How to Identify a Good Coach

There is so much information available in the game of baseball that it is often difficult to decipher what information is the best for your child.  Many parents want their children to receive private instruction and understand that it can be costly. If you are a parent who is willing to invest in private instruction for your pitcher, it is important to know what to look for when deciding on the most effective private coach for your child.

Here are a few tips to help you spot out the best from the rest when it comes to private coaches:

Video, Video and more Video
You want to choose a coach for your young athlete who uses video in their instruction.  Video should be taken of your child in almost every session so that the coach can consistently see if there are any improvements being made.  Additionally, video allows the parent to take a look and start to learn about the movement as well.  At the very least the coach should be showing your child a video of a professional who does things very well in their sport.  This way the child can have someone to pattern their movements after and have a visual interpretation in addition to the words of what the movement should look like when performed well.

Assessments
It is important to choose a coach who assesses their athletes prior to starting them on a program or series of lessons.  If the coach does not have a solid background of the athlete or at least a very good idea of where they are currently in regards to development, then they cannot truly know where to start.  Assessments, if done properly of course, are great tools for the coaches and parents to understand their young athlete.  With assessments, parents can discover information about their children that they may not have previously noticed or have been ignoring and the coach will be better informed before beginning a program. 

Background
Be sure to investigate the background of the coach that you are looking to hire.  For example, how much playing experience does the coach have?  How much coaching experience?  What efforts have they made to learn more about their craft?  Do they have specific physical education classes that will benefit your athlete?  Can they analyze film and break down movements?  Do they understand how the body works and what type of information the body will react to?  Just because a coach has major league experience doesn't make them a great coach. There are plenty of big league performers who never really understood how they got things done from a mechanical standpoint, they just knew how to get things done.  Of course there will be pluses and minuses to all coaches but don't be fooled by their background and don't forget to check on it.

Clients
Check to see what type of clients the coach has been working with.  What age group does the coach have most of their experience with?  How have the clients that they have worked with in the past evolved?  What do their former clients say about them?  We all know that it is really exciting to take your athlete to a coach who has worked with major league players.  But not every good coach you see is going to have that type of clientele.

What you really want to take a look at is how this coach is developing the clients they have.  For example, is the coach able to assist in developing young athletes who are average or below average athletes when they started instruction?  Can the coach take these young athletes and help guide them to have experiences that they would have never had unless they found each other?  The real coaches are the ones who can get those physically challenged athletes and take them to a place they would have never thought they could go.  No matter if that place was JV baseball to JC baseball or back-up Varsity to small college athlete.  Any coach can coach an All-American, but can they coach the kid who nobody thinks has a shot?

Approach
Last but certainly not least is a positive approach.  You want a coach who is positive, upbeat and energetic; a coach who loves what they do and it shows.  Be sure to pick the coaches who have a smile on their face but know what to say, how to say it and when to say it to get the best out of the athlete.  A coach who has an approach from the positive end of the scale will go a long way in inspiring your young athlete to perform at their very best.

So for now on when searching for a coach to assist your young athlete in private instruction keep these tips in mind and it will help you identify the best coach possible and may save you a whole lot of money and wasted time.