Lately, my feed has been full of ads where coaches are selling packages of sports drills. One of them even said in the video: “Stop WASTING TIME designing drills.”
That hit me in the gut a little bit.
Because… really? Is designing drills a waste of time?
Are coaches losing their creativity?
And with AI and the endless amount of content online, are we slowly outsourcing our ability to design effective practices?
There’s a lot to unpack here, but let me stick to one main point: designing your own drills is not just important—it’s fundamental.
When we think about exercises, we aren’t just copying and pasting movements. A good coach is constantly observing behavior, analyzing how constraints shape those behaviors, and then manipulating the practice so that the desired responses (affordances) emerge.
That process is creative, adaptive, and deeply tied to the athletes in front of you. When you design a drill, you’re basing it on what you see, what you measure, and what your players need at that moment. There’s no “one-size-fits-all,” no shortcut.
Now, don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing wrong with borrowing a drill from another coach. In fact, that can be a great idea. But it has to be deliberate and conscious. You need to understand exactly what that drill is doing and how your athletes are responding to it.
Unfortunately, I’ve seen many coaches take drills they saw online—sometimes used by elite athletes—and try to drop them straight into a session with beginners. The result? Confusion, frustration, and missed opportunities. Because context matters.
So maybe the bigger issue isn’t about drills themselves—it’s about how we, as coaches, think about practice design. Are we letting convenience replace creativity? Are we prioritizing “ready-made” over “tailor-made”?
At the end of the day, the real craft of coaching lies in seeing, adapting, and designing. Outsourcing that is not just a missed opportunity—it’s a loss of what makes coaching meaningful in the first place.
