The use of video as a coaching tool has moved on in leaps and bounds in recent years and the advances in technology and the lower cost of equipment has made video systems such as Hudl accessible to even the smallest teams.
Whereas, in the past, coaches may have used a whiteboard to analyze a game, they are now more likely to have the team gathered in front of a big TV screen, or they may share video footage via the internet. If you haven’t yet joined the sports coaching video revolution, here’s how video footage can help a coach get the best of a team.
Improve communication
Good use of video footage to illustrate points can improve communication with a team many times over. Saying “look; here’s what I mean” is a lot easier than trying to verbally describe a scenario or drawing a diagram of a scenario on a whiteboard.
Analyze key moments of a game
Modern digital technology means that you can create playlists that enable you to jump quickly to relevant moments in a game. If an error is being made frequently, a coach can quickly demonstrate that error with video footage.
Enables personal feedback to individual players
Coaching a team is also about coaching individuals and, when you use video footage of practices and games with systems like Hudl, you can send individual players videos of their own performance complete with drawings and annotations to explain clearly to them how they could improve their game.
Analyze stats and gain an advantage
Video and computer technology has made compiling and analyzing stats much easier. You can now look at team stats for just one single game or across a whole season and, when you video every game, you can illustrate these stats with actual footage. It is video tools like these that can provide coaches with valuable insights that can help them improve game strategies.
Study opponents
When you have video footage of your team, you can exchange it for footage of other teams, and that gives you much better way to study your opponents. As well as analyzing the play of your opponents, you can share that analysis easily with your team as well. That will make your team much better prepared for each and every game.
Improve coaching skills
Coaches can learn from video footage too. No one is perfect and sometimes even the best coach can make a bad call, but detailed video footage will help to highlight were strategies that a coach thought would work, did not, and where some new approaches might be called for.
Helps improve team spirit
Sometimes, individual players can get so caught up excelling themselves, they don’t always help the team excel. Video footage, especially if it’s taken from the high vantage point of an endzone camera tower, can help a coach demonstrate to a team how improved awareness of positioning can help a team work better as a cohesive unit. Video is also a great way to give praise when it’s due to an individual team member, or to the team as whole, and that can help improve team spirit.
Video footage and sports software packages like Hudl provide coaches with an invaluable tool to analyze games and practices, to illustrate the points they are trying to make, and to share information quickly and easily with the team. Video footage can provide a coach with the tools needed to give a team with the winning edge.
