again to think you have to crush these athletes, or it needs to be really serious. We get the best results when and athletes that are dedicated right, we get the most results and athletes that want to be there and they want to work hard when it's the best hour of their day period. So they need to enjoy the facility, they need to feel better when they leave than when they came in the door, and that's how you're going to keep that consistency which most coaches know. That's really the key to progress is the consistency and the dedication to showing up every day. So hopefully this is helpful.

Speaker 1: 6:45

You guys, get you guys ahead. If you have any questions, uh, send them over. We'd love to connect with you. Uh, coach D Hanson, on Instagram, hanson athletics, give us a follow. Uh, listen to some other podcasts, epic episodes, and if you are remote and interested in training or facility consulting or a team or club that you guys want to work with us, let us know. We work with teams around the country. So, appreciate you guys. Have a good day. Coach D out.