Thinking About Using Hudl? Listen To This First!

📹 Thinking about using Hudl for your team? Don’t press record until you listen to this. Plus catch our free training to learn more about creating a winning edge for your team → https://coachfreetraining.com

If you're a high school or middle school coach looking to level up your team's performance and culture (without burning out), this video is for you. I'm sharing everything I’ve learned using Hudl software since 2011—what it actually does, the best ways to use it for Sports Coaching, Mental Performance Coaching — including visualization, mindset development, and creating highlight reels that reinforce player confidence, and team development… and a few mistakes to avoid (like forgetting to hit record 😅).

Whether you coach volleyball, basketball, soccer, softball, or beyond—if you want to maximize this tool for both athlete development and team culture, you’re in the right place.

👋 I’m Coach Bre, a mental performance coach for girl athletes, Co-Founder of The Elite Competitor, and a longtime head volleyball coach + 4x state champion. I help coaches build confident, mentally tough teams and lead with intention—beyond just the X’s and O’s.

🧠 In this episode, you’ll learn:
How to use Hudl to build mental toughness & mindset
My favorite time-saving tip that reinforces team values & behavior
A unique way to use Hudl to prep your team for pressure
The one feature that changed everything for us (hint: Hudl Assist)

Plus, I’m sharing what not to do — from failed uploads to busted tripods.

🕓 Key Moments:
00:00 Introduction to Hudl 
01:07 What Hudl Does 
03:39 Using Hudl to Reinforce Team Culture 
04:37 Game Preparation with Hudl 
06:14 Mental Training with Hudl 
09:04 Pitfalls to Avoid with Hudl

👇 Grab free resources to start training the mental side of the game:
Grab our in-depth free training → https://coachfreetraining.com
Learn more here [link to full playlist]

💬 Coaches — comment below: Are you using Hudl? What’s your biggest challenge or win with film?

This isn’t just about tech — it’s about making your coaching smarter, your players stronger, and your team culture unshakable. Let’s go.

Want more coaching tips and resources?

🔹 Grab our FREE training for coaches → https://coachfreetraining.com
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach
🔹 Check out our plug & play elite mental game info → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

