I have never given a coaching clinic in the United States. Not in southern Indiana, central, northern Indiana...anywhere. It may be because of the lack of resume when it comes to wins that no one wants to hear what I have to say....maybe not.Last summer in Serbia I gave one clinic on court and then headed to Junior in Macedonia and gave one on court and two in class clinics. They can be nerve wracking in that you want to give the coaches something new...one thing at the least and you want to come off that you do know what you are talking about.
Heading to Iceland this summer, I will be giving two clincs along with other coaches and I will be speaking about the organization of our practices and run the players through a HHS practice, but I will also be speaking about our "motion" offense. How we work on it, how we get into it, how we practice it.
It is interesting in showing what you do because you want to make sure you do things professionally and in an instructional way. So what it has done is it has made me think critically of what we do in practice to teach our 3 out 2 in "motion" offense. This is a very good thing because I wonder if we do that enough. I wonder if we worry enough about what we do on a day to day basis in teaching what we coach to sit and look at it through some one elses eyes but our own.
What I mean is this, I know what we are doing, I know what we are doing in practice, but am I doing it so that anyone can see and understand? I want to make sure that when giving a clinic on this subject that I make it complicated yet simple, I want to make sure that my verbage is correct and understandable. I want to run our stuff and teach it as if we were in my classroom learning about the fall of the Soviet Union or the Kennedy Assassination and that the coaches/students understand.
I love clinics and I love being asked why we do what we do. It actually makes me think and pick apart my own brain as much as it does in explaining it to others. That self-reflection is important in coaching, but more importantly self-reflection is important in life.
