Performance and well being

At the United Soccer Coaches Digital Convention yesterday I was in the presentation by Dan Abrahams on performance of your team with well being in mind. He explored three environmental approaches and combines them to help you establish a healthy and safe coaching environment for players of all ages and levels.

He put the question: “What does coaching look like?” To answer this the coach must look at the three P’s Participation, Progression and Performance. So we need to engage players to get them to play, progress their development and bring all that out on match day.

He says psycho-social drives these important ingredients of your coaching. Every player deserves to go through the three P’s “What can I do to help these players?”

His model based on psycho-social is this:

Coaching: self skills, practice, environment
Individual: Motivation, emotion, characteristics
Group: Leadership, relationship, teamship

Try to consider the internal that drives the external of your players. This creates a motivational climate and answers the question “What are we doing in our coaching and why”. Who are the players in front of you and what experiences have they had to make them what they are.

As a coach we need to engage in reflective practice that drives our coaching. He recommends spending 10 minutes a week researching simple techniques to help you with player relationships.

I caught up with Dan, when we were allowed to travel, in Baltimore in 2020 and he explained psycho-social to me and what as coaches we need to do.

Listen to what we spoke about in my podcast Every word a coach says has an impact