From online calendars to digital time management tools, there is any number of products designed to make working life simpler and more efficient.
But while they’re useful, very few are tailored to the unique challenges faced by the average Director of Coaching (DOC). Challenges like:
- Overseeing the career progression of your coaching team
- Recruiting new coaches when required
- Defining and implementing your coaching philosophy
- Building a strong, positive club culture
- Deciding how best to spend the club budget
And that’s before you’ve even considered your own ongoing development. With so much to occupy your time, it’s often a real challenge to keep all those plates spinning.
Fortunately, The Coaching Manual is here to help. Our software is designed to assist with some of the most time-consuming elements of the DOC role, freeing you up to focus on the areas in which you can add genuine value. Here are six ways to use our tools for your soccer club management:
1. Plan sessions from scratch
Need your coaches to introduce a new training session? Perhaps there’s a specific skill that you want players to improve, and your existing drills aren’t working? That’s where our session planner becomes invaluable.
When we first started discussing the session planner, we set out to make it as user-friendly as possible. In fact, we wanted it to be as simple as using a pen and paper. We think we pulled it off. No need to consult lengthy user manuals; you can start using our software immediately to create beautiful, easy-to-understand training drill diagrams.
The drag-and-drop interface makes it quick and easy to create new sessions, while the level of customisation is superb – right down to player labels, shirt numbers and text.
2. Create a season-long training curriculum
Of course, creating one-off drills is only part of the battle. Without a detailed, season-long curriculum of training sessions – providing clear development from one week to the next – it becomes much harder for your players to reach their full potential.
Building a calendar of training sessions and drills covering a whole season can seem daunting. It can also be extremely time-consuming. Our season planner makes the process simple, condensing hours of work into just a couple of minutes. All you need to do is answer a few quick questions about the specific team – player age, the days of the week on which you train, etc. – and our automated software will create your curriculum from scratch.
3. Take players through new drills
It’s one thing to plan a new training drill, but it’s quite another to translate that drill from your mind to the practice field.
Again, The Coaching Manual makes it easy. Our diagram creator allows you to take your ideas and visualise them in a clear, concise manner. No chance of miscommunication; your plans can be relayed precisely and re-used time and again.
A host of pitches and layouts are available, making it perfect for demonstrating all types of training drills. Once you’re happy with the results, just click “save” and you’ll be able to present your diagram to coaches and players.
4. Handle day-to-day admin
However efficiently you work, mundane administrative tasks can be a major time drain. In a business study, managers in the UK and US said they spend an average of two days per week on admin – and that this often prevents them from focusing on important strategic work.
While we can’t stop people from sending you “urgent” emails, we can ease the strain of admin. In particular, we can dramatically reduce the time you need to spend on disseminating educational material, such as new training sessions.
With our club & team management tools, you can create profiles for coaches and individual players. Use these profiles to share coaching content with relevant parties, helping to speed up the pace of development of players and coaches alike.
5. Read guides, tips and best practice
Professional development isn’t just vital for your coaching team. It’s equally important that you continue to grow in your role – just because you’ve become the DOC, that doesn’t mean you’re the finished article.
Sometimes, a little wider reading can be invaluable to help you solve a problem, introduce a new system of working or improve your skillset. Our blog content is full of practical tips on a wide range of soccer issues, from building a coaching philosophy and recruiting the right people, to motivating your players and finding a sponsor for your club.
What’s more, you’ll find plenty of content geared toward making the most of The Coaching Manual’s feature set. So whether you’re already a subscriber or you’re thinking about signing up in the future, you’ll find lots of useful information here.
6. Access professional-quality coaching sessions
Ever wish that you and your coaches could learn from some of the best in the business? That you’d love to look inside a professional academy setup to see how they do things? With our wide range of full coaching sessions, you can.
All of our video-based sessions have been filmed with our partners at Southampton FC – home of the academy that developed elite stars like Gareth Bale, Adam Lallana, and Luke Shaw. Whatever age group you’re working with or skill you’re trying to teach, you’ll find it in our vast library of video content. Examples include:
- Rondos
- Beat-the-player moves
- 1v1 defending practices
- Playing out from the back
- Playing through the thirds
- Counter-attacking
- Defending out of balance
- Defending in balance
- Creating attacking overloads
Conclusion
Of course, we can’t do everything for you. Every DOC is busy, and even with our catalogue of tools, there’s no doubt you’ll still be feeling the strain at times.
But by taking some of the hassles out of vital club admin and making it quick and simple for you to build detailed coaching curriculums, we can free you up to focus on the things that really matter.