Had a strange hot weekend

Well was supposed to work last saturday extra at my work, but that changed into giving the shift away and babysitting my sisters daughter in Sweden.

Hot like hell both in denmark and in sweden and whiel still in sweden this afternoon my phone rang and it was one of players on the phone: "I`m been bored all weekend can you come and train me in the gym?"

F**k second player from the team that has called me and asked this is for me on of the biggest things since I started coaching 18 years ago. "My answer I`m in Sweden, but cant you call someone on the team?"

I found out he did and they where up in a gym playing 3vs3 great stuff.

Tomorrow I will have the final young coaches academy for this season and the young coaches that will attend will have practical exercise with my boys.

15minutes in drilling them and I will give them feedback good and BAD and give them concrete ideas on what to do instead and so on, will be great fun. Just to bad that everyone cant attend, but thats just how it is.

Have started putting together the second Workout I have taped so far, but babysitting messed up my plan to be finished this weekend.
I call it "big"man series, so keep you eyes open.

One season has ended and another has begun

Well, summer is getting closer and closer here in Denmark and like the preacher I`m my players get to hear about summerpractice as much as possible. I have succeded in motivating them to practice extra during the season and in a few months I will know if I have done my job in motivating them to train like a possessed bballer this summer.

I have started to record more stuff in the practices for myself, my players and for everybody else that loves this beautiful game. Maybe it can help somebody, inspirere somebody how to do or not to do it, no matter what its there for all that have love for the game.

I have put up to short videos so far and here they are:
They haven`t been edited so you see good things and bad things and I added music so you dont have to listen to my voice screamning No, YES, athletic position and so on hehe :-)




I have a quest this summer and that is to record many, many drills and workouts with players and put them on the net. If I can fullfill my quest, well we will see in time.
Until then you have 2 videos here atleast.

My world of basketball

Could be My World Of Sports, but it aint :-)

All my life sports has been a big part of my life and I`m very thanful of the things have gotten from doing sports. I have learned so much from it both learning from great coaches and bad coaches and from other players during the years.

I would say sports has made me into the person I am today and at the same time I see how much it has helped me, I today see so many not doing any sports at all.

And society has created a new form of youth sports department, the department of  "Im afraid of taking it seriuos since then I can fail". Usually not taking it serious was just for older men women needing some exercise or wanna continue their career but not as serious as before. Nowdays, its perfectly fine not ever to try to become the best you can be, do sports and chill, nobody will critize you and if you wanna skip some practises thats fine......

The young kids taking this road will not ever get anyhting else out of the sports than just having a activite and some fun with friends and well you might think thats fine and maybe so. But the problem is that I think it should havefun, try to be the best you can be, have just fun again. Dont know if you understand what I`m trying to write here, but I think we in give young kids the option of just having fun without any demands, rules and so on too easy nowdays and to early.

I have done many sports and learned a lot from them and of course it has formed me, I have tried to become the best I could be and still I have had and still have lots of fun.

Computers has taken over too much......

We as adults are suppose to guide the youngsters, help them build character and more, but giving them the "easy way" out too early makes them their own guides and since their young age they have no clue, many will get lost and will not be prepaired for adultlife.

We as sportsclubs can not become "curling clubs" and I`m of course hinting towards popular nickname for parents which try to be friends instead of parents to their kids and more or less do everything they want.

I asked a former player player of mine some days ago if he had started coaching since he has leadership and teaching skills (he is 16 years old) and I know that many want him to coach. His answer made me so happy "No, first I will give my all to be as good as I can" and he finished of with "Just like you said".

I`m so happy for him, there is a time for everything and you can`t do it all at the same time, then its will be halfhearted and you cant be the best you can be.

Champions league soccer on TV:e its so boring, but I like Zlatan Ibrahimovic so I watch it still he is a shining star and just like Kobe Bryant a joy to follow.

Coach the players not the refs

Well, I think most of us been there in a game where the ref is totally wrong or just bad in general and you get upset trying to get him to change something he will never change. I have been there, but usually I dont say much to the referees in games, since it usually just leads to that you start on minus already next game with the same referees or friends to them.

Some coaches go at the refs as a tactic in games and YES, with some refs you can change their behaiver by being on their ass. But you need to be somebody for it too work usually, nationalteams coach, famous old player, then usually you can ride their ass all night long without getting the big T and in the same game to other coach says one thing and he gets T:ed badabing directly.

