Video analysis has always been used by teams for improving, but costs and technology meant that only professional teams could access this resource. Now, youth sports teams all over the country are using camera systems to record sports to analyze and improve quickly. Significant knowledge can be gained through sports video analysis, and more and more youth teams are beginning to understand that using video is key to competing at the highest levels.

The key benefits of video analysis include: 

1. Faster player development 
2. Objective performance measurement and coaching
3. Immediate, fast feedback
4. Better collaboration with coaches and team members
5. Progress that you can track
6. College recruiting

Speed Up Development

Video analysis offers a new angle on each player’s perspective. Roughly 80% of our learning is done visually, and this is especially true for young athletes who grew up consuming social media and have shorter attention spans. Video analysis makes it easy for coaches and players to see the good and bad about athletes’ techniques and quickly make adjustments. Video allows players to review their performance after every game and quickly understand how to prioritize training to level up their performance.

Objective Performance Measurement

Have you ever tried to tell an individual something you noticed on the field, but they felt differently when making the play? Video is extremely useful for coaches because it’s an objective way to give players feedback. Video analysis is useful because video doesn’t lie. This means seeing exactly what happened during the play and what led to the win or the loss. Coaches can see the consistency of players, and players can see the results of their hard work after each game.

Immediate Feedback

Some players can spend an entire season figuring out exactly what they’re doing wrong and how they can break bad habits. Video analysis offers the chance to view performance within hours of each game and make adjustments week over week. The best way to analyze game film is within 48 hours after the game has happened. To make the most of your footage, implement consistent review sessions to let your players get used to rewatching their play.

Trace, for instance, delivers every player’s personalized highlights within hours of each game, which is only possible because of advanced AI technology in the product. For example, a soccer team might analyze game film after one game and find issues in players being out of position, passing patterns that work or don’t work, or other red flags where adjustments can be easily made to eliminate errors.

Improve Collaboration and Communication

Chemistry is invaluable to any successful team. Reviewing game film as a team is essential for communication and collaboration. It gives every player the ability to see how their performance affects the team as a whole, which then gives players motivation to train harder. Video analysis as a team covers the positive and negative aspects of play from the past games, and hearing input from all team members can help discover the best option for future games.

Track Progress

When players can see the results of their training, they are more inspired to put in work and have a better experience through the season. Video analysis helps players improve from game to game, but it also gives them a permanent record of how they are improving from the first game of the season to the last game. Coaches can set weekly sessions or assign player homework based on video. As a coach, putting game film in front of each player with a point of emphasis will keep the focus on training sessions and topics heading into next week’s game.

Recruiting Tool

Video analysis is a part of every college sport, and college coaches now expect younger athletes to have some understanding of this type of analysis when evaluating prospective players. Sports camera systems like Trace have built-in tools to make gathering and sharing the best moments with college coaches a very easy process. Coaches can easily navigate between the highlight and the full-game context so they have helpful insight on the talent you’re up against, the score of the game in critical moments, or simple movements away from the ball

In short, video analysis is becoming more important with each passing season. The results speak for themselves in terms of performance improvement, but video also gives players a big boost of motivation when it comes to viewing their improvement from game to game. Whether you’re playing on a high school team, a rec team, or for a competitive club, reviewing video can be a rewarding and fun experience. Visuals summarize content into smaller, and easier to process chunks, and when you select the right visuals, they offer more comprehensibility than text-based explanations or only audios.