Coaching Books

This is an excellent book for the beginner coach or the coach who has many years of experience. It introduces the reader to different types of motivation and how to motivate teams and players of superior levels of performance and teams and players that are perennial losers. Warren also talks about other coaching issues such as assistant coaches, coaching women, the superstar athlete, and dealing with administrators and parents.

This is a very good book. I am on my second time reading it. Good book to read inbetween seasons or at the begining of your season. A lot of common sence ideas, but they remind you or open your eyes again. Also a lot of new approaches or ideas to try out. Each part of the book deals with differend aspects of coaching and motivating players. I highley recommend this book to any coach who needs help motivating players, or just as a refresher. You will learn something new by reading it and it is sure to help your team.

First off, this is an excellent book on an exciting modern offense.

Secondly, the title is very misleading. It should be "Coaching Football's Flexbone Offense". This is not the 4- or 5-wide shotgun Spread in use at schools like Purdue, Clemson or West Virginia, nor is it the Spread Option-from-the-shotgun that Florida and others have popularized.

Rather, it is the triple option run from a Flexbone/Run-and-Shoot formation with two wide receivers and two slotbacks, with a single back behind the quarterback, who is under center.

This book is full of invaluable insights from Coach Stowers's days at Georgia Southern University, where the Flexbone attack has won six Division I-AA championships. He breaks down the running attack, based on the triple option but with a small and powerful supplement, and includes his sprint-out passing attack and some play action passes as well.

In my opinion, it would be possible to install an effective Flexbone triple option attack from Coach Stowers's book alone.

Highly recommended.

THIS BOOK IS AWESOME BABY, I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW WHAT FOOTBALL WAS, THEN I READ THIS BOOK FROM MR. STOWERS. WOW HE REALLY KNOWS HIS STUFF, HE TAUGHT ME THE WHOLE GAME!

Vince Lombardi, Jr. comes to grips with many of the ideas which his father made famous while coaching the Green Bay Packers in the early 1960's. Numerous outstanding quotations supplement the metaphors of war and football which the younger Lombardi integrates throughout this work. Valuable as a source in either the business or coaching world, this book will be very accessible to a wide range of readers. Organized, thorough and concise.

Vince Lombardi has written one of the very best leadership books I have ever read. It is thorough, well-researched, and full of great quotes, stories, and personal anecdotes about coaching and leadership. This book was the result of Lombardi's many years of personal observations and experiences with both positive and negative coaches and leaders in law, politics, football, writing, and speaking. Lombardi's writing style suggests that he wrote this book to pass on what he has learned, and not merely to try and impress the reader with his superior language and clever catch-phrases.

The book is neatly organized into four chapters: coaching for teamwork, the winning coach, the winning team, and constant reinforcement. Lombardi closes the book with a reflective conclusion and a modest suggested reading list.

Most interesting to me was Lombardi's description of coaches: "Coaches...know they belong on the sidelines. Coaches know they can't play the game, know that only the players belong on the field of play, and that only players can actually win the game. Coaches don't do things, they see that things get done - things that ensure the players are totally prepared mentally and physically. Coaches seek to create an environment within which their players have the greatest opportunity to succeed. A coach knows she is only as good as her players, so her first priority is not to seek to personally duplicate the talents of her players, but rather to provide for them the things they can't provide for themselves - direction, authority and the freedom to do their jobs."

To further solidify the coaching-leading connection, Lombardi states, "The leader of the future is the coach. Listening, communicating, teaching, challenging, directing, delegating, motivating players on the field - while she remains on the sidelines."

Lombardi simply wrote an extraordinary book for ordinary people who wish to learn about coaching and leadership, or for any leader who wants to refine his or her coaching and leadership skills to be effective in any teamwork environment. If you thought coaching was only for organized and competitive sports, this book will show you that it really applies to the game of life.

I have appreciated the Dummies series as the publisher has some fun with topics that we might not have a clue. Having coached both Little League and softball (ASA), I saw this book on the shelf and decided to buy it to see if there are any hints that I might have been missing. Overall, this book is excellent for those who are just starting out in the coaching world. Handling kids and knowing the sport can be quite tricky, especially when parents are part of the equation. I think looking this over before stepping onto the field (and looking like a "dummy") is a very wise investment of money and time. I pretty much experienced most of what he explained, but Wolff was very straightforward and to the point. I appreciated his insights and will consider using several of the tips that I had not thought of before. Parents, get out of your lawn chairs, quit complaining behind our backs, and help us other parents coach!

I bought this book when I heard the author was going to be on Oprah. I wasn't sure I was ready to let my child participate in organized sports at a young age, but this has helped me figure out what my child should expect from her coach and how I can be a supportive parents too, without putting pressure on anyone.

This book comes closest to being an actual "how to" coach book. It is a practical, easy to read plan to improve coaching skills or start developing them. Every new coach always asks "where is the book that tells you how to do it?" This is it!

This is a superb book. I recommend it to everyone. It has a delightful fun tone about it, easy to read with lovely cartoons & it is THE book to read on how to easily & simply coach your staff about customer service.... AND get them to pay attention & actually do it ! It is so logical & so effective. I am a customer service consultant to the top 100 & I find this book invaluable. You MUST read it !

