One of the ultimate ironies of youth and high school sports occurs when coaches discipline “lazy” players by making them skate. Why is that ironic? Because it is lazy coaching.
Responsible Coaches who see players in need of conditioning should help them get it. And Responsible Coaches who see players in need of discipline should help them get that.
But too often, coaches fall back on skating or other forms of conditioning to punish players for anything from poor performance in games to breaking team rules. Among the reasons Responsible Coaches should avoid using conditioning as punishment:
- Your players will come to despise running and other forms of conditioning because it feels like punishment. You want them to love skating so that they will want to do skating dirlls and become the best-conditioned athletes possible.
- You are abandoning an opportunity to teach life lessons about discipline, which may be better accomplished by talking about the subject. You can use the famous John Wooden quotation, “Discipline yourself, and others won’t need to.” This approach also sets an example, as players see you exercising the discipline required to coach responsibly, rather than giving in to the knee-jerk compulsion to punish.
So, what are some of your options for correcting problems in either behavior or performance? For behavioral issues – anything from tardiness to a failure to live up to the principles of Honoring the Game -- you have a wide range of options, such as addressing the problem in private discussion with the player and involving the player’s parents when necessary.
Within the flow of a practice session, you might ignore undesirable behavior while reinforcing the desired behavior. For example, instead of “John, why are you always the last one into our meeting circle every time I blow my whistle?” try “Bill, Bob and Fred, I appreciate all your hustle…consistently getting back to our meeting circle at the end of every drill.”
Behavioral problems aside, if conditioning is the culprit that robs your players of peak performance, then you might add conditioning to your practice. But don’t position it as punishment.
For example, instead of “Because we fell apart toward the end of our last game, we are going to skate extra today,” try “We fell a little short in our last game in part because of conditioning, so this week I am introducing more conditioning components to our practices so we can compete as well as possible in our next game.”
Then, instead of a distinct series of skating lines with no pucks, you might just incorporate more conditioning into the practice of your sport’s skills.
You also avoid resentment that comes from mindless, endless sprints. You make the practice fun so that players will want to continue acquiring the skills and conditioning they need. And you demonstrate creativity and discipline in your problem-solving. You then can explain to your players after the drill that creativity and true discipline are better approaches to problem-solving in sports and in the rest of life.
