Everything Matters In Coaching

I was recently speaking at a clinic and had the opportunity to talk about advancing in your career as a coach. It was a great opportunity to share some things that can help young coaches to avoid some common mistakes that can hold them back. We had a great Q and A session, and coaches in attendance told me it was very valuable. I wanted to share three important components to being a better coach.

1. Every Job You Do Matters, Do Them With Great Pride

One of the first duties I had was to line the practice fields.The first time I lined the fields I was miserable. I had a bad attitude and didn't do a great job. I decided not to put hash marks and markings for the numbers. When we went out to practice our receivers didn't know where to line up. The safeties and corners didn't know where to line up. The head coach ripped me in front of the team. After practice he called me into his office and told me that no matter what the job was, do it with pride. He said the reason guys get stuck not advancing often is that they are lazy. He told me if the fields weren't fixed I wouldn't have a job. That was an invaluable lesson to learn as a very young coach.

I had great mentors who taught me that if you want to be given the big jobs you really want, you've got to excel at the jobs you don't want to do. Every time I painted the lines after that I painted them like I was preparing an NFL Field. I learned to be meticulous and make sure the details were taken care of fully.

Every job you get matters. If you are assigned laundry treat it like it is the difference between winning and losing a championship game. And it should be easy, because it just might be the difference. If you are cleaning out the refrigerator in the office, take pride in how clean you get it. Don't do it just to check the box. Clean the refrigerator like it was going to be the difference between getting fired or keeping your job. It matters. I you are inventorying equipment, do it the best it can be done.

If you aren't willing to do the laundry well, you will never be a great OC or DC. If you want to move into a coordinator or head coaching position where you will delegate some of those duties, then you must be good at the duties you will delegate. No one likes doing the laundry and cleaning out the refrigerator, but great coaches take pride in the jobs that no one wants to do.

2. The Weight Room Matters More Than You Could Ever Know

When I first started coaching I didn't love the weight room. It was at the end of a long school day. I was usually mentally and physically tired. David Diaz, one of the best mentors in this business said, "this is the place where our success is built." We will get bigger, faster, and stronger, but most importantly we will get mentally tougher in here. This is where we build our team. This is where we teach our players that details matter. If you don't coach hard in the weight room, you won't be able to coach hard on the field.

The weight room is so much more than just getting bigger, faster, and stronger. It is where team chemistry is built through hard work and accountability. It is where mental toughness is built through accountability. It is where players learn to sweat together in adverse conditions. It is where you get to coach the details to players. You get to have them focus on the little tiny details, which is vital when you get on the field in the fall.

The current head coach I work for, Joe Cluley, takes this a step further. Not only does he want us engaged, but he wants us to bring the juice everyday. When you come in our athletic period it is different. It has a different feel. Every coach greets every kid with enthusiasm as they come in. We all are excited, which in turn increases the excitement of the kids. If we were bored, the kids will be bored as well. We want this to be the most exciting part of their day. The athletic period should not be easy, but it must be electric. We bring the juice from the time the first kid enters our field house until the last kid leaves after practice. The more juice you bring, the more juice the kids will have. Bring the juice every single day. He also holds us accountable to holding our kids accountable.

3. Relationships Matter Most

Relationships are the most important component of what we do as coaches. Winning games is how we get to keep doing what we are doing, and it is important. We have to win to keep our jobs. But the most important thing we do is not win a game.  The biggest ting we do is impact young men through the game of football. We use football as a catalyst to teach accountability, teamwork, trust, and responsibility. We use the game of football to teach young men to put the interests of the team in front of their own self-interests. This all depends on the relationships we build with the men we coach.

The relationships start and end with unconditional love. We love our players as much on their worst day as we do on their best day. It is important as coaches that we never give up on a young man. We must see in them what they do not see in themselves. We must believe in them and find the greatness they have inside. We must take time to get to know them off the field. We are blessed to be in a situation where many of our kids need rides to and from football actives. This gives us a great opportunity to spend time with them talking about life, their goals, their dreams, and their fears. 

Another great relationship builder is having your position group to your house for a cookout. We do this a couple of times a year to spend time with your guys away from football. It also lets them get to know our families. It allows your players to see you away from the game. It is a vital component to building relationships.

