Floorball – coach for the right reasons

With the way most of our live and work these days, we have an increasingly isolated lifestyle. We sprint from our homes to our jobs, and then from our jobs to the grocery store, or to our children’s schools… and then if we’re lucky, from there to a quick dinner before collapsing into the sofa or bed, so we can get some sleep before the next day’s race. There is never time to become part of our community, never really time to do more than survive?

Coaching Young floorball players allows us to be part of the answer. Study after study has shown that when children are involved in organized activities like in floorball teams, they do better in school and within their families. So the real question isn’t how can we make time for this, it’s more like, how can we not make time for this?

Floorball practice shooting drill

I think we’ve all met the bad coach, the unreasonable guy who treats eight year olds like they are adult men in a NHL team. But we’ve also met the guy who motivates his floorball players to try new things in life, and to learn about self confidence and teamwork. You know… he’s the guy that we aspire to be, the one who generates respect from his players and their families. It really isn’t that hard… if you are coaching for the right reasons.

Floorball feedback, value it

and, always… coach for the right reasons. You are not involved with children in order to make all of them floorball superstars or national team heroes, you are coaching them into being better people …besides developing theire floorball skills.

 

Floorball – Food is fuel

In order to incorporate these healthy snacks in to your floorball team, it’s a good idea to send home a flyer to the floorball parents outlining what is, and what is not acceptable as a floorball team snack. Make sure that everyone is signed up to bring a snack on floorball games and sometimes as well on floorball practices.

Floorball youth practices and drills

Food is fuel, and just like a high performance vehicle will sputter and die if you don’t have fuel, so will your floorball team and star players stumble and lose steam at a critical moment in the game, if you don’t have eaten correctly before the floorball game. Make sure your floorball players know about this and eat healthy and you’ll see a big difference in their performance in the floorball rink.

Floorball – A winning role, You can do it! Yes we can!

As I wrote earlier expectations create roles, I will give you the definition of a role once again.

A role within a team consists of four parts.
– Coaches and other trainers expectations on the player
– Other team member’s expectations on the player
– Other people’s expectations on the player
– The players own expectations, needs and resources

These four parts will form the players role, how the player have interpreted the expectations and what he/she thinks he must live up to, and accepts.

Could this be used in a creative positive way? Could it be used to create a winners’ role? So if one part forming the role is about expectations from coaches and trainers, your expectations, communication and feedback will be important to create that “winners role”.

Floorball practices and drills for youth players

In floorball practice, show that you belief in each individual, show them you belief they can be the best, that you belief they can do it… of course with synchronized video and audio.

This will be balancing between belief/positive expectations and pressure, and you don’t want to step over the line to the pressure side.

“- I think you can do it, but I appreciate you just as much if it does not go as we both believe.” The winners’ role I’m describing is not about winning games, it’s more about having to believe in the possibility of success. (You Can Do It).

Waterboy example of you can do it…

…and Barack Obama example of You can do it or Yes we can.

I’m not into politics, but Obamas short speach is quite impressing? Talk about creating postive expectations, you can do it!

Create a winning climate

You might have the capacity, talent and ability, but if there is a lack of belief, there will be lack of results. In this case the most valuable tool for you in your leadership is feedback. Make sure you create the pictures of success and belief in the heads of your players.

José Mourinho works on each player’s self-image, even if he might have many of the best football players in the world. They still need to be seen, feel the trust and belief from their coach. How you view them, is how they will view themselves.

Floorball practice and drills goal scoring

Here’s a practical practical tip how to create a winning climate and winnig roles within your team.
– Create a list of strengths for each floorball player in the team, and focus on talking about these with your players.
– Notice your own attitude towards the players, try to “zero it” and focus on the positive things.
– Talk about each players strengths, show them that you believe in them.
– Expect the best from each floorball player.
Players want to meet expectations, they want to be winners, you can do it!

“A loser gets bitter when he is behind, and unwise when he is in front”
“A winner keeps his faith and balance, regardless of his position”
“To be afraid of losing, removes the willingness to win” /Vanderlei Luxemburgo

Floorball – Dealing with conflicts

Floorball coaching by its nature can be very stressful. The floorball head coach has agreed to place himself in a situation where he will repeatedly face conflict. Over the course of a floorball season, the head coach will likely have disputes with opposing coaches and game officials, as well as from his or her own floorball players and their family members / parents. No matter what a floorball coach decides to do, it is highly likely that his decision will be questioned or even resisted by someone.

Waiting time at floorball practice before a drill

So what’s a coach to do about this? Well, the first thing that a new coach has to understand is that it WILL happen. It is unavoidable, conflict will continually pop up as long as you are coaching. Quite honestly, if you can’t accept this now… quit, save yourself the mental anguish. But if you decide to remain, then you are going to need some help in dealing with it. Some tools and other posts are found on this site, use the search function or keywords.

Floorball is bigger than Ice Hockey in Denmark

I will continue with the learnings from the coaching training, I attended during the World Championships in hockey. Next up Denmark…

Per Bäckman the head coach of Denmarks national hockey team and Esben Nedermark GM Danish National Hockey Team started their presentation, with talking about how small sport hockey is in Denmark.

Danish hockey has:
– 4400 registered players
– 16 teams
– 24 indoor rinks

While there are:
– 5000 hockey officials/referees in Toronto
– 296818 licensed football players in Denmark
– 5800 badminton players in Denmark
and 6000 Floorball players : )

Still Denmark is in the highest division in hockey, I will altough also talk about Norway, they have done an impressive work, with small resources!

What have Denmark done then?

One of the focus areas have been to have short and quick attacks, if you have not scored after 15 seconds you can give the ball (puck) to the other team, like the Norwegian national football team manager “Drillo” Olsen once said.

The Danish team have also been working with tactic and the discipline to stick to it, teambuilding, social environment and technical skills (opposite to Norway). What they are not good in regarding the national team coaches, is the physical part, they are too weak. The hard practicing culture is not there…

About the future…

Regarding the future for Danish hockey, Per Bäckman was quite negative, “we are at the top now, we will not get better, and we will not get more players or rinks, we need to take care of what we have now and try to maintain that.”

Wrong attitude…

In my mind totally wrong attitude, you will always need development and try to recruit new players and develop the game, players and teams, the same goes for floorball. When you think you can not develop or are satisfied, you will start to roll down the hill you are climbing and be eliminated in the end!

Denmark hockey and floorball
Danish Hockey a good story (name of the presentation) – They have done a good work, but it will not last for so long, with the attitude I have described above…

“You have totally different view on game system and tactics than Sweden?”
“Yes, I can not understand, why you would chase another players on the ice for 60 minutes” /Per Bäckman