Do you find yourself struggling with managing the time spent with your team, your individual players, and then all of the work you put in between? It isn’t uncommon for time management for soccer coaches to be a bit of a juggling act.
Managing your time as a soccer coach is a two part equation.
First, you must act as a moderator for your players. Controlling and directing their time through practices or private sessions. The second part is the hard part where you have to accomplish the many tasks required of a coach in a hopefully eight-hour workday. Many coaches acknowledge that the time they spend working as a coach spans way more than eight hours a day, or even forty-hours throughout the week.
Time Slot Pro is here to help you keep your time spent working under control and make each moment meaningful!
Disciplined Players Means Quality Practice Time
Soccer teams are often larger and begin at much earlier ages. This means that discipline must be made a priority as young as possible. If you are working with older players you may see that some are determined and focused while others believe they control the field.
How do you find the medium between keeping your clients competitive and focused, as well as allowing them to make in-game decisions that will benefit the team?
Discipline. Unfortunately, there is no other way. However, the good news is that this can be drilled in bit by bit with a focus on time blocking.
By segmenting practices out into mini-practices of drills, such as passing, shooting, control and calling you can create the sense that you control the practice. All the while using the time blocking technique doesn’t close down their ability to maintain control of the situation at hand.
Offering One-On-One or Private Sessions – Time Spent is Time Earned
Often soccer coaches work primarily through team practices and team building activities. However, when working with a club or league rather than a school, coaches have the opportunity to offer private sessions or one-on-one training.
Time spent in booking private coaching sessions can be troublesome. But, if you’re properly managing your time this is a huge opportunity to increase your income through coaching.
By using social media or enlisting with your club or league you can alert parents or players that you’re available for one-on-one coaching times. Although this is more time spent in your day it can give you valuable time to manage some of your player’s improvement.
To manage your time in private sessions, work with the players through their questions at the end of the hour you had scheduled. This gives them crucial time with you, but also gives your insight into questions other players may have that you can address during your next practice.
Although you’re putting more time of your schedule into individualized training by offering one-on-one practices, you are eliminating time spent in practices by being able to hone in on key areas for improvement.
The 18-Minute Day
Managing your time is one of the most difficult aspects of any job. However coaching, particularly if you have or will be adding one-on-one sessions, can be so many tasks to juggle. How will you ever get everything done???
The 18 minute day is a long-loved time management method that brings in constant revaluation.
Here’s the step-by-step guide to effectively using the 18-minute day!
- Step one: set a timer for 6 minutes.
- Step two: before the timer runs out, identify what appointments and practices you have for the day.
- Step three: with any remaining time in your 10-minute slot fill in the gaps between appointments and practices with high priority items.
- Step four: set an alarm to chime every 60 minutes.
- Step five: every time the alarm sounds, evaluate within one minute how productive your last hour has been.
- Step six: with your remaining 4 minutes, at the end of the day prepare anything you can for the following day. This could mean responding to confirmation texts for tomorrows appointments. It could also mean completing administrative tasks like creating invoices.