I once saw the great Coach Ivkovic ride two refs ass so hard in a friendly game in Novi Sad Serbia that it looked like the refs where little defenseless children. He made fun of them loudly so the whole gym could hear what he said and everybody was laughing. The refs well lets say the knew that is was majstore Ivkovic so of course nothing happened there, not even a warning. They just took the abuse......

Coach K can change refs minds in a game and he knows it

I still remember my first "T" as yesterday it was 17 years ago and it was in my first tournament Lundaspelen with my first team. We played a deciding game for A-playoffs against a german team and had two german refs, whom one of tried all tournament to score not a basket but the german teams coach. I knew that so I said absolutely nothing for more than half the game. With 3 minutes left we just scored and now was behind with one point we where hot and their guard dribbled the ball, but before she took 3 steps and not small steps.

I said loudly "Hey, ref travelling" and showed with my hands the referee sign for travelling, badabing the big "T" and he turned to their coach and smiled.

Why do I remember my "T"`s its easy I have gotten a total of 5 in 17 years as a coach. I have tried to get maybe four more without success, why just to make a statement for being raped by the refs.

The last two was in the same game and they where ridicolous and just bad refeering.
When a ref is trigger happy and chases the big "T"`s, well then that can happen.

I have it on tape and I have laughed at it so many times, Nothing I said should have been a "T", the second I got for saying "thanks". It was cold as hell outside the gym I tell you.

Well,  got hung up here a little about "T"`s, but back to my topic.

Watched a youth game some days ago and one of the teams are very good and the other teams lets just say not very good. From the first minute to the end their coach was on the referees asses about every call he thought was wrong. In the second period with a lead of 35 points the coach of the better team couldn`t keep his mouth shut anymore and told the other coach something like "Why on the refs the whole time, cant you give my guys some credit, we are up by 35 points, and some more, you need help or what?"

The bad team played zonepress, or different zones the whole game and all coaching that was done was, you are down, you are on top, you are 4,5 and so on. Mostly focused on the refs and onetime he put 6 players on the court just to make some kind of statement to the refs and when they saw it and gave him a "T" he even complained about that, "you cant give my a T now bla bla bla." Incredible.....

The better team won by 80 or 90 points and if it would have been great refs they would have won even more, because that coach couldn`t see the forrest because of the trees.

I sat there getting mad, because his kids tried, they really did, but the zonpress was just terrible and there zones was so full of holes you could fit a elephant in there. Why dont focus on their movement, placement and so on instead of riding the refs asses the whole game, it was to me sad since the kids tried, but the coach, coached the refs instead............

Maybe it was a one time deal that he focused totally on the refs I dont know I have only seen one game with him. But thats enought......

We can all get angry or caught up in the moment and lose it a little bit, where a humans......but coach remember when you are coaching the refs, your players are without what you are there for, so get come back to focus again, shake it off (hard ass hell sometimes I know, believe me), but remember who needs you the most and its never the refs.

Back in Denmark

My team participated in the 33th Lundaspelen one of the worlds biggest youth tournament in basketball. I had devided them into to even teams since I think at this age its to early to put all the best in one team.

There is lots of time and to stress it is not something I feel is needed right now. My two teams played a ok tournament with one loosing A-quaterfinal after overtime and the other lost the B semifinal. At this age the hardest things are most of them not on the court, homesickness, sleeping problems, resting time instead of "fun" time, learning to respect others for a couple of days.

I will write more about these things some other day.

After my two teams went out of the tournament we came back to our sleeping quarters and i hooked them up with a great basketball DVD called "The final shoot" - The Hank Gathers Story. We had a nice time allthough we only had to look forward to sleeping, breakfasr, cleaning and the we went to watch the final in hour agegroup whick was between TuS Lichterfelde (Germany) and Norrkoping Dolphins (sweden).

We came home about 13:00 on the 5th and the kids, parents where happy. Myself I was totally hammered by fever, runy noose and sourness in my whole body. My punishment for sleeping on a thin madrass close to the floor in a drafty classroom. Had 2½ days of fever and now still with a bad cold a have to skip watching some great games in our homegym. The danish championships finals for youth teams is played this weekend plus two league games, but with age comes smartness they say and I have stayed home to get well instead, but damm thats hard......I love this game sometimes to much, but rather that than having no passion besides work and family.

So home sick I have been working with things that I can do, planing a pre season tournament

Date is not yet decided

and planing a coach clinic and so far its gone well and I hope to close these two in some days.

If I wake up tomorrow without a runy nose I will be the happiest man alive.....at leats until I start to move and use my shoulder whick is still broken. Its been over 3½ months since the train accident in Sweden where I got the injury and thats just plain sucks that it still is a problem for me.

