Become your own best coach

Thats the title of a great book from former swedish golfcaptain Pia Nilsson that I read many years ago.

Its written in swedish and I dont know if there is a english version, but its a great read about awareness in your training and being able to correct yourself into greatness. In simple words how to become your own coach and together with a coach and your own coachskills to make yourself better, I say watch out!

Another sport that are great in using the athleets in getting better is track and field. The older kids help and teach tthe younger ones, the groups are often of skill and not age. They have a coach, but the coach eachother to become as good as the can of course with a coach, but its better with 12 coaches than one.

Of course if they teach the right things, but that why the expereinced coach is there to deliever the goods for them to learn with the help of eachother.

I try to use that thinking in basketball, where I want my players to correct, teach, help their teammates in practise and in games. I have done this for many years and when you get it going it makes your job as a coach so much easier.

A bonus of this a discovered during the years is that many of my players go and ask the clubs by themselfs if they can become a ass coach with some young team.

I have never told my players you should become coaches, I think their focus should be on playing basketball. So in that way I have not done what all clubs I have been in have told me to do. "Its important they become coaches, referees, other stuff in club" I have always thought there is a time for everthing and their goals to become a great players shouldn`t be stopped by them beeing a ass coach and they lose 4 hours a week where they could rest, practise, study.

Still most of my players have later on become coaches, you dont tell kids what to become, you guide them, give them tools and then they can choose what to do with the tools you give them.

Let kids be kids and dont let the clubs bad recruitment in new coaches be the reason why you kids become coaches, they should become it because they want to do it. Not because the clubs says you should do it.

So if I as a coach give them a tools in how to teach to others, how to solve a problem, how to talk to different people, the understanding that if my teammate becomes better I become better mentality.

The odds are very high in favor of many becoming coaches at least for some years, to be a coach formany years you have to be a little bit insain :-)