Football Coaching and Learning Styles | FBCP S11E12

Not every player learns best the same way. I’ll say that again. Not every player learns best the same way. Some of your players cannot sit down with a playbook and learn how to play football. The white board looks nothing like a football field to some of your players. You’re writing Greek up there. Your practice schedule, as well as your coaching style, should incorporate as many learning styles as possible to ensure every player on the team is taking something from it.

On this episode Joe, Daniel, and Coach James Vint discuss the types of learning styles there are, why they’re all important, and ways that we’ve been adding them all into our practice plan to get the most benefit for the most players.

Why do we need to consider player learning styles?

• Coaching is teaching, first and foremost. Although we are teaching a play, scheme, idea, read, etc rather than how to use the pythagorean theorem, we’re still teaching. 
• Coaches use all four of the active teaching styles, auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and reading/writing as well as passive learning through our actions.
• Most kids can learn by doing, or kinesthetic learning, regardless of how well they learn from any of the other styles.

What player learning styles are used in football?

• Beginning with day 1 installs, you can and should hit every learning style with a calculated install plan.
• Utilize a printed playbook, online playbooks, group meetings to discuss the install, white board to simplify the day’s goal, and the walk(run)through to get every learning style engaged.
• Especially for your younger or newer players, using a “crawl, walk, run” system can bring understanding along without overloading.

How to incorporate more coaching styles for our players

• Practice itself can be limited on what learning styles to incorporate. The hands on seems automatic at this point, but don’t forget you can draw up a play or scheme and discuss it with the group. You may even let an advanced player “teach” the idea to the others in their position group.
• Use group meetings to install ideas, and then move to pod work on the practice field. Can move in and out of meeting spaces and back to the field as needed.
• Get the players drawing what you’re trying to install.
• Technology has opened doors for helping to teach our players outside of the practice field and field house. 
• VR and 3D installs from GoArmyEdge allow for a player to be immersed in the “situation of the week” while running a key play for many extra reps, without the fatigue or practice time consumption of the past.

Related Links

• Special Teams is the perfect place to try different learning/coaching styles. It’s the team that gets the least reps, but is still just as important. Listen to this episode from Season 9 to work out your special teams practice schedule.
• Pre-practice is still fairly new to some coaches. It’s a great place to input some alternate learning/coaching styles for your concept of the day. Listen to this episode from Season 5 about using pre-practice in your practice plan.
• Just because you’re good at including all the learning styles, doesn’t mean that your assistants are. Don’t forget to coach your coaches. In Season 9, Joe discussed Football coaching staff organization.