A Coach's 3 R's for the Off-Season

So, the other day I posted what I thought to be 3 guidelines for an athlete to follow during the off-season.  Miraculously, all of these words began with the letter R.  It took me a few days, consequently, I have now come up with the 3 R's for a coach to follow in the off season.  They are as follows:

Review: At the end of every season, I see it vital for a coach to understand what happened throughout the course of that very long season.  The first step is to look back and just review (recall) the season in full.  Take notes on what happened through different points of the year, important games, practices, events and begin to make some sense of what exactly went down.

Reflect: The next step for me and in my opinion the most important step in the process is reflection.  Reflection takes all the notes you just complied from your review and looks deeper into them.  Ask yourself why these events occurred, what could have happened differently, what was your role in the process, etc.  Reflection is an often overlooked area of coaching for most developing coaches, but something that most expert level coaches engage in regularly.  If you are a coach and haven't began refining the skill of reflection take it upon yourself to start now.

Revise: The last of the 3 R's is to revise.  Understand how some of the events form the year unfolded and in making your plan for next year, revise some of the things you did as a change for the better in the following season.  Adding input form the previous season will give you a better grasp on what you want to accomplish and establish for the upcoming year.