To make this work, you must care about your players as people. If you only care what they can do in a jersey you aren't a coach. At that point you are just a spectator. I don't care how much you can draw on a board. If you don't truly care about your players you need to do something else. 

What you have to understand is that the relationship in itself is not the impact. The relationship is what allows us to make an impact. Through the relationship we earn trust, and that allows us to hold athletes accountable. Many people struggle with holding players accountable, but accountability is a key to making an impact. When you hold players accountable to meeting the standards of performance, you are setting them up for success later in life. If you don't hold kids accountable, you are setting them up for failure.

Winning games matters, but making an impact on your players matters more. But here is the deal, if you make an impact on your players, you will win more games. You will have a stronger team bond. If you impact your players, they will impact each other. 

If you want to move up in coaching, you have to be willing to do the jobs know one wants to do and do them well. You have to be a great teacher and coach in the weight room. And most importantly, you have to unconditionally love your players. You have to build strong relationships that will impact your players in the future.

 Last year I got hooked up with CoachTube, and put together three courses for offensive football coaches. I put together two courses on RPO's, and a course on Building An Elite System of Communication. All of these courses will help you to score more points! 

https://coachtube.com/users/coachvint

All three of these courses are detailed, with everything you need to be more explosive and to score more points. 

The course on communication gives you a detailed approach to your gameday communication. I give you a system and a process to improve the quality of conversations, leading to improved play calling on game day. This course has received outstanding reviews from coaches at all level of football. A coach with multiple state titles told me this course helped them to be much more efficient and explosive this season. 

My two RPO courses take you through a systematic process of installing RPO's into your offensive system. RPO's put the defense in conflict, forcing them to defend all 53 yards of width and all 6 skill players every single play. I not only give you a system, but I teach you the methods to develop your own RPO concepts. 

https://coachtube.com/users/coachvint

Game and Practice Planning Preparation Resources

As you prepare for the 2019 season, I wanted to make available our game planning resources for you! These helped us to have one of the most explosive offenses at every level I have coached. Coaches from some of the top high school programs in the country use these documents to prepare. Coaches at more than a dozen BCS programs have also downloaded these documents to help them in their preparation.

Here is a link to my offensive game planning documents: https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/

It includes everything from a scouting report template, to practice plans, to a two-sided color call sheet, and more! Each of the nine documents are fully editable and customizable! Order today and start preparing for your first game right now!

Here is a link to the defensive game planning documents. It includes 12 fully editable and customizable documents. https://sellfy.com/p/AY1u/ These are what we used to post 6 shutouts when I was a defensive coordinator.

And finally, I put together a special teams resource. This has everything you need, included drill tape, practice tape, and game footage. It includes teaching presentations and scouting forms just for special teams! https://sellfy.com/p/tJwz/

If you want to learn more about installing RPO's, I wrote a book called Installing Explosive RPO Concepts Into Any Offense. I wrote it for iBooks, which includes cut-ups to reinforce the application of these concepts. In the book I give you a systematic process for installing 2nd and 3rd level RPO's. Coaches at all level of football tell me this is a game changer! The book can be found for iBooks here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1078061959

The iBooks version can be viewed on any iPhone, Mac, or iPad. It is a game changer in book technology! This book will give you everything you need to build RPO's into your offense!

If you don't have an apple device, you can order the paperback version! It is available on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1520447485

Follow me @coachvint on Twitter! 

I hope you found something in this post you can use with your program! Good luck this season! 

Why We Must Teach Character and Leadership

When I first started coaching I was all about feeding my own competitive spirit. I wanted to win because that's all I had really done. Every team I had been a part of had been very successful in the win column. My first coaching job was with a losing program that had no history of winning. The mentality was that of a downtrodden group that had no hope. While we won some games and changed the culture, we didn't do as well as we probably could have done.