If you're thinking about using the video software Hudl, or maybe you are using it, but you're not sure if you are utilizing it to its fullest potential, then this video is for you. I've been using Hudl as a volleyball coach since 2011, and in this video I'm breaking down what it actually does. My favorite ways to use it beyond just showing athletes film of themselves and pitfalls to avoid, especially if you're using it for the first time. And if I haven't met you, I'm Coach Bre. I'm a mental performance coach for athletes, but also a longtime head coach, four time state champ coach and I get to help coaches build the mental side of their team while also building a culture that they are proud of. Let's get into it. If you're here, then you are either considering using Hudl for your team. Or you are using it, but not sure if you're using it to its fullest potential no matter what sport you coach, if Hudl is a video software that's available to you, this is the video that you need to be watching. I have used it in my 14 years of coaching. I have used it when they first kind of rolled out some of their features to now how they have it, which is a lot more sophisticated. So I've, I've seen it over the evolution, and I just wanna provide you some things that you can cut through the noise with to know if this can be a valuable tool for your program. So, first of all, what does Hudl really do? Hudl is a video software platform that you can use to record your game, film your practices, also get scout film from another team. So. You basically set it up, you use a tripod, you use an iPad, or you can upload film that's recorded in your gym. So some gyms like ours have like a mounted camera up there that records everything that happens when a game is going on. You can upload that and it does a variety of things. For you as a coach, you have a login. As a varsity coach, myself, I use it just for, for my varsity team, but. I could set up logins for my JV coach, my C team coach, and they could all utilize it as well. It's a little bit of an extra fee to do that, but you have your login, your coaches have theirs, and then each of your players has a login as well so that they can see film of themselves. So that is kind of the, the basics. But what's really cool about Hudl that, that I love, and I'll get into kind of the three big ways that I use it, is that it tags. The plays it tags by player as well. So we pay for a feature called Hudl Assist, which I do recommend. Um, it's, it's improved greatly over the years. Um, but it tags every play and, and it, uh, it tags every player as well. So what I mean by that is that one of my athletes could. Log in with their account, they can look at all of their hitting attempts. They can look at all of their kills, all of their errors, all of their service seed passes, and they can filter it by skill and by rotation. Kind of. There's just a variety of filters that they can utilize and it just shows them clips of it. I used to spend hours breaking down film for athletes and it like was such a pain, such a headache, so hard even using Hudl like back in the day to do this. Then they didn't have this feature of like tagging and creating like playlists and clicks and things like that. Now it's all done for you. You literally just like send it off to them. They tag it, send it back to you, all broken down. You can also show your athletes. Films of certain rotations or certain skills. So there's a lot of really great functionality, especially if you, you, if you are using Hudl assist with it. So that is kind of the, like the foundation of what Hudl is. It's kind of the main player when it comes to like film recording and um, software. When it comes to video. So, like I said, I've been using it since 2011. I've seen the evolution of it, and here are the three big ways that I use Hudl. In my program to not just show my players film of themselves, but also strengthen our culture and we tie mental training into it. So the first big way that I use Hudl is to reinforce our culture. Um, what do I mean by this? Film is great to show your athletes what they're doing wrong, to show them what they're doing right. But it's also great to enforce the things that you have values around in your culture. So in our culture, we have a value around bench behavior. We also teach athletes how to get over mistakes fast. We use something called the snapback routine. It's part of our mental training that we do. And so we put a lot of emphasis on how fast can you recover from mistakes, and that's a mental training skill that you can measure just so you can measure your attempts, your errors, your hitting perce percentage, all of that. Um, how fast you get over a mistake is something that you can measure and you can see. And so showing athletes film and what our bench looks like, what their body language looks like when they make a mistake, and how fast it takes them to get over a mistake. All of that can actually be reinforced through film. So you can show athletes ways in which they're doing it right. You can show it where they need to improve. And so this can be like a reinforcing thing for your culture. Now, another way that I love to use it is for game prep Now. I coach volleyball. We've got two to three games a week. There's not a lot of turnaround time when it comes to like scouting reports. We don't actually utilize a whole lot of scouting reports, just like in the day-to-day season. But when it comes to post-season, we do a little bit more. And also this dev, you know, this really depends on the development and the talent level of your team for them to be able to digest and utilize a scouting report. But if you're there and you do wanna give them some nuggets of information. About the other team or even your team and like what rotations you're strong in. Again, this is a volleyball example, but that's a really great way to do it as well. So Hudl will. Also tag and break down the other team. So if you have film of, you know, in our, in our case, we play each of our teams two times in a season. So we have film of the team that we played earlier in the season, and then we're gonna see them again. And so Hudl will break down that side of the net and we can actually see like, okay, here's what these attackers tendencies are, here's what they do outta different rotations. When we get into the postseason, there's some film exchange that happens between coaches. Um, and so we can break down film of other. Of other opponents that we'll be facing. And we can show kind of, again, tendencies, attacking patterns, things like that. And so it makes it really simple because Hudl just breaks it down for you and it's just ready to use. So if you utilize any sort of like scouting report, um, instead of just telling them like, Hey, number five likes to hit, um, line, you can actually show them like, this is what her approach looks like and this is what it looks like when she's. Hitting line. Now again, you have to be able to defend that, so it doesn't really do any good to know that that's what's gonna happen if you can't actually defend it. But if that's useful to your team, then yes. This is a great way to use it. And finally, I love to use it for mental training. And if you're like, how do you use film for mental training? One of the main ways that we love to train our athletes' mental game is to give them an image of what they want to have happen in their brain. Your athletes, because they're human, have what's called a