30-Second Version
- Five professional youth coaches who watched video of their own sessions over three seasons ended up instructing less, giving less feedback, leaving more deliberate silence, and in four cases asking more questions.
- You can't see your own coaching clearly from inside a session. That isn't a discipline problem. Most likely, your attention is on the players, which is where it should be.
- Four ways to see it: the five-things check after training, ten minutes of phone video with a simple tally, asking your players, and a colleague watching.
- Count a few things, not everything: instructions, questions (open or closed), silence, and every time you stop play and who it was for.
Five professional youth coaches in England watched video of their own sessions over three seasons. By the third season, they were instructing less, giving less feedback, and leaving more deliberate silence while players were working. Four of the five were also asking more questions (Partington, Cushion, Cope & Harvey, Reflective Practice, 2015).
They saw what they were doing, and over time most of them changed it.
That's five coaches, all working in professional academies, so it's a direction rather than proof. But it points at something most coaches rarely get: a clear look at their own coaching from the outside.
Why you can't see it from the inside
Coaches tend to misjudge their own behavior. When researchers compared coaches' ratings of what they did with what an observer recorded, the players' ratings matched the recording more closely than the coaches' own did (Cushion, Ford & Williams, Journal of Sports Sciences, 2012). How Much Should You Actually Say? gets into what that research found about how much coaches talk.
I don't think that's a discipline problem. The likeliest reason is attention: during a session it's on the players, the game, the clock and the next activity. How you're coaching isn't something you're watching, because you're busy doing it. Seeing it needs either a record or another pair of eyes.
Four ways to see it
These run roughly from quickest to most involved.
1. The five-things check. After training, write down the last five things you remember saying to players. If most of them were telling someone what to do, that's worth noticing. It's rough and it relies on memory, which is exactly what the research says is unreliable, but it takes a minute and it starts the habit.
2. Ten minutes of video. Prop a phone on a bag and film ten minutes of one activity, with sound. Watch it back once with a simple tally (below). In my experience ten minutes is enough to see patterns, and short enough that you'll watch it. The Partington study used a research-grade system for coding coach behavior, so a phone and a tally sheet is a much rougher version, but it's the same basic idea: see it, then decide what to change.
3. Ask your players. If players judge your coaching more accurately than you do, ask them. With young players, keep it simple: "What were we working on today?" If they can't tell you, too much was competing for their attention. That's the same test Why Your Soccer Practice Feels Like Chaos uses for session design.
4. A colleague watching. Another coach watching one activity and noting the same things you'd tally on video. I watch a lot of other coaches' sessions, and it's far easier to see someone else's patterns than your own. Swapping with another coach means you both get the outside view.
What to count
Counting everything is how a tally sheet gets abandoned after one session. A few categories, borrowed from the Coaching Intervention Wheel this site uses, cover most of what matters:
| Count | What you're looking for |
|---|---|
| Instructions | Telling a player what to do. |
| Questions: closed | One right answer you already have in mind. |
| Questions: open | A real question with more than one answer. |
| Deliberate silence | A moment you chose not to say anything. |
| Stoppages | Every time play stops for you, and who the message was for: one player, a group, or everyone. |
For a rough reference point, 19 Australian coaches of U12–U16 players, filmed in real training, asked a little under one question a minute, split about evenly between closed and open (O'Connor et al., Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 2021). That's a description of what coaches did, not a target.
The stoppages row is often the most revealing. If the whole group keeps stopping for messages meant for one player, How to Coach Without Stopping the Game covers the cheaper options.
Free printable
Coaching Tally Sheet
The five rows above on one page, with room for three clips, a split of who each stoppage was for, and a box for the one thing you'll change next time.
What to be careful about
- Being filmed changes how you coach. Most people coach a little differently when they know the camera's on. That's partly the point, but it means one video shows your careful version. Film a few times and it usually fades.
- Counts aren't quality. Ten questions a session isn't automatically better than five. A well-timed instruction can be exactly right, especially for a player who can't yet do the skill (Teach It or Let the Game Teach It? covers when). The tally shows your patterns. Whether they're the right patterns for your players is a judgment call.
- The research base is small. The video study is five coaches in professional academies. The self-rating finding comes from a review of several observational studies. Both point the same way, but neither is a large trial.
Next session
If you want a starting point: film ten minutes, tally the five rows above, and pick one thing to change next time, not five.
Common questions about observing your own coaching
How can I improve my coaching without a mentor? One way is to film yourself. Ten minutes of phone video with a simple tally of instructions, questions, silence and stoppages will show you patterns you can't see from inside a session. In one study, professional youth coaches who reviewed video of their own sessions over three seasons reduced their instruction and increased their questioning.
Why don't coaches notice how much they talk? Because their attention is on the players and the game, not on themselves. Research comparing coaches' self-ratings with observed behavior found players' ratings matched reality more closely than coaches' own.
What should I look for when I watch video of my coaching? Start with a few things: how often you instruct, how many of your questions are open versus closed, whether you leave deliberate silence, and every time you stop play and who the message was for.
Is asking players for feedback useful with young children? Yes, if you keep it simple. "What were we working on today?" tells you whether the session's main idea landed. If most players can't answer, the session probably had too much going on.
This is part of Coach Development & CPD. It builds on How Much Should You Actually Say? and How to Coach Without Stopping the Game. For planning the sessions you'll be watching, see How to Plan a Soccer Training Session.