Program Culture is Built on the Field

I am not a believer in the coaching cliche, ‘How you do one thing is how you do everything.’ I use a steamer on my dress shirts and pants but I hardly take the time to fold my t-shirts before smashing them into a dresser drawer. Yet I do believe that the way you practice is the way you play.

In the book, The Program: Lessons From Elite Military Units for Creating and Sustaining High Performance Leaders and Teams, the leaders of The Program, LLC say,“Under pressure, you don't rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training.”

As a coach if your practices are an unorganized, chaotic, time-wasting mess- more than likely that will be what your sidelines will look like on gameday. While some sports programs have enough talent to overcome even the most egregious of coaching malpractice and mishaps, most do not. Eventually great culture with good talent will beat bad culture with great talent.

Caption: Pictured with my student assistant, Elyn, who kept me organized as a head coach

In the book, Thinking in Systems, the author discusses how our lizard brain strives for three things: safety, routines and systems. Practices for any sport must be planned and organized, but left with some flexibility to change the scope of emphasis depending on concerns.

When I was a head football coach I set our practice time limit to 90 minutes. Prior to the season, the coaching staff would meet and we would discuss how much time we thought should be allotted to different practice periods, and which types of periods we thought should be included on which days of the week. Take the time to make a plan for your plan.

As a staff, we could pivot the week of (or even day of) and focus more time on kick return if we struggled there the week prior, but that meant we were going to have to cut time from somewhere else to stick to our 90-minute cap. Be flexible, use your data for feedback, but also stay disciplined with your resources.

Safety, routines, and systems

All humans but especially teenagers, need to be: physically safe, psychologically safe, established in a routine, and surrounded by a system. Regarding football, if players know that Mondays are for our scheme, the kicking game, and fundamentals, they then know what to expect before practice even begins.

As an educator with nearly 20 years of experience in the classroom and as an administrator, I use the same tactic in my classroom. My students know that there are a small handful of “types” of days in class (project days, food truck race episode days, lecture-heavy days, etc.) and that each lesson will start off with Simon Sinek’s “Golden Circle.”

Caption: The Golden Circle from Simon Sinek

This gives the students a ‘comfort zone’ when walking into my classroom. There’s not just a routine, but also a safety net when you know exactly what is expected of you when you enter a room.

I have worked under head coaches that were extremely planned but allowed zero flexibility as many times as I’ve worked for coaches that have no plan and no set end time. Both of those situations lead to ineffective practices and a lot of wasted time and energy. Imagine telling your spouse you have no idea when practice will be over and actually meaning it?! That wouldn’t make for a happy living situation for anyone.

The win-win of practice planning

There isn’t much worse in coaching than watching your time be wasted away by poor planning. The programs I have coached in that had poor planning also had poor success on the field. When practices are planned, organized, and executed properly, everyone reaps the benefit and feels the reward.

Parents love organized practice plans because they know that when they arrive at the field house at 5:15, Jenny or Jamal will walk out at 5:20, come Hades or high water. Players loved our consistent and organized practices when I was a head coach because they had time for their social lives.

Coaches loved our disciplined practice habits because I valued their time on and off the field. Administrators loved our planning because they could schedule athletic trainers and field times far in advance. It’s a win for all stakeholders to plan and run an organized practice model.

Caption: My niece (age four) at pre-season practice in 2015.

When our players started to practice sloppily or uninterested, I would remind them that we were going to be done as soon as we completed our daily objectives. 90 minutes was the max, not the set-in-stone end time. This kept our athletes dialed in to get quality reps and to keep the practice field and gear organized for a quick field clean-up. The faster you go, the faster we go home.

Disciplined Coaching

That’s where the word discipline comes into play. Discipline isn’t screaming, yelling, or punishments. Those are what they are- screaming, yelling and punishments. Discipline is arriving on time with an organized plan of action.

Discipline is sticking to your practice organization and planning, but also being locked in to kaizen (continuous feedback loops) enough to have slight variations without collapsing into a little dab of ambiguity or change. Borrowing five minutes from team period to work on tracking ball carriers for five minutes longer is effective as long as everyone is on board with and aware of the change.

