Do we expect too much physically?

I had ten boys at our training session tonight, that's pretty good out of a squad of thirteen. Two couldn't make it because of prior commitments but one wasn't there because he's got a painful heel. Normally I'd have just brushed it off but I watched him play in a school match yesterday and he was struggling. You might not notice it normally, but as his coach I'm used to how he plays. Tonight a couple of the other lads got what seemed innocuous taps on their ankles or feet and went down quite easily too. Even my own son mentioned how the bottoms of his feet ached when he got home. With all this in mind and the fact that they're ten or eleven years old, I can only put it down to two things: over-playing or growth spurts. I learned a lot about this on the Youth Appropriate Module 2 I completed recently

I spoke to the boys about it after training and asked them what else they've got coming up. Most have got rugby or PE at school tomorrow and then some have got a rugby match on Friday AND football training in the evening. So I've decided to call off our friendly on Saturday and I'm going to try and plan a session for next week that gives them a rest physically and is much more technical based. I'm sure I can think of something I can do to set a challenge for those that are ok.

I'm sure the parents will be glad of the break, but I need to make sure they actually get the boys to rest. I wonder if many other coaches would do the same?

What would you do?

Putting the theory into practice

So I'm back from my course, I've got all this new info I've learned (anyone that coaches kids sport should really look into this stuff!) and I'm keen to put it into practice. Tuesday night is training night so an excellent opportunity to plan a session. I sit down with my pad and decide to do a session on defending. I'm going to do a whole-part-whole session starting with the idea of the second leg of a cup-tie meaning one team needs to score and one doesn't. Then I'll break it down and do some 1v1, 2v2 and maybe 3v3 defending and then back into the game.

I've got 13 in the squad so 6v7 is perfect for this as it gives us a natural overload, or I can stand in goal and possibly change the course of the game by good or "accidentally" bad goalkeeping. Out goes the teamer invite and almost immediately I get 3 declines. "Sorry, rugby practice is now on a Tuesday"...

Ok, that slightly changes things, but not much. Tuesday comes and we start training with a warm-up, gentle jogging, some dynamic stretches and I throw a couple of footballs into the square with the instruction of "don't pass to someone who's standing still". This makes sure all the boys keep moving. I found out at that point that the majority of the boys had just done a school football training for an hour so we kept the warm-up to a minimum. "Right, let's have a game" I said. That really threw them! Steve and I were going to go in goal to allow the boys to play 5v5 on pitch, giving them the chance to use different formations. I told them the scenario and we discussed separately how the teams should play and they came up with the formations straight away. The team leading on away goals said immediately "we don't need to score so we need to pass the ball about. Let's play 3-1-1". The team needing a goal said "we need to attack quickly so can we play 1-2-2?".

I let them just play, without really any interventions apart from reminding them of the score and whether the team in possession needed a goal or not. There were a couple of occasions when a striker rushed in to two defenders and was taken out the game with a simple wall pass and it gave me the perfect opportunity to set up the defending "part" of the session. We set up two mini pitches with offset target areas and played the 1v1 and 2v2 with the objective of dribbling the ball through the targets. After the defending "part" we went back into the game under the same conditions. The team in the lead scored a quick goal and then they relaxed and played really nice controlled football. The other team really stepped up their efforts as they would need to. A couple of dodgy bits of keeping on my part changed the game and at that point we stopped it, talked about what needed to happen and the boys changed their formations accordingly.

Perfect!

It was a fantastic session overall. I got a great piece of advice from a really good coach, Matt Smith. He said if I put the goals on the same side and get the boys to change ends half way through, they get to practice defending both the right back and left back positions instead of just one side. Simple and obvious when you think about it! Thanks Matt, you're a genius :-)

I've since found out that another lad has school rugby on a Tuesday and school football is now going to be every Tuesday too so I think we'll be training on Wednesdays from now on...

Day 4 completed and all signed off

Day four was basically the groups putting on their sessions and then receiving feedback from the rest of the guys (and gals) on the course and from the tutors. We were the third group on out of eight, so I watched the first session, listened and contributed to the feedback and then our group set up for our session. We were only given approximately 20 minutes to put our sessions on. We (myself, Jason - a very good coach and although still young has a lot of experience, and Damien - very similar to me and coaches a kids team as well as an adults team) sat down to discuss what we were going to do and how we'd put the session on.

