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Our first book, Lead Yourself First, is our field manual for coaches to build their Leadership. We’ve heard from many coaches who have read it, love it, and are taking their staff through it.

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We asked last week. And the response was overwhelming. 95% of you said you wanted content aimed at Athletes. So, we will start it! Look for a new edition next Tuesday aimed at your athletes.

The topic? The same one as this very edition! How to Actually Get BETTER This Offseason.

If you want your athletes to go ahead and subscribe, send them here:

You can send them this link.

Every offseason, you’ll hear a lot of the same talking points from coaches.

“We’re getting a lot of good work in.”

And they are. More workouts. More film. More reps. Offseason projects.

Coaches read books. They listen to podcasts. They attend coaches clinics and conventions. If they really want to invest in their learning they call someone and ask to learn from them. They’ll even take notes.

It all feels productive towards their learning.

But then the season starts. And not much has actually changed.

Same habits. Same mistakes. Same conversations. The team hits the same ruts in the same points in the season they usually do, and there’s no real plan of action to make it better.

Because activity isn’t the same as improvement.

And most offseasons are built around activity.

Most coaches don’t lack effort in the offseason. They lack a system for learning from what they’re doing every day.

Reps don’t equal learning. Reflection does. Adjustment does. Feedback from people you trust does.

Without those, reps typically just reinforce whatever already exists. Good and bad.

We continue to be surprised, but maybe we shouldn’t. We will be on the course with a top 100 golfer in the world. We’ll start asking them about their pre-shot process. Or how they like to practice.

They can talk in meticulous detail about some parts. But others, there isn’t really a system. And these are the elite of the elite. The best at what they do!

Sometimes, we wonder, “How is that even possible?” But when you think about it. It also makes a lot of sense.

Unless they’ve been walked through it by someone else and built a system into their development, why WOULD they know how to do it?

But the truth is, the same holds for coaches and their learning.

If you want this offseason to actually lead to improvement, you need to follow the advice you’re probably giving to your athletes. It doesn’t need to be more complicated. It needs to be more intentional.

Here’s a simple framework:

It’s true for your players and it’s true for you.

If you ask your player what they’re going to do in the offseason and they say “just need to get a better coach,” it’s likely a sign they have no idea what they actually need to improve on.

But coaches do the same thing.

Most offseason plans start with:

“We need to improve.”

That’s not clear enough.

Better at what?

If you can’t define it clearly, you can’t build toward it.

Whatever you’re doing whether it’s practice, film, workouts…

Ask one question at the end:

“What did we actually learn today?”

Not what you did. What changed?
What did you see differently?
What would you do differently tomorrow?

If nothing changed in your daily systems, you didn’t get better.

Most teams (and their leaders) follow some sort of system like this.

Plan → Execute → Repeat

The leaders and teams that learn the most do something like this:

Plan → Execute → Reflect → Adjust

And they do that daily. These small adjustments compound over months and seasons.

Let’s be clear. We are not saying to make it a routine to change things during seasons. Most coaches don’t make small tweaks until there’s a gaping issue, and then they try to change major parts of their offense or defense when it’s too late.

What we are talking about is evaluating yourself, your leadership, your coaching, and your team in the offseason and reflecting intentionally to make small, incremental changes.

But only if you actually make them.

What gets measured gets improved.

But most teams track outcomes. We’ve talked about that before. Wins, scores, and championships are lagging results that come as a result of your daily processes.

Instead, track something like:

Pick 1–2 things. Track them every day. Make improvement visible for everyone.

The best development environments don’t eliminate mistakes.

They eliminate the time between mistake and correction. So we want to build a system for your leadership where you are able to do this for yourself.

Address things sooner. Build feedback loops for yourself that respond in real time.

The speed at which you are able to learn is everything.

Most offseasons feel productive.

You’re busy. Your players are working. Your staff is engaged.

It looks like improvement.

But without a system you’re just getting really efficient at staying the same.

Your offseason isn’t about how much you do.

It’s about how much you learn from what you do.

How are you ensuring that today’s work on your development actually makes you better?

Because that answer is what will define your offseason.

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