Make practices fun
That is why you are all here!
“Work without joy is drudgery. Drudgery does not produce champions.”
— John Wooden
The Number One reason kids play sports is to have fun.
But, remember: “Fun” isn’t necessarily aimless activity without structure or impact. We humans are hard-wired to enjoy things that aren’t easy to do. When we encounter a puzzle or problem, our brain secretes a number of neurotransmitters, including dopamine, a chemical that makes us, to quote the Godfather of Soul, feel good. Bonus: Our brains spit out a second round of feel good chemicals when we actually solve the problem.
Our players have fun when we help them become better athletes, better people, better teammates.
Winning is, generally, fun. But more than 90% of young athletes would rather play on a losing team than sit the bench on championship team. Why? Because they aren’t improving as athletes if they aren’t playing and improving is what’s fun.
Below are 15 tips and tricks you can use to help ensure your players can have more fun during practices.
Design a fun practices:
Use challenges and competitions to excite your players and help sharpen their focus. Try warping the rules to bring different skills to the forefront, award non-traditional points (for example, points for defensive success), have mini-teams play against each other, or try elimination (“knockout”) drills. Keep the competition friendly, emphasize support for teammates, and adjust the competitions so your best athletes don’t win all the time.
Incorporate mystery and surprise in your practice plan. It works for local TV news, why wouldn’t it work for youth sports? Promise a fun drill, surprise guest, or even something as simple as cool stickers for accomplishing a set goal within a drill. Even “I haven’t decided yet” can help keep your players in-the-moment rather than spinning off into goofy land.
Allow unstructured play before practice. This is a great way to help players have fun. The play should be safe, positive, and at least a tiny bit related to your sport (running, tag, climbing, ultimate, tips, are all examples of activity that don’t need coach direction and build conditioning, strength, agility, and flexibility). Unstructured play should also end as soon as practice starts (and practice always starts on time).
Consider making the first drill of practice a fun one. Nothing like setting the tone right away!
However you start your session, change the structure and order of your practices over time. Maybe start with team drills one practice and individual stations the next. Work on defense for an entire session and split evenly with offense the next. Shake things up so that your practices don’t become predictable and your team remains engaged.
Coordinate events and activities outside of practice to help form social bonds between players and between families. A “parents vs kids” scrimmage brings the team together as much as an ice cream surprise after practice, movie night, or post-game pizza party.
Bring a speaker to practice and build a playlist from your players’ recommendations. Blast the tunes during warmups, stretching, or anytime the level of instruction is minimal as a fun way to energize your players (and their families).
Run a fun practice:
One of the most important rules on your team is that everyone brings positive vibes with them. Encouragement and recognition of the things we are doing right builds morale, teamwork, and self-respect. This doesn’t mean the coach can’t correct a player. We have to because it’s literally our job. But there’s a difference between describing what to do properly and focusing on what was done incorrectly.
Don’t obsess over winning. Obsess over your players’ improvement and your team’s cohesion. That doesn’t mean winning is unimportant, just that winning is the byproduct of the things that are important: Player improvement and team bonding. Winning is, also, very often out of our control (as is much of life). Help your players focus on what they can control and your players will have more fun.
You and your assistants can set the tone for a fun practice by showing your own enthusiasm and excitement. For most of us, practice is a mini-vacation during the drudge of a regular work week. Go ahead and enjoy yourself. Give permission to your players to enjoy themselves, too. A good attitude is the right kind of contagious.
Part of the fun we have when learning something new, is when we can take ownership over our own development. A sense of personal responsibility and autonomy are vital to building self-confidence and motivating ourselves to continue to work hard. Take suggestions from players on what skills the team should focus on. Let the team choose between two or more options to develop a skill. Give your players a say in their own development and watch how much more engaged they become. Institute a team rule that players are responsible for their own equipment (not their parents).
But don’t sacrifice growth and development for aimless activity without structure or impact. You’re the coach. You know what your players should be improving. Guide them rather than lead them. As coach you must retain ultimate control over your team.
Encourage your players to cheer for each other. All these other suggestions are great ways to keep a player’s attention directed at learning during a drill. But you will earn double the impact when their teammates applaud and encourage them. This reinforces the player’s desire to achieve and builds the sense of team loyalty they will all need in order to thrive throughout a long season.
Team cheering can also help individual players keep up a positive stream self-talk instead of slipping into disappointment and frustration. If our teammates focus on the positive and what to do instead of the negative, then so can we. And then we will be in the right headspace to pay them back if when they make a mistake or don’t perform as well as they would like.
Celebrations are an important way to mark a milestone, no matter how small. As long as it is truly earned, heartfelt, and universal, recognition of an achievement is like the push we give to another person on swing: They are just going to keep going higher. Rewards don’t have to be big things. A game ball. A sticker. The responsibility to lead warmups. Any kind of nod for a job well-done keeps us motivated.
As the coach, you will build your own team culture and you will have the most influence on it. However, every team is different and every kid is different. What worked one year or for one player, may not work the next time. Be flexible and try different things without sacrificing the core values you wish to emphasize.