We thought about a constant, random, variable practice, which starts with a simple practice of a technical subject - the constant part. You then move on to a variable practice which focuses on the same technical subject but introduces more options or some kind of interference or obstructions. The random part is normally by putting the subject into a game like scenario. The other option we had is what is known as a whole-part-whole practice. This is where you start off with a game and set a target and let the players play (I spoke about this in an earlier blog). You then break the session down and focus on the particular aspect of the game you want the players to work on. Once you've completed the "part" session, you put it back into another game scenario and see how it differs from the first one.

Because we only had 20 minutes, we chose to do a "part" session on "counter-attacking from deep" and explained in the intro that this would be the part of the whole-part-whole. Jason and I have both done similar sessions with our own teams and Damien was happy for us to lead it. I won't go into the actual session details now (I'll post it another day, unless people want to see it sooner rather than later) but suffice to say it went really well. All the guys playing in the session really enjoyed it and we got some great feedback from them. The only real criticism came from Mark, one of the tutors, and that was that our subject was "counter-attacking from deep" and the way we set it up meant that the defending team was always organised, even though there was potential for a 4v3 overload in favour of the attacking team. We talked about ways of tweaking it so the defence wasn't always organised and that one of the defenders would need to make a recovery run. It was some great advice and I'll certainly incorporate it into my sessions when I do this subject again.

To get through everyone's sessions as quickly as possible we decided as a group that we would just grab our lunch during a session we weren't involved in. I tried to be part of as many as possible and I'm paying the price now. My legs are REALLY stiff!!! The other sessions were all really good and all very different. The good thing was that you could see everyone on the course had taken on board what we'd been taught and used either a whole-part-whole or constant-variable-random session. They were split fairly evenly between the two as well so it made it even better.

Once we'd done all the sessions we went back into the classroom, finished off our paperwork and got our books signed off. There was some great feedback given, all very positive, and well received. We then watched a couple more slides just re-capping and then we were done. The funniest part of the whole four days was when Richard (the ex-pro tutor) was about to do the summing up and one of the candidates did a really loud yawn. As you can imagine there were jokes flying around and we were all in hysterics for about fifteen minutes.

Overall, the course was brilliant. It's a really worthwhile course for anyone that coaches football, regardless of age group. There were a couple of guys there that don't do kids coaching but still got a lot out of it and will use what they've learnt with their adult teams. If you already coach or are thinking about coaching kids, get yourself booked on one of the YAM1 courses as soon as you can. You WILL learn a lot and you WILL think differently about what you coach and how you coach it. And you'll become a better coach for it.

Day 3, and what a day!

Today was a day of very mixed feelings. Firstly I was really looking forward to getting back to the course. Secondly, it was my team's very first 9v9 match and I was going to miss it because I was on the course :-(

I got to Bracknell about 9:15 and was ready to start straight away. We started off with a quick recap of the first two days and then went straight into a group exercise discussing a variety of different topics. We had to present on "The birth bias and how can we eradicate it". The birth bias is basically a way of describing the numbers of young academy players and what month they were born in. Did you know that 57% of academy players were born between September and December and only 13% were born between May and August? At the younger age groups in particular, but not exclusively, players born between September and December tend to be bigger and therefore stronger. There are pros and cons to being bigger. Primarily, academies tend to look for athletic players. These bigger kids tend to use their size to win the ball and their speed to go past players. Where does that leave the smaller players? Well they need to develop their technical skills much quicker so they don't get involved in the physical battle with the bigger kids. So, on the flip side, what happens when the smaller kids grow and catch up? Funnily enough they tend to be better all round players because they have more advanced technical skills. So why do academies let the smaller players go? Short term gain over long term development... :-/

Once we'd had a coffee, we went outside to do a practical demo. Today was a whole-part-whole session, which means you play a game with a specific focus, break it down into smaller part once you've observed what you want to work on, and then play another game again and see whether what you've worked on is remembered. We did defending today. Chris told us once team was Man Utd and the other was Barca. Man Utd had got a 1-1 draw at the Nou Camp and only needed a 0-0 to go through to the next round of the Champions League. We were to play an 8v8 game and should decide our formation. Strangely both teams chose to play 2-3-2. Our thought was that we didn't need to win, but if we imposed ourselves on the game our opponents wouldn't get the time they needed on the ball to generate measured attacks. we played for about 20 minutes and scored to go 2-1 up on average. We relaxed even more and could've scored another. Then Barca scored an equaliser. It's amazing how serious a few guys that are on a coaching course actually take a game that doesn't really mean anything!!!

We then broke the game down and Richard (or other tutor) took the "part" session. This went from 1v1 to 2v2, then onto 3v3 and finally 4v4 with the aim to dribble to ball through a scoring gate. The focus was on how to defend, showing a player with the ball to the side you wanted him to go and finally about dropping into a covering position when your player releases the ball.