negativity bias, meaning we tend to focus on the negative when we're making sensitive experiences or when they're nervous about something. When your athletes are nervous about something that could happen, their brain goes to worst case scenario, and they're recalling the times that they messed up and they're. Kind of having that play in their head. And we know because of sports psychology that. What you think about and what you focus on is more likely to happen. And so in order to have athletes kinda shift what they're focusing on and the image that they have in their head, I love to use Hudl's highlight feature. So I have them actually sit down and watch for three minutes. I carve this time out. Where they're watching their, their kills, they're watching their perfect passes, they're watching their ACEs. Um, and again, apply this to your sport. I know Hudl is across many different sports, but having them have an image of themselves, literally doing the skill is so powerful because then they're reminding themselves that, Hey, I can do this and I've done it before. And so just having this little highlight reel is so powerful. And, um, in our sense, in our case, I coach varsity and so not. Everybody has film in the game, right? Not everyone's getting the same amount of playing time. Um, so we also film practices as well, so that athletes have an image of what it looks like to do well and they're kind of building this like, oh yeah, like I have done this before. And then that combined with some visualization. So I also have athletes create. I highlight real visualization based on what they've seen that they have done in the past, so that they can really put themselves in that, that moment. Because we know from research that visualization, when done correctly, athletes actually can't know the difference. Their brain and their body can't tell the difference between real and imagined. So they're literally putting themselves in that frame of mind so that when they're out there on the court or on the field performing. It's like I've been here, their brain and their body is familiar with it, and they're more likely to do that image of what they see themselves doing well. So that's just one quick mental training tool that we lean on. Hudl's, highlight reel, um, feature to, to. Strengthen our mental game, um, on our team. Now, if you want other little quick tips on how to strengthen your athlete's mental game on your team in less than 30 minutes a week, like really quick things that you can be doing without adding a bunch of time to your plate or going and becoming a sports psychologist because who has time to do that, then head to our free coach training where I break all of that down. So that's at coach free training.com. I break down really simple mental training strategies that you can be implementing with your team, and then I also talk about. Our program, the Plug and Play Elite Mental Game. So if you want a quick, easy plug and play resource that you can use with your team, I'll talk about that at the training as well. So that's at coach free training.com. Okay. Lastly, I wanna go over some pitfalls to avoid things that I wish I would've known sooner after using Hudl for the past 14 years. Like I said, I've seen it from, its like infancy to what it is now. It's way more sophisticated and way more expensive now. Okay. But we actually go in with a couple other sports in our. Building. So if you have the capability to do that, I highly recommend that you kind of like reach out to them and see if you could do like a package deal with some other sports. That's great. Um, same with Hudl Assist. We do the Hudl assist Unlimited because we're always sending them game film and it's just so much faster for them to break it down than me. Um, so I do recommend that, but it's an investment. But one of the most simple things is press record. I know that sounds like so simple, but as a head coach you got so much going on and I had to finally delegate this to somebody else because I was like, the amount of times that I forgot to record the game, um, is embarrassing. So I just finally like put it on my manager. It was, it's their job now to record so that I'm not at the end of the game being like, oh, here's the iPad right here. We forgot to record that because now I actually, because the tagging has gotten a lot better. Um, I use some of this for stats. Um, because you can go in and you can see all of your team's stats, um, serve, receive, site out rotations, uh, percentages, like all of that stuff is in there. So I lean on Hudl a lot more for stats. I kind of crosscheck it with the manual stats that we take as well, that if you are using it for stats, you gotta remember to record. The other thing is I use Hudls like. Um, iPad case duty to have an iPad to record their iPad case is not great. Um, Hudl, if you're listening, like you need to upgrade that. So I'm on case number three. They're not cheap, but they are cheap because they get hit and then they fall down and, and then it's a whole thing. I have to buy a new anyone. So, um, I, this season I'm gonna look into like a more sophisticated leg. Situation for that. Um, but if you are utilizing the, like the iPad and then you're just buying like their case and their tripod, just know that like you might, you might need a budget for a couple of more couple of other things. When you're uploading, it's best if you're connected to wifi. So like in our gym we have wifi, so it uploads really fast. But if you're not, so, like if we're on the road and traveling other places and then we're not connected to wifi, you have to then like connect into wifi. It doesn't like. Not upload, but you have to be connected to wifi for it to upload, um, so that it gets to everybody's account. So you've gotta like keep the iPad open, connected to wifi, plugged in, so. You've gotta do that so it doesn't like die mid upload and all that. And then the tagging, um, like I said, things have gotten better, but it's not perfect. So sometimes I, I do believe that it's like a physical person breaking it down. Um, and so there's some human error to it, meaning like if you're watching the film and it's tagging one of your athletes as the person who got the kill, and then you're looking at it and you're like, that's somebody else. That happens. And so sometimes they'll send you back the film and be like, we didn't, we couldn't tag these like 38 clips. And you can sit there as a coach and like manually tag, like go through and tag them yourself. But it does take a little more time and just know that it, it's not a hundred percent perfect. Okay. So as a recap, if you're going to invest in Hudl. I do recommend it, but these are the ways that I love to use it. If you are a new coach and you're like, I'm looking at Hudl, um, trying to figure out how to utilize film best, you're probably in this boat where you're also doing some other things to build a program and start a program, and if that is you, I have a video that I want you to head to next. These are my three rookie mistakes that I made when I took over a program for the first time as a head coach. And the things that I wish I could tell every new coach to avoid, please learn from me. So that's in the next video. If you are a new coach or maybe you're a seasoned coach and you're just curious what they are, you're like, did I do those things? Am I still doing them? Go ahead and head to that next video because you're gonna learn a lot there, and I'll see you there