Alexis at Coaches Corner pondered how different aspects of coaching should be prioritized on the basis of what is cake – the core, what is icing – meaningful, but not key – and what is sprinkles – the nice to have stuff. This is how he broke it down in his own view.
Cake
• Quality Coaching
• Strength and Conditioning
• Skill/Technical training
• Group culture
Icing
• Group Dynamics
• Recovery
• Video review
• Training Diaries
• Healthy nutrition
Sprinkles
• Nutritional supplements
• Training gear
I’m not sure how Alexis differentiates between Group Culture and Group Dynamics (edit: he offers an explanation in a comment below). I think, depending on one’s situation, strength & conditioning can be moved to icing. For example, when I coached at Exeter – and this applies to many club programs – we only trained twice a week for 3.5 hours total. No time in there to work specifically on S&C. Similarly, for some video analysis might fall into the Sprinkles category.
Here’s how I prioritized things with my Svedala at the time Alexis wrote his post.
Cake
• Player use optimization (line-ups, subs, etc.)
• Strength and Conditioning
• Skill/Technical training
• Volleyball IQ development
• Group culture
• Statistical analysis
Icing
• Group Dynamics
• Recovery
• Video review
• Training Diaries
• Healthy nutrition
Sprinkles
• Nutritional supplements
• Training gear
• In-training video
These things, for me, change over the course of a season. For example, developing the team culture and dynamic is a big priority early on, but if done right is more about maintenance later. Regardless, knowing your priorities is very important.
How would you break it out?
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One Response
Hey there John – glad to know someone read my post 🙂
To answer your question – for me, Team Culture is about the overall way the group acts. Its about the standards, the personal interaction, the ideals of the group as a whole. Team Dynamics are more related to individual interactions, individual behavioural traits that affect the team. Probably the main difference in my mind is the the coach and team set the culture, but there probably needs to be more specialised help with Team Dynamics. In the end, maybe there isn’t a lot of difference.
Regarding S&C, this is a critical point to the philosophy of the prioritisation. The essential point is that the Cake are fundamentals. Just because you don’t do them or don’t have time for them, doesn’t mean they don’t belong. For example, if you are coaching a group of 14 year olds and had funding for a full time assistant, would you be better off hiring an expert in skill development for adolescents, or a full time scout? Most likely, it would be an expert in skill development.
The idea is not that you spend all your time working on ‘cake’ but that you only work on other things when the ‘cake’ is working well. An elite team would spend a lot less time on fundamental development than a junior team, BUT ONLY because they no longer need to. It doesn’t mean it is less important to them than dietary management and recovery, it means that it is not appropriate to spend time on that.
Think of it more as a checklist. If you are checking things in Icing and Sprinkles, but not checking things in Cake, then you need to revisit your priorities.