Sometimes you give and sometimes you take

What?

I`m talking about energy this week I have been working alot and with a bad shoulder its not the most fun you could do, but necessery since money is needed there is no pardon.

Tires as hell I stopped work 17:30 today and had practise at 18:00 with boys 98 and if I didn`t have any energy before pactise THEY gave me energy and all of a sudden I wasn`t tired at all I was out there sweating and giving instructions and making them go harder in each drill.

Thats whats great about a team if you are out of energy the rest of the team can give it to you and there are always somebody with lots of energy and always giving. Normally I`m as a coach are always one of them, but sometimes since we coaches also are humans we need to get a energyboost frm somebody and today I got it from my team and it was 1½ hour of pure pleasure and we had a great practise once again.

Now home I´m so tired so I dont even know why a write this text, but I´m sqeezing the last energy out of my body and head to write this and I will soon find my bed and have nice dreams a hope.

By the way today I did something I have laughed so much at other for doing. I dropped my cellphone in the toilette...not good at all. :-)

A great basketballsite for those who wanna learn

The Cross Over Movement
I have been following this site for several years and there are a lot of great stuff that gets you brain working.

The picture above is linked to a article about talent identification, enjoy your reading.

Chapter 4: Dealing with players and parents as a new coach

This is a chapter that I propably could write on and on and on about, but I will try to get just some of the essentials into this text.

Dealing with parents
First of all starting out as a new coach there are many things that is hard in the beginning until you get a way of dealing with the certain situations. Some you make rules for, some you hand out info to parents and players, so no questions need to be asked later on. The problem is no matter how great you are at writting down rules, instructions and more, there will always be questions and inputs from players and parents.

This are the situations that are very hard as a new coach since, now its not a pen and a piece of papper but LIVE IRL in real life communication. Communication is the key, but  is also normally something you get better at by experience and age.
When I started out I was lucky I had great parents in my first team and they where supporters and not assistent coaches. I mean with that they let me coach and them being supporters and transportation organizers and more.

If you are unlucky you get  a lot of "assistent coaches" and of course they know everything since they played sports 10-15 years ago. Clubs need to help new coaches being organized to deal with parents its not always very easy. And its so important since all clubs in at least the nordic countries needs parents to be involved.

Normally the parents that have some sportsbackground maybe in the heat of moment dont understand, but when they calm down the realize it.

The hardest parents as I see to deal with as a new coach is the parents without any sports background and still they have 1000 opinions about most things you do with the team, all from practise, to games, playing time is normally a big factor for them........and for some reason moste of these non sport parents all seem to think a like. Everything should be fair, equal, but sport isn`t like that and I tell you after 33 years in life, life is not equal or fair but there is for some reasons thoughts of that utopia.

Well, to me sports are very "fair, equal", but you dont get it for free or easy, you will have to fight, sweat, cry, have pain, bleed, to do what you wanna do. This is something you have with you whenever in life and to me (us) that have great sport passion this is obvious, but you need to realize as a new coach, that the non sport parents dont see it as this. They haven`t lived it, so to them its a alien thing.....

One last thing about parents adn of course like I started with I could write page after page after page, but the last thing about parents is something that is a problem every year since I started coaching 17 years ago.

Parents priorities dont always go hand and hand with the players/kids
Well, this could go in either way....the parents want their kid to be great and basketball, but the kids doesn´t he just likes basketball.
But I will write from the point that the kid wants to be great. Parents need to sit down and talk with their kid about there basketball playing and how importants its for the kid. Just as coaches need individual talks parents need to talk to their kids. I have seen so many kids torn up because the parents just dont have any respect for their kids playing sports. They just plan totally egoistic there travelling or visits or shopping when their kids has a game or tournament.
Well, you might say they are the parents the decide and thats totally right. But a kid is just a kid one time and there are 365 days in a year. There are "babysitters", friends of family and so in, maybe he doesn´t need to go with the parents.

So this is something that needs to be communicated to the parents and thats not easy for a new coach I promise you that.

One tip!
For all new coaches or experienced coaches find the parent that 90% respects and listens too, every team has one. Try to get him/her as teamleader organizing the parents its great if this parents has sports background also, then he will get many questions from the other parents and answer them so you will not even hear the questions.

Today there is a "new" problem to deal with known as "curling parents". It aint new, but the % of a teams parents that are "curling" are so much higher more on that in another chapter.


Dealing with players
Handling players as new coach is just as hard as handling parents and maybe harder in way since you meet the players a lot more often.