My next job was at Christopher Columbus High School, a large, inner-city school in the Bronx, New York. I was hired by one of the greatest developers of character in coaching today, David Diaz. When Coach Diaz was hired, the program was in the midst of a 27 game losing streak. Participation was way down, and the players didn't believe they could win. As a coaching staff we were all very fiery, demanding, and enthusiastic, and that translated into some success. We had the first winning season in school history our first year, and in the second year went to the playoffs. We thought we had begun building a strong foundation for significant success.

We are at a point where we felt like we were ready to get over the hump and win a playoff game. We had taken a program that had never had a winning season to the playoffs. We had a talented group coming back. Everything seemed to be lined up for us to have a big year. Then we ran into a buzz saw. Our kids were making some very poor decisions off the field. We had to suspend several players and lost others to grades. It was one of the most disappointing seasons of my coaching career. We were mentally weak on and off the field.

After the season we were complaining about how we had a lack of leadership. It was about this time we met Dennis Parker at a clinic and he talked about implementing character education into a football program. We talked with him for an hour after his talk and decided this is what was missing. This turned out to be the most important clinic talk of my coaching career.

We made a decision that we were going to teach character and leadership with intent. We were going to be as intentional in teaching character as we were in teaching our guys how to squat. Too often we think the sport itself teaches character. If this were true, every kid that played football would demonstrate high character. Sports don't teach character, coaches do.

That was an important epiphany we went through. What are we teaching? Are we teaching them to act a certain way? We are, but it may not be what we intend to teach. If we wanted to develop a culture of high character, high energy, mental toughness, everything we had to do had to build this culture.

Too often we think that character and leadership just happen. We say things like, "this group just weren't very good leaders." Or, "this senior class didn't know how to lead." This is when a good self-evaluation is needed. These are the questions we need to ask:

1. What did we do to develop positive leaders in our program?
2. How much time did we spend focused on teaching character with intent?
3. What might we have done that was detrimental to the leadership and character of this group?
4. Where can we find time to improve the leadership and teach character lessons with this group?

The biggest hindrance for us was the worry about what we would have to give up to take time to teach character and leadership? How much time in the weight room would we give up? How much film time would we give up? Where would we make up the practice time?

After talking with Dennis Parker and D.W. Rutledge, we made a decision that we wouldn't have to give anything up. With stronger leaders and a better foundation of character, our workouts would be better and more efficient. We would have higher intensity and better focus. While we would use some of our time to teach leadership and character, this use of time was actually an investment. We would get a return far greater than what we put in.

It was early February when Coach Diaz made the decision that we were going to go "all in" on teaching character. We took one week where we went into the classroom, focusing on character. On Fridays we had our seniors to be go through  leadership development program. After the first week we spent 20 minutes a day, three days a week before workouts in the classroom. One of the reasons this was successful is that each of our coaches bought in to what we were doing and sold it passionately to our kids.

One of the first things we did in the classroom was had our athletes fill out a sheet that gave us some information on them that was deeper than simply who they are. We wanted to know who they lived with, what their home life was like, what their dreams were, and what their goals were. We wanted to learn about their hopes and dreams and fears. We wanted them to understand that we loved them unconditionally because of who they were, not because of what they did.

Up until this point we had coached in a very transactional way. We told them what do do and expected them to do it. If they didn't we expressed disappointment. Often we had conflict and there was a genuine mistrust. They began to fear screwing up because they would face our wrath. Because they feared screwing up, they began to taking any risks at all. They wouldn't try to break personal records in the weight room. They wouldn't try to make a difficult play on the field. They sometimes would freeze under pressure. How did we respond? We yelled at them more. And then we wondered by they weren't improving their performance.

Character education and leadership development changed all this. Instead of a transactional form of coaching, we began a transformational form of coaching. Not only did our players begin to change, we began to change as coaches. Instead of yelling at our players and berating them, we began to coach them through mistakes and remind them of how they can do it better. This doesn't mean we didn't yell. The difference was the purpose of our yelling. Our purpose was to uplift and build them up!

Part of our leadership component involved empowering our players to take ownership of the successes an challenges we faced. We wanted them to know it was their deal and all about them. Instead of us setting the goals, we had the players set team goals. We had them set our goals for the winter and spring, goals for the summer, and goals for the season. We had them come up with a framework of expectations. It was amazing to watch them blossom through this process.

