How to Be a Better Coach

As a coach, you embody a teacher, a strategist, and a counselor for athletes. You are for your team and ensuring they are successful. Taking time for self-development can significantly impact your leadership, no matter what sport you coach. Here are five ways to become an excellent sports coach.

Learn How to Set Practical Goals

Developing concrete goals and expectations is crucial to managing a solid team. Goals should emphasize improvement over winning streaks. Setting challenging yet achievable goals can enhance the performance of an entire team. Moreover, instilling the importance of goal setting is one of the essential skills you can provide as a coach. It can also be helpful to develop goals for each athlete you work with and individualize these goals to focus on their wants and strengths.

Develop a Culture

Athletes typically perform better when they feel a sense of belonging. Developing and implementing a positive team culture can help keep athletes motivated and maintain a high level of synergy. Culture is a coach’s philosophy put into action. Motivate each team member to become a part of the team’s culture and take pride in it.

Provide Continuous Feedback

Feedback can take many forms, but without it, athletes don’t know what to keep doing and how to improve. Athletes don’t innately know what they need to do to perform at their peak level, and feedback is what they need. The feedback you provide should be both positive and constructive. Even if each athlete is not performing at the same level, finding methods to encourage individual improvements can lead to better cohesiveness.

Maintain a Healthy Sense of Perception

In a competitive setting, it can be easy to lose your perspective. Getting lost in the rush of a big game or losing a key player can feel so overwhelming that it becomes all-consuming. Successful coaches understand that maintaining the game in perspective is critical. Being a coach is just one aspect of who you are. Along with guiding a sport, you teach competitors how to deal with success and disappointment.

Don’t Stop Learning

Like the athletes you coach, continuing to hone your skills will lead to positive growth. Simple ways to improve include: reading, continuing your education, finding resources, and researching other programs that will help you improve your game, which will only benefit the athletes you coach.

ABOUT COACH DAVID PARKER

Coach David Parker is a dedicated javelin and conditioning coach that places a high value on his athletes’ growth as athletes and their physical strength and stamina. For many years, David has been in charge of overseeing the expansion of national programs and the physical development of national program athletes in Shanghai, China. David is always looking for new ways to help his athletes improve, and he does more than just teach them the rules of a sport; he also focuses on their body movements. With this approach, David is able to aid in the development of his athletes while maintaining a safe and regulated training environment. Known for his innovative and practical training methods, David helps his athletes improve their dynamic stability, reduce the risk of injury and be ready for anything that may come their way.

As a successful entrepreneur, China’s National Men’s Javelin Coach, and the Head Performance Javelin Coach for the Shanghai Track & Field Team, David Parker has a wide range of responsibilities. Sightline Performance and The Javelin Throw, of which he is a co-owner and director, are also under his direction. Coach David Parker formerly worked for British Athletics as the National Performance Institute Coach for Throws and as the Lead Throws Coach at Loughborough University, where he earned both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

In his spare time, when he isn’t relaxing with his family, David plays football for two separate teams in Shanghai and enjoys skiing and golfing whenever possible. While it may seem like David’s life is centered solely around athleticism, he is a big advocate for conservation on a global scale. His aspirations include reaching a point in his career where he can lend his voice to some of the world’s challenges. His dream is to retire from coaching one day and launch his own bee farm, a hobby that has long been his passion. In addition, David hopes to grow and maintain an apple orchard and manufacture his own cider.