Mistake I have made often -- Doing way too much

The entire premise of this article is based on keeping things simple and teaching concepts. The reason I know this the best way to teach the game of football is because I made the mistake of trying to do too much. I still have to fight the urge to jump ahead before we are great at what we are already teaching.

Call it arrogance or just desperation, but whatever it was that caused me to feel the need to “outcoach” everyone it did not work. Many games our athletes were confused and playing slow, or worse playing very sloppy since we had not driven home the fundamentals. When I have kept things simple with answers built into our base sets we have always seemed to have much more success. Often I want to do more or move on before I have mastered a skill. As coaches we now have access to massive amounts of information and thanks to social media we are constantly comparing what we are doing with what other programs are doing. All of these programs are doing great things, but if I try to implement everything that everyone does, I will be terrible at all of it and great at none of it. What helps me is to visit with other coaches one-on-one and here the successful coaches echoing my belief system -- Keep it simple.

This applies to us in life with our players as well. I have a quote I’ll be using this season to help me - “Am I busy or am I productive”. Often I find myself becoming busy with unimportant issues (or even important issues, but not the most important issue). My goal this season is to focus on what I can be great at and not allow myself to be concerned about other things that would simply eat up my time. I hope this can help you in your walk as a coach.

By Kenny Simpson