The First Pancake Is Always Awful

Adam Clery said something on the Football Ramble this week that I keep coming back to.

"Ever made pancakes? The first is often awful. They get better."

That's it. That's the whole thing. And if you're a soccer coach and you don't immediately see how that applies to what you do every day on the field — read on.

(He was talking about the clubs who replace a long term manager, and the next, new coach is often like the first pancake in a pan.)

Why the first pancake always burns

There's nothing wrong with the batter. The recipe is fine. The problem is the pan.

It's not seasoned. It's not at the right temperature. You haven't found the heat yet, you haven't got the feel of the flip, you don't know where the hot spots are. So the first one comes out uneven, too dark on one side, raw in the middle. You scrape it off and try not to let anyone see it.

The second one is better. The third one is better still. By the fifth pancake you're barely thinking about it — the pan knows what to do, and so do you.

Now think about what you do the first time you run a new session.

You explain the setup. Half the players look confused. Someone's standing in the wrong grid. You restart it three times before it actually runs. You're coaching the shape of the activity rather than the soccer inside it. The session runs, but it doesn't sing.

Run the same session the following week. Half the explaining is gone — players already know the rules. Now you can coach what's actually happening. The decisions, the movement, the quality under pressure. You're not managing the environment anymore. You're coaching inside it.

That's the second pancake. It was always in you. The pan just needed to be hot.

This is why we repeat sessions

The coaching culture we grew up in worshipped novelty. New week, new session plan. Keep them guessing. Keep it fresh. And yes — variety matters. You don't want players going through the motions.

But there's a difference between varying the challenge and throwing away a perfectly good session because you've already used it once.

When players encounter an activity for the second or third time, something different happens. The cognitive load drops. They're not processing the rules anymore — they're playing the game inside the rules. The decisions get sharper. The movement gets more automatic. A session you've run twice is a completely different environment from one you've run once, even if the cones are in exactly the same place.

Some of the best moments I've had on the field came from sessions I'd already run. The players owned it by the third rep. I was just watching and coaching and getting out of the way.

This is why a game model matters

Here's where the pancake metaphor goes deeper.

Imagine every coach at your club is making a different recipe. One uses a different amount of butter. One uses a different pan. One skips the resting time. The players move between these coaches — age group to age group, training group to training group — and every time they do, they're back to the first pancake. Starting over. No continuity, no carry.

A shared game model — a common language, a consistent set of principles that run from your youngest age group to your oldest — means every coach at your club is working from the same recipe. When a player steps up an age group, they already know the pan. They already know the heat. The jump isn't a reset; it's a continuation.

This isn't about rigidity. The recipe can evolve. But there has to be a recipe, or you're just making a different mess every week.

This is why coaches need more games

The last pancake in the stack is the one most coaches forget: your pancakes need to get better too.

Every session you run, every game you coach, you're calibrating your pan. You're learning when to step in and when to stay out. You're reading groups faster. Your interventions are sharper. Your timing for the right question at the right moment gets better with every rep.

This is why volume matters for developing coaches. Not just watching sessions. Running them. Making mistakes in them. Running them again. You can read every coaching book ever written — and you should — but the books don't season the pan. Only the reps do that.

If you're early in your coaching career and you have the choice between one well-prepared session per week or three scrappier ones: take the three. Make the first pancake. Make the bad one. Get to the good ones faster.

The last thing

The first pancake isn't a failure. It's the price of admission. It tells you what the pan needs. It warms everything up so the rest of the batch can be what it was supposed to be.

Don't throw out the recipe. Don't change the pan. Don't start a different breakfast entirely.

Run it again. It gets better.

Thanks to Adam Clery and the Football Ramble for the metaphor. Sometimes the best coaching insight comes from somewhere completely unexpected.

@LeeDunneSoccer