Brad Adler has done a great service by taking the time to painstakingly research and describe what separates the all-time great NFL coaches of the modern era from their mediocre colleagues. His chapters on each of the 10 selected coaches are detailed with care and each selection is justified well. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is the manner in which Adler explains how certain personality traits seem to make all the difference in the world (e.g. between mediocre team records and winning Super Bowls): he outlines the need for physical and/or psychological "intimidation" to instill a sense of purpose in the players which is supported by appropriate fear of being humiliated or cut from the team if they do not do their jobs. Simply being a successful coordinator or knowing the strategic x's and o's is not nearly enough! I loved the summary chapter in which he pulls his conclusions together and states his case definitively. I am a psychologist and executive coach by training, and I learned quite a bit from this book. I highly recommend it!

I went into this expecting just a long opinion piece, but wow does this book rock! He's got stats, facts, and yes opinions. But it gets all put together into a great, great read on the ten best coaches (says Adler) of the NFL since the 1950s.

He doesn't just pick them out of thin air either; he takes a look at what defines success in football and comes up with a set of parameters that the coaches must all meet. There are a couple additions based on extenuating circumstances, but I think he explains that well.

A great look at football coaches, including two that are still active -- Parcells and Holmgren. Get it!

Had to add this edit -- with Joe Gibbs one of the coaches profiled, this book is GREAT to show you just how awesome a coach he is and look at back his first career as he tries to bring the Redskins back to success.

I have read this excellent book by Kenn Gangel, Personally I want to say that this book is excellent and extraordinary. Because of his insight and scholars background plus his background of practical ministry that make this book became awesome. Especially in Christian Coaching, this is quite new and nobody writes in the some topic as good as Gangel does. With Biblical and scriptural passages background plus practical way of coaching principles and action make this book easy to read and very beneficial. I encourage to all Christian leader to read and apply this principle in this book, this is a book for the future leader in this generation and to the next generation. Thanks and God bless you.

this book provides a treasure trove for both the new and older christian from respected dispensational authors.if you look at the sample pages you get an idea of the depth and helpfulness of this
great resource

This book is one of the most thorough books on the market. It covers nickel and dime defense in an easy to understand format. John Rice shows his knowledge of these defenses in this book. I would recommend it to anyone-coach, player or spectator-who would like to know more about the game of football.

A top-notch resource, especially useful in light of the number of teams going to spread offense variations. The coach has organized a lot of very good coverage and pressure concepts so they're easy to teach, and applies them to all types of front structures--Odd, Even, Split, and 3-3, so that you can make use of some of the ideas no matter what your base defense is. Simply the best book of its kind I've seen...thorough and well-explained.

The book is very informative to coaches of all levels. Even better was his presentation at a recent Coaches Clinic I attended. If you had any questions from his book he was more than happy to explain, even demonstrate, what he meant. Excellent content from an exellent coach.

Coach Christensen provides a clear and informative book on developing essential skills in offensive lineman. I believe this book is a "must have" for any line coach or head coach at any level. Each type of block, accompanying points of attack etc. is clearly described with excellent diagrams. Overall, an outstanding book.

Until recently, there were no books on how to implement a coaching style of leadership throughout an organization. Now we have The Coaching Organization. This book provides leaders with a thoughtful strategy for introducing developmental coaching throughout an organization.

The Coaching Organization is straightforward, mixing helpful instruction with actual case studies. The authors also wrote Coaching Manager: Developing Top Talent in Business and have obvious expertise in this area.

After reviewing what developmental coaching is, the authors provide an organization assessment of readiness to implement a coaching culture. The assessment has four sections: 1) the cultural context; 2) the business context; 3) the human resource management context; and 4) organizational experiences with coaching. The last assessment section leads into one of the more innovative (and therefore worth reading) chapters, that of A Strategic Approach to Coaching.

Here the authors go beyond the obvious of "linking coaching to business outcomes" and go deeper to the systemic level. The goal is to create a coaching initiative that promotes a sustainable coaching capacity. Here's where the book pays off: the authors show how some "common sense" initiatives to introduce coaching actually work against the long-term sustainability of coaching. For example, if a coach is assigned to a poorly performing manager, what is communicated is that coaching is for those not doing well, thus, managers resist the coaching initiative so they won't be labeled a "poor performer."

Two other especially useful chapters are about how to build and lead a coaching capacity, and how to raise up qualified Internal coaches. These two processes are at the heart of creating a coaching organization. In my view, it will still take partnership with a coaching provider or trainer to do it, but the chapters serve as a guide for the overall process.

The Coaching Organization is one of only a few books on organization-wide implementation of coaching.

I liked their first book, The Coaching Manager, which discussed the importance and strategy of actually coaching--this new paperback book goes to the next level, taking a more strategic view of coaching. This is helpful because there's little out there that talks about HOW to create a coaching culture. The Coaching Organization admirably fills that gap. They get you to think about taking a strategic approach to development through coaching. Including what it takes to be successful.

The number of examples of real companies showing how they are using the development coaching model is really helpful. I especially liked the Whirlpool case, illustrating how a large, successful company uses coaching as an adjunct to its leadership development efforts and the importance of a senior leadership team dedicated to executive development. The cases used make a very compelling statement supporting the "business case" as to why it makes sense to create a coaching organization.

The authors are well-known academics in addition to being firmly grounded in the real world of business and consulting. They avoid excessive hype and selling their point of view, while making clear the value of their approach to organizations committed to genuine development efforts.