warm ups?

September 10th - Under 13's - 16 children

A good session, utilising the 4 v 4 + 4 approach. The session centred on the players ability to undertake fast transitions from defence to attack. Session quality high, understanding of subject matter , high when tested during and after the session.

Since the course in July I have given much consideration to the content from the Sports Scientisit elements of the course - particularly the SAQ. I have chosen to adddress these issues with all ball based exercises. During this session our warm up comprised of numerous decision making exercises concluding in an aerobic ball based exercise.

The other realisation from this type of approach has been that the text book prescription of an ldeal session is a linear progression from warm up to end. I now approach the warm up as the time to prepare the body and the mind - so lots of gentle aerobic work coupled with high dexterity decision based drills- Hence many of my warm ups are not directly related to the session.

Old habits die hard?

Under 11's - transition from defence to attack

A good session tonight, The format of the sessions have become more centred on the 4 corners of player development, with considerably more emphasis on enabling decisions via the design of drills, even within the warm up every opportunity is utilised to exercise a players decision making options.

Our warm ups have more emphasis on preparing the player to train, rather than the traditional mantra of ensuring a linear progression throughout the session

Very noticable tonight some of the players had delayed responses when possession changed - Post session the group have been asked to work on this singular component when training with their club teams

I felt tonight at certain stages of the session I was looking for what went wrong rather than encouraging what went well. This seems to have been fuelled by a level of frustration caused by the delayed transition responses. Good lessons learnt tonight - I'll work on this in the next session

On the plus side the questioning methods are now fully accepted by the players, they now take that as the norm, we rarely get the throw away cliched answers such as "PASSING" etc

Went to se Barcelona beat Inter last week - what a team - great to watch always entertaining

Under 9's - Systematic errors?

Session - Possession and spacial awareness

The first session of the season for our newly formed under 9's. A simple session that comprised a skills based warm up, some 2 v 2 progressions followed by a possesion game and concluding with a small sided game

Observations
During 1 of the drills - 7 v 3 possession, 4 passes or a 1/2 to score a goal - . A systematic problem occurred hence feedback needed to be at a group level rather than at an individual level. The problem was centred on players in possession only utilising short passing , thus causing the team in possesion to compress the playing area, this made it easy for the defenders to win the ball back.

When the ball went of play we used the dead time to ask a group question - Do the team in possession want to make the pitch big or small -BIG was the unified response - WHY - more time and space for the man on the ball and the defence have to turn and chase the ball, the children knew the answer but what followed were repeats of the same problem. so despite knowing the answer they were unable to implement the solution

Our response was to introduce a conditioned drill that caused transfer of play from 1 side of the pitch to the other.

Enjoyable session, with deeper insights to the player development process

Session 4 - Skillful neglect?

Session 4 - receiving to pass - 15 players under 12 age group

Warm up
Used the warm up games to concentrate on the basics of raising the body temperature plus also added a number of simple games that were designed to activate the players decision making processes - worked a treat. Also included the group questioning methods to set the scene and to test understanding. The kids have adapted to this approach, very noticable the quality of the answers to the questions are significantly higher

Session
The session comprised a series of progressive small sided games that centred on passing and movement - Great session, tempo excellent, kids loved it

Skillful neglect
All our groups have now accepted this approach - we wait and see if the error is self correcting if not we make a note of it then discreetly discuss it with the player without anyone knowing, Tonight there were 5 interventions (all related to slowing the attacks down by having too many touches) all delivered discreetly - very interesting to see the reactions of the children - far more receptive, always delivered via questions with heavy positive spin

We have organised sessions for our parents to illustrate the blue dot exercise and to show how sideline coaching shuts down the learning system

Session 3 - Under 12's July 23rd

Session - receiveing to pass or shoot

Intervention - Beginning to get the hang of the intervention -used the skillful neglect approach, amazing how many mistakes are self correcting. Intervened discreetly with 5 players yesterday, all for systematic problems, Including using dribbling as the only method to progress the ball, weight of the pass, Off the ball movement and speed of release when playing in a congested area of the pitch.

All interventions were delivered in discreet 1 on 1 situations, mainly by the use of questions rather than instructions,much better way of establishing understanding and aiding learning

Qusetioning
I've started to use questions as the principle medium of communication to the players -they are beginning to get to grips with the small group system, too early to say but initially appears to have a significant impact on understanding

Session 2 Under 10's

Session 2 - Tuesday 17th July - Under 11's

Session - possession
Used some of the warm up drills from the course - also used the switching drill - where 2 players have to switch positions to receive the ball in the box - worked very well - kids loved it

Intervention
Worked well tonight - 0 interventions, didn't stop any of the drills, however gave dicreet individual feedback to 4 individuals during the session. Definite evidence of the kids understanding and actioning the points raised. It becomes easier to communicate the specifics , also able to test understanding by backing the point up with questions

Questioning
Started the session with small group questions relating to what makes a team good at possession - also asked the question what is possession. When each group gave an answer to the question I asked them to demonstrate what they meant - wrked really well. Feel confident understanding is fuller and deeper as a consequence - I asked the kids what is different about my coaching - "You are asking lots more questions" - seems about right to me. It's beginning to get easier

Coach and parents
We are running a session for all our coaches and any interested parents. We will subject them to the blue dot exercise, the 4 corners, how the brain learns, the questioning and the low intervention systems - Looking forward to it - we should get 20 - 30 people there

First Session

Evaluation of the first session

Tried a number of new things during the session, including questioning and the suggested player development based intervention:

Session - Possession

Drills - Used a number of the drills from the course, including the fitness based warm up drills - concluded with some of our old favorites. Early drills took a bit of adapting to but in general session tempo went well and standard was high

Interventions - Only stopped a drill once during a 2 hour session - concentrated on giving discreet individual feedback - worked incredibly well - Also used it as a method to address behaviour issues - worked very well

Testing Understanding - Used questioning throughout the session - repeatedly split the group into sub groups of 3 or 4 players, 30 secs to answer a question, then challenged the answers - can't believe how much of an impact this had - Far more powerful way of getting to grips with levels of understanding - Kids found it, fun, challenging and a bit strange. Very difficult to train my mind to centre on open questions only.

Overall good session - lots of learning points