Why coaches yell at players

She smiled. No biggie. Point blank— winning is fun. However, depending on the level you are coaching—there is an appropriate importance to put on winning. Are you screwing up by caring more about winning than you should? Or not caring as much as you should?

I always pitied the fellow who was 2-minutes late, or tried to leave 1-minute early. Oh yeah, we expect people to be on time, yet I see coaches continually keep their athletes late. Five minutes, ten minutes, 30 minutes late. For the greatest impact to occur, it is better to pick and choose your moments when to raise your voice and yell than to deliver a steady diet of it to your teams.

This must be really important because we never hear coach yell at us like this. Why are you yelling? What is your purpose in choosing this form of communication? Is it the best method to elicit whatever it is you want as an outcome from your team? In other words what is your intent when it comes to yelling at your team? If you truly believe that it is an appropriate way to communicate to your audience, the timing is good, and your purpose is genuinely intended to help bring out the best or stop the worst in your team, then by all means yell.

So if you are yelling to help you feel better, or you are yelling while you are not completely in control of your words and emotions, you need to re-consider this method of communicating at this time.

However, there are lot of things that coaches yell at players that have nothing to do with being upset at them. Sometimes, it is based on the arena in which they compete. To communicate across a large field or in a loud gym requires coaches to raise their voices, so they yell. At other times, they are merely yelling instructions or words of encouragement. Of course, there will be times when coaches are upset and they will yell. When doing so, though, they must choose their words wisely so as not to hurt, belittle, demean, or embarrass their players.

Along with the words that you yell, you must also consider how you yell. What is your body language, facial expression, and tone like when you yell? Are these non-verbals expressing what you want expressed? You must consider how you yell what you yell. In fact, you should consider this dynamic even when you are not yelling.

How one says what one says speaks volumes to the audience to whom one is speaking. Did they not teach and prepare their team well enough? They have failed to help their team retain information and neglected to adequately prepare them. As coach, analyzing these two questions can radically change how you practice and the techniques used to convey a message.

Do you need to use more or less video? Do you need to listen to advice from your assistant coach? Do you need to involve your captain and hear their advice?

Do you need to have a team meeting where your players do the talking, not you? Play the clip below to remind yourself if you need. Some players need this high energy, passion and volume to get their butt into gear and work hard. Some of these players may even think that when a coach stops yelling at them they stop caring, making them feel even worse, further complicating the issue. This was a very polarizing event where a coach was making his player accountable for his actions, or lack of actions.

But was it effective? Would this kind of coaching fire up all athletes the same way? Or is hearing the same loud voice telling what to do and how to perform constantly hurtful and demotivating? But there is, of course, the other end of the spectrum.

These athletes lose trust in their coach and easily have their egos crushed, negatively impacting performance. This effectively paralyzes the player. The funny thing is, coaches have hours and hours of practice time to change and fix things that are not working.

Yelling at a player during the game to fix new things or even change things relatively new to the program is likely going to fall on deaf ears. They need alternatives to yellings the same old thing. As mentioned, yelling can be beneficial for particular athletes. Coaches and referees are the adults out there.

Neither group should assume that the other one is an incompetent, malevolent or arrogant power tripper, unless events show that to be true. Even though the coach is really not criticizing the referee, the referee still has to take action. Try standing side-by-side with the coach and find out what the issue really is. If the behavior continues, an early caution will give you a lot of information and separate the purely manipulative coach who will most likely back down, from those who really have lost it.

Once you know that, punative action will be your next course of action should the behavior remain a problem. Note: This article is archival in nature.

Rules, interpretations, mechanics, philosophies and other information may or may not be correct for the current year. The article is made available for educational use by individuals.