Quick Daily Check-ins Help Athletes Perform At Their BEST

🧠 Ever had a player shut down mid-practice and you had no idea why? This simple check-in strategy fixes that! Get more coaching tips here → https://coachfreetraining.com 👈

As a coach, you know how important it is to check in with your athletes—but with a packed schedule, it’s tough to do consistently. That’s why I started using this 10-second daily athlete check-in, a quick and effective strategy to improve coach-athlete communication, build psychological safety, enhance team cohesion, and boost player performance without adding extra time to practice.

This isn’t about fluffy team bonding—it’s a repeatable communication tool you can start tomorrow that will make you a better coach and build stronger athletes.

In this video, you’ll learn:
✅ The 3 key things we track in our daily check-in
✅ How this boosts athlete accountability and emotional awareness
✅ One unexpected hack that makes your connection stick
✅ Ways to adapt this strategy whether you coach indoors, outdoors, or online

🎤 I’m Coach Bre – a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a 4x state championship volleyball coach. I help coaches build programs rooted in confidence, leadership, and results.

🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction: The Importance of Athlete Check-Ins
00:22 Introducing the 10 Second Daily Athlete Check-In
01:17 Setting Up Your Pre-Practice Routine
01:49 Implementing the Check-In: Practical Tips
03:14 The Key Hack for Effective Check-Ins
04:26 Creating Your Own 10 Second Routine

🏆 Whether you coach volleyball, basketball, soccer, softball, or any high school sport, this strategy will help you connect with your athletes, increase accountability, and improve team dynamics.

💬 Coaches – comment below: What’s ONE thing you wish you knew about your athletes before practice starts?

Want tools like this to build your team’s mental game—without the overwhelm?
👉 Grab our in-depth free training → https://coachfreetraining.com
🎥 Watch my next video: "3 Phrases You Should Say to Your Athletes Daily to Boost Motivation!" 
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Transcript

1:04

I'm hoping I'm not alone as a coach who has ever had a practice go sideways only to learn afterwards that one of my athletes was struggling with something that would have been helpful to know ahead of time Now, you already know how important it is to check in with athletes physically and emotionally but honestly, who has time to do this on a regular basis? There's already so much on our plate! But we know how important it is. And that is exactly why I started implementing this 10 Second Daily Athlete Check-In that is a total low lift, high reward strategy that you can seamlessly enter into the daily fold of your practice to check in with your athletes. as a head coach for the past 12 years and a mental performance coach for athletes, I've learned that missing these key moments can make or break my practice. In this video, I'm going to show you how easy it is that you can start implementing it, how it gives you instant insights into what your athlete is experiencing. It'll also help you run more efficient practices and strengthen your connection with your athletes all without adding a ton of extra time to your practice plans and things that you're already doing as a coach. Now, if you haven't already, go ahead and like this video and subscribe to our channel if you want more strategies on how to elevate your coaching, train your athletes mental game and build a culture in your program that you're proud of. Now what is this daily 10 second check in routine? This check in routine is a part of our pre practice routine that we do before practice. If you don't already have a pre practice routine, I highly encourage you to create one. And if you need help with that, we have a video all about that. It's called the simple pre practice routine for smoother, more focused practices. So during this 10 to 15 minute time where athletes are intentionally working on certain things that are written out for them on the board, they're also doing their 10 second check in. Now this check in for us happens on a whiteboard. So we coach in a gym. I coach volleyball and so I have a big whiteboard in the gym. If you do coach a sport in the gym and you do have access to a whiteboard, highly recommend that you use it for this. And if you don't, you can do this in a variety of other ways. I'll talk about that at the end, but we checked in on three categories that our coaching staff deemed important for athletes, hours of sleep that they got the night before. how much water they had in ounces coming into practice and what their focus is for practice. Now I'll talk about a hack that actually is way more important than these three things, but these are a really good starting place for athletes because we know that when they come into practice, they're dealing with more things than just that two hour chunk that we get to see them, how much they have had in ounces of water, how much they fueled themselves. sleep, the stress, all the things that they're coming in with to practice, influence how they perform and how they show up, but allowing them to check in on these things provides them with a layer of accountability and some awareness that what they do outside of practice matters. And they're going to be accountable to reporting that now there's no penalty or anything for how much we give them targets on what it should be, but it's also good insight for me as a coach to know if an athlete has Only three hours of sleep on the board. I'm going to be checking in with them. We're going to kind of see what's, what's going on here. Same thing with water and then their focus. We can help kind of direct what their focus is for that practice, which makes practice a lot more efficient and a lot more smooth but here's the hack that I use that's actually way more important than those three things. I actually position myself at the whiteboard where the check in is happening. Now I'm going to be there kind of writing up practice plans, kind of doing my thing. I'm not like, Hey, you've got to check in with me. But what naturally happens is that when they come to the whiteboard to write these things down, I'm there and I'm saying, Hey, how's it going? I'm giving them a high five, a fist bump. I'm making contact with every single one of my athletes. before they get into practice. And we know that psychological safety is a key factor in athlete performance. And part of that psychological safety is having a connection with their coach. It allows me to connect with everybody. And these conversations can last from, you know, five seconds to maybe a couple of minutes. If an athlete does identify. something that is going on, right? If it's just a, Hey, how's it going? Excited for practice today? Or maybe it is like, Hey, how was that presentation day? And I learned a little bit about the athlete in those, those key moments. And so that is actually the hack that's even more important than the check in that they're doing around water, around sleep, around their focus, is that I just get this opportunity to check in with athletes every single day, which can key into things that might be really important for me to know as their coach. Now, for you, the challenge is. Let's create your 10 second routine, decide on two things. What's the modality for us? It was the whiteboard, but maybe for you, it's a pen and paper. Maybe it's a Google form, whatever it is, it's something that they do. And it's very quick. Don't choose more than about two to three things that they're checking in on. Again, the most important thing is that they're coming to you and giving you like a high five or a fist bump and that you're, you're connecting with them, but make it simple and decide what those check in items are for you. What's important for you to prioritize as a coach and in your program and mark my words, this will make you a better coach and your athletes are going to be the ones that actually will want to run through a brick wall for you because they know that you care about them and now that you have this information about your players. You might be wondering how to actually use it to motivate them. And if that's you, this next video is going to be super important. I'm talking about the three phrases that you should be saying daily to your athletes in order to motivate them. So these are phrases that you can be saying when they give you some information, you can be infusing these into practice. They're very simple phrases, and it's not just a. Good job because we know that actually doesn't work. So go ahead and check out that next video. The three phrases that you should be saying to your athlete daily to motivate them. I'll see you there