I have always actually worked from a big point in my philosphy and that is dont LIE to the kids. I totally hate, when coaches sugercoat what they say or totally flat out just LIE, to avoid the conflict with the kid/parents.

But here is the thing as a new coach its very hard to get your point out without saying the wrong thing or not getting the players to understand what you mean and he/she takes it very very hard, since they didn` t really understood what you said.

Players will always gain more and be tougher athletes if you are honest with them and to me this is a big thing. I have during the years heard so many lies at every level of the game and to me thats just messed up.  

HOW, do you look yourself int he mirror at night?

Well maybe they dont have a mirror :-)

As soon as you can have short minitalks with the players and times when you have the possibility. It doesn`t have to be this superorganized indiviueal talks with charts, and more. Just, get talking with the players before, after practises during breaks in practises, during a drill take som time ask some questions and more. The tip here is use the time you have, its easy to be to ambitous and fail beacuse lack of time since work, school. Do it in the time you already have booked for that team and do it great instead of 50% of what it could have been.

Attitude problem players is something that needs to be adressed directly one way or the other this needs to change or there will problems for the whole team further on. Many hours may be spent to get that kid on the right track, remember bad attitude directed in the right direction will be fuel instead of shit in the system. Thats where you as a coach come in, to guide this "bad kid" they right way and as a new coach this is extremelly hard, especially since often the kids with bad attitude is one or the best player on the team. And if that problem isnt handled it can stop his/hers chances to become  what he/she could have become.

If new and unexperienced coaches are put on team, the club needs to have somebody responsable to deal with these kinds of problems, if not well then you really dont care about the kids.

Well I will stop here and propably come back to this huge subject at a later stage.

Next chapter 5 will be about: Yearly plan and practise plans, what to do?

Chapter 1 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Empty book"

Chapter 2 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Doing wrong when doing right"

Chapter 3 - Becoming a basketballcoach "Will to win is to loud, the kids cant hear you"

Chapter 3 - Will to win is to loud - The kids cant hear you

What do I mean with that?
Well, again I go to myself when I started out as a coach. I never shut up during games i was telling the kids what to do in offense adn defense coaching/directing most of what happened on the court.

My teams played well or should I say I played well?
It took a couple of years before I realized that I wasn`t lettin the kids think the game, understand the game, I was simply controlling them like "puppets" in a way.

If you as coach shout "every" second on the game first of all in your will to win you stop a lot of progress for the players. Sure!, Propably you won`t play as well, make more mistakes, but we as coaches say that we learn from misstakes, so whats wrong with us. Well, nothing really.....difference in personalities is of course one, but our goal is the same to win (and for many to develop players), in most cases coaches calm down in couple of years I have heard its because his older and so on as a explationen, well I dont buy into that.

I instead hope that theese coaches that have calmed down have realized that screaming the whole game is waist of time and you will never see if what you practised has sunk into your players brains. Since you scream out everything. There is nothing wrong with passion and being active on the sideline at all, but there is a difference in being active and being a moviedirector instead of being a teacher of the game.

I changed in my way from screaming and running on the sideline, to standing still more and instead of screaming out, cut trough, swing the ball, now attack. Rotate in defense and drop down and so on.

To screaming out smaller things and instead of screaming it out I put mental notes in my brain. To my brain: "Coach, you are not doing this right in practise they still do it wrong, what can you do different in practise" Of course a talk about 1-3 things in breaks and timeouts and when players come out for a change, but huge differens between sreaming out to player when he/she is paying and talking when he/she has nothing else to focus about.

Dont know if you understand my thinking.....but this changed me and made me better I think.

There is missconception that I loud coach and a coach running the sidelines like a lunitic is being a good coach. Its easy to make that false assumption since you see a lot of commitment and passion and also often theese coaches do funny stuff or say funny stuff.

I truly believe that when you scream to much, you miss a lot of the game because you let yourself get stuck in situations that happens on the floor. Maybe a offense that went wrong, a call, a defensiv play and more, that you miss a lot of other important things. Simply your brain cant do it all and see the game.

I compaire coaching a lot with teaching in the school and practises are studying and researching to find the answers for the the tests that are coming up.If your are studying the right things going and doing it right, you can go on studying in, high shool, college, university and take higher level education and getting a great job and more.

Back to my point.......In school when kids to tests, the teachers dont stand in front of the class and call out what they should, write, draw, calculate and what order, and how fast and more. The kids know what they should be able to do, the have had lessons(practises) before the test, small tests maybe also, they have been shown, where to find all informatuion they need to do well on the test.

