The ideal coach not only passes on his experiences to players and develops their skills, but does so quickly, bringing out the full potential of his players. The ultimate image is of the elite coach who joins a team and totally transforms their performance over the course of one season. While you may not be quite there yet, there is certainly a lot you can do to speed up your players' learning experience.

While there are many different models regarding how players learn and how to speed this up, there is one thing in common to all of them – the coach must be highly responsive to the needs of his player.

There are different ways of learning, each tied in to different coaching styles. One is the more traditional way of teaching, where players learn through direct instruction and repetition – for example, repeated drills. Another is creating an environment in which players can learn for themselves – where the coach is largely there for advice and structure, rather than to guide through every detail. The style you choose is largely dependent on the players you are coaching.

The former style tends to create short term improvement that is not sustained in the long term, as the player tends to be repeating without really understanding – how many pieces of Shakespeare that you were forced to learn in school can you still recite?

On the other hand, there is still a place for this kind of learning, particularly with inexperienced players, who need every piece of guidance they can get. Meanwhile, more elite players need space to learn on their own, with you to help them when they need it. Discussing practice with them afterwards, and encouraging them to reflect on their own and each other's performance can lead to much greater self-learning for these kinds of players.

The trick is to keep the difficulty level of your training within “the challenge zone”. This means making sure that the training is difficult enough to be challenging at all times: neither too easy, in which case your players will become bored; not too hard, in which case they will become nervous and lose self-confidence.

This is where the different styles of learning come in – where an experienced player would be bored by simple drills, a younger player might feel overly challenged by and nervous about a self-learning session.

Building up your players' self-confidence, in an environment in which they are constantly challenged ensures an optimal learning environment. Naturally, this means watching your players constantly during training sessions to make sure they are in the “challenge zone”, and adapting your sessions accordingly if they are not.

As in many other aspects of coaching, ensuring your players are learning at the optimal speed is a delicate balancing act, and one you should keep practising at. As you vary your coaching sessions, you will find your players beginning to progress at a much greater speed, and soon you will be able to design the ideal learning environment for your team.