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Post by groundchuck on May 6, 2008 20:26:07 GMT -6
As much as we would often like to we probably can't immitate White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and go X-rated on the media or allow our players to have blow-up dolls in the lockerroom.......
........So what do you do to help your team bust out of a slump?
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Post by leighty on May 6, 2008 22:10:35 GMT -6
Change up the practice schedule, hit on a day when you wouldn't normally hit...Crap like that
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Post by Coach Huey on May 6, 2008 23:19:00 GMT -6
change up the routine, like was mentioned...
try letting off the reins some ... then, try pulling on the bit more and going to the whip ( to use a horse racing analogy )
hardest thing is to identify why the slump exists ... are we working them too hard in practice and dampening the spirit? are we too loosey-goosey in practice and not focusing them enough? is there a problem in morale due to some conflict? have they lost interest or the passion for the game? are they placing too much stress on themselves?
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Post by kurtbryan on May 7, 2008 0:46:55 GMT -6
When in a slump, yours truly never blames the players for a loss or string of losses, so.............I take 100% of the heat, and:
1. ask the asst. coaches for even more input
2. seek the input of my captain's council
3. listen to all of the players needing to vent
4. IGNORE the hate mail and anonymous emails from disgruntled fans
5. Stick to basics...OR totally Change everything on the side of the ball that is doing not well at all
KB
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Post by coachcathey on May 7, 2008 9:03:51 GMT -6
When in a slump, yours truly never blames the players for a loss or string of losses, so.............I take 100% of the heat, and: 1. ask the asst. coaches for even more input 2. seek the input of my captain's council 3. listen to all of the players needing to vent 4. IGNORE the hate mail and anonymous emails from disgruntled fans 5. Stick to basics...OR totally Change everything on the side of the ball that is doing not well at allKB Change everything?!, thats not a slump, thats making a mistake. If your season is down the toilet, I could maybe see it, but change everything because of a slump, thats asking for trouble. But making wholesale changes in the middle of a season to get out of a slump, thats probably going to dig your hole deeper, because players/fans/parents/etc are see that you are second guessing yourself and those who already said those changes should have been made, just got more credit than deserved. Keep it simple. Change up practice, find what is wrong somehow (council, etc.) and address it from there. Do something that they don't expect. (No conditioning for a week or something to that extent. ) Other sports do the same thing. Basketball - Shooters keep shooting to get out of slumps. Baseball - They skip BP, take extra BP, etc. There is no cure to "the yips" in golf, you just have to work through it. |
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Post by lsrood on May 7, 2008 10:26:50 GMT -6
We started this past season 0-4 versus a very tough schedule, but we expected to do much, much better.
We tried a number of things:
1: Coaching staff scouted ourselves to see if we were too predictable and evaluated our own coaching to try to figure out what went wrong.
2: Had a meeting first with the captains then with the seniors to find out how they felt and what they were thinking.
3: Allowed the team to have a players only meeting to vent with each other.
4: Sat down and listened to what they had to say after the meeting and worked together with them to implement some of the changes they asked for. (No not wimping out and letting the inmates run the asylum, but genuine give and take that resulted in them understanding what we were trying to accomplish and us coaches finding out that their interpretation was something altogether different.
5: Simplified our approach to offense/defense trying to put our players into their comfort zone. Followed the KISS theory.
Whatever it was, it worked and we were able to run the table winning out in the regular season qualifying for the playoffs and even garnering a home playoff game.
Sometimes it helps to just step back and take a hard look at what you are doing and determining how effectively you are getting your message across. For us, improving communications both ways helped out a lot and made everyone's approach to practice & games that much better.
I'm not sure if this is the answer for everyone but it worked for us.
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Post by cqmiller on May 7, 2008 10:28:33 GMT -6
Mark Grace said it best a while back when he played for the cubs... Take the fattest and ugliest girl at the bar home for the night...
Jose Canseco then put it into an actual sentence - “you find the fattest, gnarliest chick you can uncover, & you lay the wood to her.”
But joking aside, we will sometimes give the kids a "day off" if we need to... Sometimes the kids wil just reach a point where trying to learn, rep, practice more information becomes counter-productive. Everyone has heard of the "wall" that professional athletes run into when they move from college to the pros due to the large increase in practices/games at that level. Many of our kids have never had to experience the mental taxing that football at the HS level requires in Pop-Warner... We will condition them on a monday and then let them go.
The rest of the practices for the rest of the week go an extra 20-30 minutes each day to make up for it, but the kids do come back with a little more focus and a bit of a "need" to get back to the grind.
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Post by leighty on May 7, 2008 11:21:21 GMT -6
I don't know coach...I tried drinking 2 beers per hole instead of just one and that seemed to help quite a bit on holes 6-12. I think maybe you were so hammered that you didn't care where the ball was going. |
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Post by coachcathey on May 7, 2008 12:31:21 GMT -6
But you played through it and overcame. Forget partaking in your beverage of choice.  |
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Post by justryn2 on May 7, 2008 13:18:33 GMT -6
Not that this is necessarily designed to get you out of a slump but, a slump can really hurt team chemistry. Instead of giving them the day off, I just take the learning and drills out of it. Basically, use the practice time for some team building activity not related to football. Whether it helps over the slump or not, it helps get team chemistry back on track.
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