You want to lead this session? OK!

Last time we talked about how to keep children excited about sports and training. We have to make sure they feel safe, valued, and have fun. This will keep them fired up for more and have them coming back.

Last week I had a very interesting situation in my club. One of the older kids was asking me if he can run a training session while I would assist him. I still remember them all talking that I am just shouting and making them work and that everyone could do it. So I said yes.

You are the head coach for today

We agreed that he would lead the next training session and I would assist him mostly with the kindergarten kids. As homework he should come up with a plan on what they will be doing and try to execute on his plan as best he could.

Warm-up

This went quite smoothly because this is the most repeated part of our training sessions. He built a small obstacle course and they were running in circles for a few minutes after which they had a quick stretch and it was time for the main part. The only thing he struggled here was keeping the attention of everyone on him while stretching. Smaller children generally don’t like stretching because it hurts and who doesn’t want to avoid a little pain but all in all there weren’t a lot of problems.

Tae Kwon Do techniques

I have to admit he did a good job coming up with a general plan for the main part where he repeated the techniques we did 2 days before but instead doing them in place they executed them while moving in a particular stance. But now the problems started to pile up.

Some didn’t really understand what they had to do because they were quite new so he had to explain it to them a little more while others were goofing around and making noise. He had to discipline them while forgetting what they were doing and repeating the same technique twice.

Realizing he lost them he looked in my direction but I just shrugged and watched. A minute later I stepped in just to keep the training session going.

He switched to kicks after that and this went far smoother because who doesn’t like kicking things :)

Cool down and play time

Play is a key part of our training sessions because it helps to ease any built up tension and also provides a nice way to relax after working out for an hour. The only problem is that he wanted to start playing almost 20 minutes before the end of the session so I had to step in again and suggest some alternative activities and drills for the next 15-ish minutes.

It’s not that easy

After the session was over I asked him how it went and he said it was OK but that he lost a little track of time because some of the kids weren’t listening to him and giving him a hard time.

Welcome to my world of coaching kids from the age of 3 to 13 :)

I am sure he changed his mind about “yelling and making us work” now that he has been in my shoes and he will appreciate more everything that goes on before we step into the gym.

Planning my sessions

Over the past 2 months I have been using Clubs Craft to plan all of our activities and have already a list of things I will be adding in the near future but more on that another time.

If you would like to use a digital tool to manage your sports club you can fill out this little survey and we will give you Clubs Craft for free for two months!

Until next time,
Don’t overtrain