Flipped Coaching, have you tried it?

  • September 23, 2013
  • Tim Hutton

Less standing around getting cold and more learning! Help your students or players get a better understanding of your coaching sessions. Either share a plan with them by email before training or get them in front of an interactive whiteboard and let them watch the session quickly before they go outside and get cold.

Simply prepare your session on Sportplan and you are ready to go - here's one I made earlier: Hockey Example: published session.

Have you ever wanted to get more out of your sessions, or wish your players would have knowledge of what you were going to be coaching before the session?

That's where flipped coaching comes in. Deriving from the concept of a Flipped Classroom, which was pioneered by Aaron Sams and Jon Bergmann, flipped coaching aims to use technology to benefit learning. Rather than spending time at the start of a session explaining a technical skill, or explaining how to do a complex drill, flipped coaching gives you more time to practice the skill or have players take part in the drill.

This is done by giving your players prior knowledge of the practice or drill in the form of a video, or written resources, which they will study in their own time before the session, allowing you more time to interact with them, and means the coach doesn’t have to repeat themselves over and over again until all players have understood.

Here are some of the great features of flipped coaching:

  • Allows players to have knowledge of what you will be doing in a session before it has begun
  • Lets players learn at their own pace, and also allows them to watch as many times as they like if they are struggling to understand.
  • Gives you more time to work with players in practices rather than spending 5-10 minutes explaining things at the start of a session.
  • Allows new members of a team to get to grips quickly by watching videos or learn tactics before attending training.
  • Impacts on your players all week rather than just the time you are coaching them, as they can go home and read up on a practise or watch videos on it.

Sportplan is a great advocate of flipped coaching. With various online coaching tools that can be used, Sportplan is perfect for those coaches who want to use the flipped coaching technique with their team.

A great example of this can be found in published sessions, where users can open all of the drills in the session in a slideshow, enabling them to see drills in the biggest size possible. These can be given to players to read and watch before a session, meaning that you as a coach can get the most out of your sessions.

Happy coaching!