Using Text Messaging and Email to make Hudl an Uber Coaching Machine

Posted October 14, 2009 by John Wirtz
Under  • Tips & Tricks  • Coaching & Athletics

We love hearing coaches telling us that Hudl has helped their athletes watch more video, learn more from it, and really enjoy doing it. Ultimately, that’s what Hudl is all about - helping athletes improve. We’ve heard of athletes watching the game together at Hudl pizza parties, texting coaches as soon as they get home asking when practice video will be on Hudl, and creating and sharing their own video notes to teammates to highlight an opponent’s weakness. We’ve recently seen a handful of coaches go a step further in Hudl and use text messages and email combined with Hudl video notes in pretty creative ways to get their teams even more engaged in learning off the field.

How Can I Motivate My Athletes Off the Field?

One of the challenges whenever you are coaching anyone is to keep them engaged and have some level of accountability that the athlete gets the concept you’ve been trying to hit home. Video is one of the most effective ways to do that - but even with a great video presentation, you want to know that the player watched it and understood what she was watching.

We’ve worked hard to make video notes in Hudl a great way to do that and receive lots of positive feedback from players and coaches that video notes are effective. A few of our coaches have decided to go a step further and use Hudl’s video notes as a way to hold athletes accountable for learning new concepts. The beauty is - it’s really simple. Instead of just putting text on the video with information the player needs to know, these coaches have been adding questions on top of the video at key moments. Following the question is a simple instruction for how the player should answer. Typically, they ask their players to text message or email the answer to them that evening. Some of these coaches have even added rewards into the mix - e.g. the first athlete to text the correct answer gets to eat first at the team dinner or only has to run half the reps at the end of practice.

Why Add These Types of Video Notes?

Adding questions like these to your video does a few important things:

• It makes the whole process more interactive for the athlete
• It gives the coach feedback on whether the athlete has really understood the point
• It rewards those athletes that are putting in crucial time off the field to get better and tells the team that studying the game off the field is a priority

If you want to simply confirm that the player is watching video, you don’t even have to use a question. Just type something in your note like “Text Falcons789 to Coach Johnson” and require all your athletes follow the instructions or reward the athletes that are first to do it.

We are always trying to build tools in Hudl that let coaches really get creative with the ways they interact with their team - if you have found a cool new way to use Hudl, please leave a comment or contact us and let us know.