Byline: Connie Etemadi
Athletes, parents, and coaches have a new reason to celebrate. The ever-evolving digital world has made its way onto the pitch, colliding with sports enthusiasts and teams to make getting into the game easier than before. This digital transformation has helped to revolutionize how coaches can serve their teams, engage with partners, and even grow their organizations. Platforms like Striveon offer coaches and teams a winning advantage, bringing the field to their fingertips and helping connect players, parents, and others quickly and easily.
The Digital Shift
The digital shift in coaching started with a simple enough realization: coaches can do their best work when connecting and instructing their players, unencumbered with the tedium of managing who needs to be where and when. The coaching industry is embracing technology that takes the pain out of scheduling and administrative work.
Digital tools can help to free up teams and coaches to do their best work with players, whether that’s revamping a training development plan or identifying new skill sets. Digital coaching platforms allow players and coaches to shine.
Modern Tools for Modern Coaching
While successful coaching has long relied on excellent interpersonal communication, when players and their coaches are not face-to-face, the gap can be challenging to fill. Modern coaching tools help facilitate up-to-the-minute communications, enabling easier scheduling and secure messaging. Players and coaches can worry less about gameday location changes or whether they are on the correct text chain through these messaging features.
These digital tools enable personalized goal-setting and tracking for players and personnel, too. Coaches and players don’t need to hunt down spare spreadsheets or navigate through disparate fitness apps to determine whether goals are being met. Through a consolidated platform, teammates can connect and stay on track together.
A Winning Strategy for Coaches and Clients
The benefits of using a digitized coaching platform are wide-ranging, offering simplicity and ease of use for coaches and clients alike. Digital tools can integrate videos for further practice and clarity outside of team meetings. These platforms may also feature customer relationship management tools, like secure payment gateways, so team dues are easily tracked, with no paper receipts required.
Coaches can benefit from more streamlined workflows to allow a quick and easy visualization of training plans. The organizational structure facilitates better client management and supports data-driven growth and development of players and the team. At the same time, clients can benefit from clear, consistent communication and trackable progress metrics.
Scalability and Customization
As a team or organization grows, its tools ought to have the flexibility and capability to grow right along with it. Rather than being forced to transfer data elsewhere, coaches would do well to think ahead and choose a scalable solution designed to handle growth and change.
Ideally, digital coaching platforms should support one-on-one coaching, group coaching, or even course-based models. Each player or client has their preferences and needs, as do their coaches. Digital tools must be able to address these needs and offer the flexibility to change paths when the strategy calls for it.
Choosing the Right Coaching Technology Solutions
In addition to scalability, there are many things to consider when deciding on the right coaching platform. For one, coaches must consider whether the user experience (UX) or interface is easily accessible and usable for their players or clients. Coaches must look for a solution that helps safeguard data privacy, particularly for players or teams with minors.
Better technology solutions offer a comprehensive digital environment, supporting coaches and teams safely and securely. Of course, these tools must also be affordable for teams, combining utility with accessibility at a reasonable price point.
Keeping Up with Coaching Trends
As the digital shift continues, it is perhaps unsurprising that teams may look to see what’s next on the horizon. While digital platforms themselves transform to meet the needs of clients and coaches alike, trendsetters keep an eye on how AI can enable smarter coaching insights and gamify engagement for players.
Technological adoption is often linked to long-term growth and an overall competitive advantage. Digital tools help to drive insights and facilitate communication, allowing coaches and their teams to get back to the basics of what makes playing great.