Why you should be encouraging your athletes to complete a Training Diary every session

Completing training diaries is an important stage and progress to go through when looking to improve performance. Just like writing a wellness journal a training diary should give athletes a place and opportunity to reflect on a session, write down any learnings, give themselves targets and begin to actively see progress in their training. 

Coaches don’t need to see training diaries as something added to their very long to-do list. Instead they just need to be able to facilitate the learning and encourage athletes to be proactive in reflecting on their own sessions. 

It can be as simple as getting your athletes together at the end of the session to stretch. Whilst they do so, you can speak to them about the aims for the sessions and your own reflections. This will help you to model good practice. You could speak generally about how the session went, speak about what you want to work on next time, give some forward thought on how you hope they will use the practice in their next game and perhaps discuss some individual outstanding performances. Then remind athletes to complete their own training journal when they get home (if you don’t have time for them to do this in the session). They should make sure to include the positives, negatives and the takeaways so that they can reflect on their performance and improve. You could even ask them to write a short message of their main takeaway in your team’s group chat to help you see and monitor their understanding of the session. 

Doing this encourages your athletes to be thinking players. If you encourage them to actively reflect on their sessions you also encourage them to come away from ‘going through the motions’ and actually begin to see worth in the drills and practices you are completing with them. When they get used to completing a training diary they can then think about setting goals for their game and reflecting on their match day performances too. The possibilities are endless. 

Top things to reflect on after a session

• What was the main focus of the session?
• What did you like most about the session?
• What did you take away from this part of the session?
• How can you see it helping you in your game?
• What do you think you need to work on next time?
• What questions do you still have from the session?
• What made you proud today?

As I said before, a training diary doesn’t need to be complicated or take a long time. Encourage your athletes to spend 5 minute on the car ride home answering these questions in the notes section on their phone. As soon as they start to reflect on their gameplay, their game sense will improve and you will start to build more rounded, intelligent and aware athletes.