Use This 15 Minute Drill for Focused, Smoother Practices

💪🏼 Ready for the #1 Practice Strategy Every Coach Needs? Learn how to run more focused and productive practices → https://coachfreetraining.com

Do your athletes waste the first 15-20 minutes of practice unfocused, socializing, or moving slowly into drills? As a high school volleyball coach and mental performance expert, I’ve been there. But after implementing one game-changing pre-practice routine, everything shifted—our practices became sharper, team culture improved, and we maximized our time on the court.

👋 I'm Coach Bre – a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a long-time head volleyball coach and 4-time state champion. This channel is where we help high school and middle school coaches build elite team cultures, train confident athletes, and coach beyond just the X’s and O’s.

🎯 Ready to create a championship-level practice routine? Inside this quick coaching tip, you'll discover:
✔️ The 3-part recipe for a high-impact pre-practice routine
✔️ How to cut down wasted time & elevate player accountability
✔️ A practical way to reduce cliques & build team connection
✔️ Easy ways to work in mental check-ins (even if you're short on time!)
✔️ How to get started even if you don’t have a whiteboard or gym space

This is one of the simplest coaching strategies you can implement today to:
✅ Increase practice efficiency
✅ Strengthen your team culture
✅ Develop focused, motivated athletes
✅ Set the tone for a winning mindset — every single day

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction: The Struggle of Unfocused Practices
00:54 The Game-Changing Pre-Practice Routine
02:18 Benefits of a Structured Pre-Practice Routine
03:52 Key Elements of an Effective Pre-Practice
05:20 Implementing the Routine: Practical Tips
05:58 Conclusion and Next Steps

💬 Coaches – comment below: What’s your biggest struggle with practice efficiency?

👉 Next Step: Want an easy way to check in with your athletes daily? Stay tuned for my next video on the 10-Second Daily Athlete Check-In! 

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Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

The Simple Pre-Practice Routine For Smoother_ More Focused Practices (1): 1:04

Ever feel like practice starts with your athletes just dragging in maybe a little bit asleep and you're spending the first 15 or 20 minutes just trying to get them to focus Well, same here. And as a head volleyball coach for the past 12 years, I started implementing one small shift at the beginning of my practices that significantly changed things my practices became more sharp it actually strengthened our team culture and I was wasting way less time trying to get people to focus so we could actually have a productive practice well, in this video, I will be breaking down the exact change that I made and how implementing it not only will give you your time back, but strengthen your team culture and how you can start doing it too, no matter what sport you coach and if you haven't already, make sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel to get more strategies on how to elevate your culture, build mentally strong athletes, and build a culture in your program that you are proud of. Let's get into this. This one strategy that I started implementing is called a pre practice routine. And likely you already have a pre practice routine, but my question for you is, is it one that is actually helping your team culture and making your practices better??! Because to be honest, the pre practice routine that I had before was athletes would kind of mosey on into the gym. They would set up nets and they would pick their favorite partner and then do some arbitrary arm swing exercises. And then maybe they would start peppering, which is a volleyball term. It really wasn't productive until I finally was like, okay, we're, we're here to start practice. And I would still spend the first 15 or 20 minutes trying to get them engaged, get them going until we could actually get a good pace into our practice, which is a ton of wasted time and wasted opportunity. So instead a pre practice routine is a 10 to 15 minute series of activities that athletes engage in as soon as they come into the gym. So. When they come into the gym, they have a whiteboard with these pre practice activities written on them that they can go through. Now there is a recipe to making these pre practices effective. I'm going to go over that in a second. Now, if you don't coach in a gym or you don't have a whiteboard, first of all, I would actually recommend that you do get a whiteboard. If you do coach in a gym, it is a game changer, but this can also be done on a sheet of paper. Your captains can lead it. There's a lot of different strategies and different ways you can do it that I'll talk about at the end of this video, but let's get into. What this can actually do for your practices, less wasted time. I already mentioned this athletes come in and they know exactly what to do. So they're not just, you know, randomly doing things with, um, that aren't actually going to help them get better. So much less wasted time, more accountability. More accountability and ownership over what they are doing in the gym instead of just, you know, getting some reps and actually probably getting a little bit worse because they're not actually high quality intentional reps, less clicks. Now, my pre practice routine before I actually implemented something that was intentional was actually reinforcing things in my culture that I didn't want. including more clicks, which leads to more drama. You can actually be intentional with your pre practice to alternate the groupings and the pairings of people so that your athletes are able to interact with more people in the program and create less opportunity for clicks and drama, and also more opportunities for check in. Now, in addition to being a head volleyball coach, I'm also a mental performance coach so we do a lot of mental training in our program, and this. 10 to 15 minute pre practice buffer gives me a really great opportunity to check in with my athletes. We all know how important it is for us to check in on our athletes mental health, but honestly, who has the time? And so during this time, I actually do my 10 Second Daily Athlete Check In and I actually have a video for that right after this. So if you want to know a quick 10 second check in that you can do with your athletes on a daily basis, check that next video out because it's something that we incorporate into our pre practice and it really makes a difference. Let's talk about the recipe for a good pre practice. There are three things that you need. You need connection, you need skill reps, and you need small group or game light. Let's break these all down first. Connection. I recommend that you come up with three to five connection activities that your players can do at the start of their pre practice. And when they come in, they look at the board. A really simple example, give five high fives, right? They go and they find five people to give high fives to, so they're physically connecting and they're maybe even having a little conversation with somebody before practice, so they're connecting. This is also where we do our athlete mental health check in. So that 10 second check in is part of a connection activity that we do at the beginning of practice. So something that leads to connection. Skill reps is the second one. So skill reps, these are these things that you want your athletes to do, but typically we don't want to waste practice time doing them. So some footwork things, maybe some ball control thing, have it written out. I rotate through three different skill rep activities. One is offensive focus, one is defensive focused. And then there's another one that has some blocking footwork and that is related to volleyball. Number three in this. game, like some sort of small group game like situation so that athletes can be getting their heart rate up and also connecting in a game like setting. Now, these three things, that recipe is pretty simple once you break it down like that, and how you can simply implement this into your program is come up for you. What does this look like for you? That little picture is an example of one of our pre practice routines towards the end of the season. So you can see our connection was five high fives. We had some skill repetitions, we had some blocking footwork, we also had some service zones that they were doing, and then at the bottom, that's actually cut off, we had a little game like activity the athletes were doing, and as they're doing this, they're also checking in with me, and they're doing a lot of intentional things to make sure that their mind is right, and they're physically ready for practice and now, like I said, if you don't have a whiteboard, first of all, get one. But if you don't have that capacity, we can also do this on a sheet of paper. You can have your captains lead it. So there's a lot of ways that you can implement this pre practice routine, no matter what sport that you coach. Now, if you want one of the easiest ways to use some of this pre practice time to check in with your athletes, because we all know how important that is, but honestly, who has the time you're going to want to watch my next video on the Daily 10 Second Athlete Check In to make you a better coach it's something that literally take seconds and it gives you valuable insights to your athlete so that you can coach them more effectively in that day's practice. So I will see you in that next video