Posts in category Coaching
Dynamic Fitness Video: The Step-Over
Here’s a quick look at the step over drill, also known as the scissor drill. Girls are asked to perform continuous step-overs for 30 seconds over and around a flat cone at their feet. For some, this is a fitness challenge. Their weakness shows in sloppy steps, kicking the cone, or flat-footed stepping rather than bounding off the balls [...]
Fit2Finish Will Present ‘Fit to...
Fit2Finish will be presenting Fit to the Final Whistle to coaches, trainers and athletes at the Virginia Youth Soccer Association Convention in Richmond on February 3 and 4.
Coaches want their athletes to stay strong and execute their game plan all the way to overtime – if necessary. But finding time during practice to add conditioning [...]
Work and Recovery are Essential to Hi...
Stretching and chatting build team especially for girls
Recovery. Every athlete needs it. Suzy Germain says it’s missing from her son’s topnotch team and that’s taking a toll.
Wayne Goldsmith, in his January 4th blog post, has a great mnemonic to help us think about how recovery – that is, time off from sport-specific [...]
Fail More, But Try to Avoid Mistakes
Team gathers for post game chat
Many girls, by nature, are tentative. Go ahead. Watch the U7 boys play. They throw themselves into the game, into their opponent, get whistled for rough play. Then watch the girls. They fight over offering the other player the ball. A whole new species.
Girls are tentative, not necessarily because they are bei [...]
Suzy Germain on “the Coach-Athl...
One of the hardest issues for kids in today’s competitive youth sports setting is playing time. No one likes to spend time on the bench; the fun is in playing the game. But, the more competitive the team, the more important the win. Coaches whose jobs and reputation depend on fielding a winning team play their starters. Maybe only their [...]
Suzy Germain Says We Need to Give Kid...
Here’s a riddle:
What do you call something you do almost every day, all week, year round? … work, right?
What do we call it when our kids do it? … sports. Is anyone laughing?
Neither are our kids. They’re paying the price in exhaustion, stress, injury, and burnout. The scenario sounds very much like the popular docume [...]
Legacy of Joe Paterno: Hold All Coach...
If you Google ”coach” today, you’ll find the debacle of ex-coach Joe Paterno. But below this (after Coach handbags) you’ll land not on “sport coaching” but on personal or life coaching. These are people who will help you achieve your personal and professional goals. The word, I’m told, originated from [...]
Young Athlete Says the Key to a Good ...
I met a lacrosse player yesterday who was aching to be released from physical therapy and get back on the field. This is his senior year in high school and college coaches have shown an interest in him.
I ask him how he likes his coach.
“He’s okay,” the kid says, but his frown tells me otherwise.
I know the former lacrosse c [...]
Coaching Well: Saturday Only Travel S...
My friend and fellow coach Kimo Kaloi has formed a new U9 travel Soccer team with Chantilly Youth Association in Chantilly Virginia.
CYA Blaze banner, proudly flying their own direction
They’re called the CYA Purple Blaze and they play on Saturdays. Only Saturdays. He petitioned the club and then submitted a request with the Old Dominio [...]
Coaching Well: Why Do We Coach?
This article was originally published in The Fairfax Times, June 2010.
It so saddens me to read the endless stories of remarkably talented athletes like Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger behaving badly– these lives, full of potential, are then misspent by their worst natures. We are left asking:
“How did we let these athlete [...]
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