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What are the best sports coaching apps?
We are all using apps for everyday purposes. Therefore, why not use them to help plan your sports coaching sessions. We have included below our favourite coaching apps we think all sports coaches should use to improve their sports coaching. We include our view on why each app has been chosen for this post and the benefits these apps can provide.
Following the success of this article, we recommended you read our second article on more apps for sports coaches. The second article provides our top apps for coaches who manage teams.
You may also be interested in our article on what makes a good sports coach or our re mi view of the best sports training equipment.
Our 6 best sports coaching apps:
Hudl
Price: Free
Hudl is a app that allows you to analyse your teams performance by recording on your phone or tablet. You can then use the app to select different plays/ within a match and then the app also enables you to share the this with your team.
Our View:
We found this app useful when analysing team performances. The app was really in its element when it was used to illustrate the best parts of a performance as well as the parts that needed improvement. The benefits to a coach means that they can then share this with their team along with coaching points on how it can be better next time.
iPractice Builder – 25 Sports
Price: £6.99
ipractice Builder currently consists of a video catalogue of 25 sports. Within each sport, the app provides a number of pre-recorded video coaching drills to help coaches create a coaching session.
You can also add your own drills so you can begin to plan your coaching sessions and create a catalogue of all the skills and drills that you currently use.
Our view:
We decided to include this app as it is great for coaches who are new to sports coaching. An experienced coach may already know a number of the coaching drills in the app and may find some of these not relevant. The ability to include your own coaching drills can be really useful if you have other coaches working for you as you can share these with them. For £6.99 we felt this is still a worthy app to recommend.
https://www.ipracticebuilder.com
STRAVA
Price: Free (in app purchases)
Strava tracks a various number of exercises using GPS and then enables you to upload this online.
You can also set challenges for your team and create a competitive angle by setting up leagues to see who is training/not training.
Our View:
STRAVA is not an app for monitoring team performance or for tactics. This app comes into its own during pre-season and post-season training plans when working on fitness building. Coaches benefit from using this app to monitor their players physical fitness and exercise. STRAVA is also useful to monitor motivation levels if you have arranged a pre-season fitness programme and you want to ensure they are completing this.
TrainingPeaks
Price: Free (in app purchases)
TrainingPeaks is an app that allows you to monitor your athletes fitness training. Very similar to Strava, this app allows your athletes to follow a set training programme and you can communicate to your athletes (using premium).
Our View:
The benefit of this app compared with Strava is that coaches can arrange and complete a fitness programme and all your athletes have to do is look at the app and complete the programme already set out by you or your fitness coach. The downside is that this setting is only for premium paying customers which does add up if all of your players sign up to it.
Teamer Sports Team App
Price: Free
The Teamer Sports Team App allows coaches to manage their team, collect payments, check player availability and shares fixtures/locations with their team. Even better is that it is free.
Our view:
This app really stands out for us and is useful is so many ways. Whether you are a Sunday league team with irregular players or a Saturday team who you know are always turning up. Coaches can use this app to select tactics and inform their team mates prior to match day. We also found the sharing of fixture locations really useful to save any of your players getting lost on match day. This app is our favourite team managing app due to the ease and simplicity of it. For those sports coaches who coach as well as managing a team this app is a must.
Dartfish
Price: £17 per month (offer 15 day free trial)
Dartfish have been around for years and provides reliable video analysis so you can draw and write over videos as well as compare videos between your athletes/players. You can then send this to your players to view.
https://www.dartfish.com/mobile
Our view:
Dartfish is not for all sports coaches as from experience it can be time-consuming and costly. Dartfish really shines out if you regularly teach the same skill. Whether this training free-kicks in football or a golf swing, coaches are able to demonstrate using technology and statistics and create what the perfect performance should look like. Another benefit it being able to share this with players and athletes.
More sports coaching articles and advice can be found on our guide to sports coaching. We have also recently complied and analysed our favourite autobiographies on sports leadership and management.