The Results
The results were outstanding! They began to think about the man next to them and the good of the team when they made a decision. Their decisions began to improve both on and off the field. Our players began to walk a little bit taller.  Their grades improved and they began to show excitement for their future. When we first arrived most of our players were taking summer school to get eligible. After implementing a character education program we rarely lost a kid to eligibility.

Perhaps the biggest thing that happened was the trust that was built. They began to trust that we really cared about them as more than athletes. We cared about them in life. We cared about what happened to them when we weren't around them. Our relationships with our players improved and we built bonds that will never be broken. And the relationships they built with each other were strengthened. They began to care about each other and truly became a family.

Did we win more games? Yes we did. We enjoyed a very good six year run of sustained success. We won playoff games for the first time in school history. Our kids were much better at handling adversity. They learned to push themselves to new limits. They developed a solid mental toughness that powered them through challenges they faced. Most importantly, they learned it isn't about them. It is bigger than them. Everything they do and every choice they make will impact others.

Teaching character and leadership will help you leave a lasting legacy. Everything we do as coaches will have an impact on our kids. That impact can be positive, or it can be negative. By teaching character and leadership we can greatly increase the chances that our student-athletes will have a very positive, life-changing experience in our program.

My experience at Christopher Columbus High School gave me tremendous appreciation for the value of teaching character and leadership. While I was a coordinator at the college level we emphasized character and leadership with our student-athletes.

I was blessed to get hired by Kent Jackson when I moved to Texas, one of the best men in the coaching business. We teach character with intent at Seminole High School. We invested a lot of time during two a days introducing our players to the concept of our character and leadership component. We use each day teach character and life lessons with our players.

At some point the good lord will present a head coaching opportunity,  and you can be sure that character education and leadership development will be paramount to our program. It is our duty and responsibility as coaches to develop our players into great leaders with a strong moral compass.

The R.E.A.L Man Program
There are several character programs that are out there. One program I really like is called The R.E.A.L Man Program by Coach Frank DiCocco. It is simple to implement and all the materials are ready for use. I have used this with my athletes and in my classes. This program is being used by several high schools and colleges throughout the US. You can find more information clicking here: The Real Man Program

The Texas High School Coaches Association also has several resources available with their Game Changer Program. I highly recommend these resources as well! Game Changer Coaches

A few months back I published a couple of iBooks that can help your program with X's and O's. The first is on Installing RPO's into any offense. Here is a link to the iBooks version: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1078061959. The ibooks version includes explanations, diagrams, and video clips on multiple RPO Concepts. It will give you a simple process for implementing them into your offense.

If you don't have an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can order the Amazon version for the Kindle. It has everything except the embedded video. You can order it here: http://www.amazon.com/Installing-Explosive-Concepts-Into-Offense-ebook/dp/B01B12YSCG/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

I also wrote a book on Tempo. It will greatly help you build a multiple tempo system with simple communication that will allow your kids to play with confidence. It also had over an hour of video clips! You can order the ibooks version here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/id1075902270.

Order the Amazon Kindle version here:

http://www.amazon.com/Using-Multiple-Tempos-Create-Explosive-ebook/dp/B01ATOL46A/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

If you are looking for information on the Pistol Offense, I have written two books on the pistol offense with Coaches Choice. If you are interested in learning more about those, click this link: https://coacheschoice.com/m-63-james-vint.aspx

One of the keys to our success was tremendous preparation!The key to  preparation was our outstanding group of documents we used for all three phases. If you are looking for fully editable and customizable documents that you can tailor to your program, I have made mine available. 

Here is a link to my offensive game planning documents: https://sellfy.com/p/AndN/

It includes everything from a scouting report template, to practice plans, to a two-sided color call sheet, and more! Each of the nine documents are fully editable and customizable! Order today for under $15 and download them tonight!

Here is a link to the defensive game planning documents. It includes 12 fully editable and customizable documents. https://sellfy.com/p/AY1u/

And finally, I put together a special teams resource. This has everything you need, included drill tape, practice tape, and game footage. It includes teaching presentations and scouting forms just for special teams! https://sellfy.com/p/tJwz/