Don’t make training suck. Is great advice for youth coaches.
Tags games work. Playing the sport the kid has signed up for, the same. But what doesn’t work, for many, is relentless practise.
At a young age, Andre Agassi was hitting 2,500 tennis balls a day. The task and Andre’s skills were clear. The environment, murky.
Conflate the task with the environment and you too will muddy the water.
The job of a coach is to engage kids in learning a task that is fun. The work of a coach is to create a learning environment that requires effort, inconvenience, and a willingness to want to improve.
Engage to create change. But know you can get one and not the other.