Doug Lemov's field notes

Reflections on teaching, literacy, coaching, and practice.

01.25.20 Notes for Coaches: The Story of a Stoppage

As coaching goes, my daughter is lucky. She plays for a great club: serious about teaching and hires top quality coaches. Her coach this year is just what you’d want as a parent and a student of the game: builds positive culture; values teamwork and integrity; knows the game, respects it, teaches it right. He’s also…


01.11.19 On Coaching: You Give Two Kinds of Feedback. Are They Aligned??

Here’s a slide I showed recently to coaches at a workshop: The slide is an attempt to describe a common challenge I see in the teaching/coaching of athletes. Here’s the scene. Athletes are playing. We are observing them as coaches. We notice something that needs to be improved. So we stop and make a teaching point. …


10.21.16 On Coaching: “Throw, Antonio. Throw & Do Not Waste Time [Punting]”

A quote from Jacob Steinberg’s excellent piece on Pep Guardiola in this morning’s Guardian: [Claudio] Bravo completed 84% of his passes last season. [Joe] Hart completed 53%. Hart gave possession to the opposition 352 times, Bravo 142. This is the first time I’ve seen goalkeeper possession and pass completion statistics quoted in the newspaper and the…