We lost Focus 3 CEO Tim Kight far too early, but his teachings had a massive impact on my life both as an educator and as a coach. I think about Tim Kight often and use his model to dig deeper into core values. His model, titled “BBO” or the need for leaders to define the belief, behavior and outcome of each core value.

When it comes to disciplined habits, one of my core values, the ‘belief’ is that discipline takes over when motivation goes on vacation. I borrowed the ‘behavior’ of disciplined habits from The Program, LLC, which is to arrive five minutes early with a notebook and a pen. The ‘outcome’ of the belief and behavior should be a focused and accountable culture.

Deliberate Coaching

In the fascinating book Peak: Unleashing Your Inner Champion Through Revolutionary Methods for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement in Work, Sports, and Life, the authors define three types of practice models- naive, purposeful, and deliberate.

Naive practice is defined as showing up, going through drills, and doing something repeatedly while hoping that closed, repetitive drills will drive change. As coaches, we know that drills alone don’t create greatness on the field, court, or ice.

Caption: First win of the 2016 season for the Willamina Bulldogs

While naive is the lowest form of practice, purposeful falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. Purposeful practice has well-defined, specific goals. Think of something like “catch 10 shots as a goal keeper without a drop.” While goal setting is just fine, what is the true method to achieving these 10 catches as a GK?

Deliberate practice is considered the gold standard of practice plans. In deliberate practice, the main purpose is to develop effective mental representations. The best athletes in the world play their best when they get into a flow state. But they also find success because they can feel when they’re off and what is going wrong in their swing or shot.

The four characteristics of deliberate practice are that it must be: 1- measurable, 2- competitive, 3- established as a field, and 4- coachable. There has to be winners and losers, incentives, new developments, and sophisticated training.

Practice Makes Perfect

As an athletics team, what you focus on is what you get back. As a head football coach, we won or lost 10 games because of a kicking situation. As the ‘boss’ I put a massive emphasis on special teams, even to the boredom of my fellow coaches and our players.

However, we dominated a team via onside kicks in 2015, returned a kickoff for a game winning touchdown in 2014, drilled a 40+ yard field goal to put ourselves up by nine points with under three minutes to go in 2012, booted seven touchbacks on seven kickoffs in a senior day win in 2013, and pulled off a massive upset on a 40-yard FG to take and hold a 15-14 win in ‘15.

Caption: Team photo in 2015 after the only district win in school history

I do believe that our 20-minute daily kicking game periods paid off over the four years that I served as the head football coach. What we define as discipline in the U.S. the Japanese call self-respect. NFL players that reach their generational wealth, changing 2nd and 3rd contracts, share two things: a 6:30 am reporting time to the team facility and daily recovery methods.

Having our athletic programs prepared mentally, physically and psychologically with an organized and consistent practice plan is paramount for success. Establish a high standard for culture, discipline and practice habits and hold that line regardless of your mood or energy level.

Conclusion

Recently, I served as the “athletic performance” coach for a youth hockey camp. The goalie's coach hand-picked his teenage counselors to work with two dozen goalies ages 10-15 at the camp. 10-15 is a wide gap in age and maturity; however the co-ed group was punctual, polite, focused, and attentive.

When I asked one of the counselors how they became so disciplined, his response was (and I paraphrase), ‘We wouldn’t want to disappoint the coach. He’s someone you want to do right by because he has high expectations.’

Having a well-planned camp, practice, or training session with high standards can create a positive, hard-working, and dedicated culture… and who wouldn’t want that?

Works Cited

Ericsson, Anders and Pool, Robert. Peak: Unleashing Your Inner Champion Through Revolutionary Methods for Skill Acquisition and Performance Enhancement in Work, Sports, and Life. HarperOne, 2016.

Kapitulik, Eric and MacDonald, Jake. The Program: Lessons From Elite Military Units forCreating and Sustaining High Performance Leaders and Teams. Wiley, 2019.

Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in Systems. Chelsea Green, 2008.