PLAY WITH PURPOSE

                                       

Shane Pill is an Australian PE Teacher/Sport Coach who every coach should read up on in my opinion.

Here are some notes taken from an article of his that I titled Play With Purpose in my notes but might have gone by a different name when he published as I can' t locate now!

Being a PE teacher his focus is not on winning like sports coaches bur rather player development on an intricate level as well as player participation, 2 things local/amateur coaches of all ages and grades should focus on a lot more and what I try to get out to the masses through my content.

• Skilled players have better anticipation and decision making skills from more play at training
• Coaches should try to deliberately manipulate games for a specific purpose by using constraints such as exaggerating (decreasing goal size etc), eliminating (small sided games etc) or reducing (area etc) specific game aspects, depending on what you want to work on
• The change in formula for these constrainted games is through a difference in coaching style, how scoring occurs, area/dimension of play space, number of players, game rules, equipment, inclusion strategies for special needs and time of play in possession/phase of play
• Coaches can shape the strategy used by their players by knowing the desired game behaviour, sequencing the game progression from simple to complex, use questions to focus players thinking/actions and reinforcing learning through volume of engagement and repeated  exposure to the desired game behaviour
• Design training by choosing  a tactical concept for that session and designing games that match simulation to develop it
• Skill is the ability to be in the right place at the right time and to select the correct technique on demand and is therefore concerned with making judgement and selections, making it  psychological-tactical skill
• Players can only perform in games what they have practiced in training