After about another half an hour we went back and played another game. The focus was the same as the first game, but with the scores now tied it was virtually next goal wins. We decided to change formation and I dropped from up front (where I had hardly touched the ball) into a sweeper role, pushing on when possible. We used our new found defensive skills to good effect and the extra player paid dividends. It was a great demo of how to use the whole-part-whole method of coaching. After lunch we got into groups of three and decided on the sessions we will give tomorrow. We're doing "Counter attacking from deep". I'll let you know how it goes tomorrow!

But the most important thing: the boys played out of their skins! They found their shape after a few shaky minutes and ran out comfortable winners. I don't care about the score, it's the performance that counts. I just wish I'd been there to see it...

Best laid plans... turned out well though!!!

This evening was my first training session since starting the YAM2 course. I was hoping for 12 or 13 of my squad to come as our first league match in the new 9v9 format is this Saturday. Unfortunately a couple of the boys were committed to rugby training so we ended up with 10. I had planned to do the session I talked about in my previous blog but the best laid plans...

So we started off talking about the formation I want them to play on Saturday. We have 12 outfield players signed on so it fits perfectly into a squad rotation. Every player will get 40 minutes of a 60 minute game. 10 of them will play in the same position for the whole game and two will play in two positions. I know we should rotate positions, but as it's a new format I want to get as much consistency as possible. Once I was happy they understood their positions, we discussed how I want them to attack using the wide areas, which should also create some space to attack through the middle. We're really fortunate to have some excellent ball players throughout the team so passing the ball around has always been one of our strongest assets. I talked about how the players should remember the shape of the team and how I wanted the wide players to go wide at certain times and when to tuck in. We then talked about how important it is to drop off and get our shape back when we lose the ball.

After a bit of a warm-up we went straight into a game. I stressed about holding shape, which wasn't easy playing 5 v 5, so myself and Steve decided to be an extra player on each team at the back to allow the boys a bit of freedom. We stopped the game a few times to demonstrate what we had talked about and I also stressed about when to press the ball and when to leave it to them in their own half. There's no point in one player wasting energy by charging in if he does it on his own. The only things to come out of that are tired forwards and a player taken out of the game!!! They picked it up really fast and played some fantastic football. There were a couple of kids that weren't that keen on the work rate, particularly the wide players, but when they saw the benefits they were fine.

I just wish I was going to be there on Saturday...

Days 1 and 2 of the FA Youth Award Module 2 complete...

and I'm knackered!!!

Days 1 and 2 have been really enjoyable. It's always a bit difficult to fit straight in to a group that mostly know each other, most of the guys on the course did the Module 1 together in April, but it's been really easy. The age range goes from early 20s to 50+. There's some guys that have only recently started coaching, some that have no youth coaching experience, and a couple that are already coaching at pro clubs. The 2 tutors are both excellent. Chris and Rich are both really experienced and have their own unique style. They're both very funny in their own way and they bounce off each other all the time.

The course itself, developing the practice, promises to be about 70% practical and so far that's pretty accurate. The pre-course reading explains all about how repetition of the correct things is key to the development of young players, how the neural pathways are defined by those repetitions and how, what and the way we teach could make all the difference to a players development. I'm finding it fascinating! The classroom stuff has been re-capping Module 1, discussions about the pre-course stuff and a lot of talk about constant, variable and random sessions. A great demo of this was done on day one starting with the constant session. We had to set up in lines of 4 starting with two at one end, one in the middle, and one at the other end. It started off with player one passing to player two and then following his pass. Player two received the ball, turned and passed to player three. He then followed his pass to the other end. Player three then passed back into the middle (player 1) and so on. The first progression was that the central player moved so the could receive at an angle. The variable session was basically the same exercise, but had three teams all passing though a central circle. This introduced some interference for the central player. The final session involved a game situation with the pitch split into thirds, with the midfielders acting as the central player, receiving the ball from the defenders and trying to turn to play to a forward. So far the practical content has been mostly about demonstrating these different ways of coaching similar sessions to achieve different results and introduce different levels of complexity.

The message has been that for a player to developer properly and be able to make decisions in a game, we need to first teach them the technical skills of the action we're after and then gradually introduce opposed versions into a game scenario. This will lay those muscle memories and neural pathways so the actions they need to perform don't even need to be thought about, they just happen!

I'm really looking forward to next weekend and the rest of the course.

The only downer is that I'll miss my team's first ever 9-a-side match because the course is being run at the same time the season starts. Surely the county FAs and the leagues could get together and arrange not to do this???