When they have a test in school the teachers sometimes speak, maybe a kids doesn`t understand what the teacher means with one question, how much time do we have left and so on. I think you get my point.

I will round of this chapter with, something that often goes hand in hand with the screamers of course everybody is not like this but.....You have to read between the lines :-)

Humiliation of players
One thing they do also that  I absolutly hate, they make fun of there own players or yell out stupid remarks to young kids. I have never understood how the parents can accept such a behavier in a coach. I have later in my "career" seen close up how parents of a team, thought that one of the lunatics, doing all of the above (+ didn`t teach them anything basketballwise) was "cool" and well he doesn`t mean so bad and so on.

Well if he doesn`t mean it, then he should be locked up somewhere with white walls and not coaching kids that will be shaped by this man mentally and so much more. Did all of the kids parents think it was OK?
No, but they didn`t want to make a fight and get hated by the other parents.

Well, thats thats throwing your kid to the wolves.....will he/she survive and be a good person/player, maybe, maybe....and maybe not.

Would you let your kids teacher in school behaive like some coaches do?
Well, answer is very simple
NO!

Chapter 1 - Becoming a basketballcoach

Chapter 2 - Becoming a basketballcoach

Look out for chapter 4 "Dealing with players and parents as a coach"

Becoming a basketballcoachChapter 1 "Empty book"

First part the Empty book - new coach on the block

Well I think my story is similar to many coaches in the world, but I will try to share my experiences in a couple of chapters here on the page.

First part I call "Empty book" when I talk with other coaches about the first years as a coach.
I felt like I got a huge book and I started to have practises and looked in the book and there was no text in it. Well, what do you do then as a newborn coach, yes of course you do the things that you did as player often much to hard for the group you have.

The empty book should not be a empty book if the clubs really cares about the youth teams, as most people know we humans are creations of habits and good or bad habits can really make or break the players dreams of a basketballcareer.

Myself I didn`t have many coaches to bounch ideàs with when I stared as a 15 years old. And with that empty book and not so many to talk with the odds that it will be an optimal experience for the kids is slim to none.

So what do you as a new coach on block do then?
Well, I really already back then loved the game, so I wanted to improve as a coach.
So I started filling out the empty pages in my huge book, how?

Well, I remember I started with going to the library in my hometown and well lets just say that they hade 2 basketballbooks. One of the books was about 25 years old and well   alot had already happened with the game in that time. Well, I rented them and started reading about the game.....I filled out some more pages in my huge book.

Internet was pretty new and 56k speed dialup modem was the sh*t" back then I cant even try to tell you how many hours/days/months I sat in front of the screen searching for more stuff to add to my book. I found a lot of stuff, but when you are new you need guidance, since you have hard time realizing whats right for the age that you are coaching. Maybe you find great stuff on the net, in books but it is suitable for your team?
Thats a question I think is asked not often enough.

I realized that by watching other coaches have practises you could learn a lot and get tips how to do stuff the "right" way. Same thing here, you can find a lot of great stuff on other coaches practises, but it is suitable for your team?

I think all club should have a "manual" - These are the things we teach in different ages, to some of you that coach in serbia, greece and more. Right now you are scratching your heads maybe, but its not very common in Sweden, Denmark that the clubs has that. (so its more or less up to each coach to do his thing)
In Sweden have started a manual called "Players development manuel" its I think only 3 years old as a creation, but very important.

As a new coach you need guidance and you also need som "this you have to do" drills and pointers to the players. I think that clubs which have very few experienced coaches should have what I call "minutes that belongs to the club". What I mean with that is, if the team has practise for 1 hours, 30 minutes belongs to the club and that means the clubs drills are done with the clubs teaching "methods". That way you can always guarantee that 50% of the practises are in the clubs development direction.

Not everybody can become a good basketballcoach and I really hate when clubs try to get everybody that is not blesssed with becoming a great basketballplayers to become coaches for youth team. Its very easy at least for me to see who can become a good coach, and who can`t. How many parents are happy with having a new teacher for their kid in school, that has no authority or leadership or passion for teaching?

It all comes down to leadership. ( I will not go in to leadership in this part 1, since it will come in a later) chapter.

Well some time has passed and that empty book you started up with has gotten a lot of text, pictures, tips, tactical, pshyical tips and more in it. Now, you are starting to feel more like a coach and you philosphy has started to grow, but growing towars something good or are you on the wrong track?

More about this in next chapter "Doing wrong, when doing right"

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