Glossary
Sports Coach Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential sports coach terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key sports coach vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in sports coach training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Concussion protocol
- Steps after head injuries.
- Conditioning
- Physical fitness training.
- Drill
- A practice activity for a skill.
- Eligibility
- Rules for who can play.
- Film study
- Reviewing video.
- Game plan
- Strategy for a game.
- NCAA
- National Collegiate Athletic Association.
- Periodization
- Planning training cycles.
- Positional coach
- A coach for a specific position.
- Practice plan
- A schedule of drills and activities.
- Recruiting
- Attracting athletes to a program.
- Scouting report
- Analysis of an opponent or player.
- Substitution
- Changing players.
- Team culture
- Shared values and behaviors.
- Timeout
- A break in play.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Sports Coach practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Sports Coach training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.