It's almost 2026 but a lot of coaches still use drills (I'll get to that term later), from 1986 but it's clearly time to reinvent your coaching practices and look at what elite team sport coaches are doing right now.
WHAT WE CURRENTLY SEE
Kicking from this cone to that cone to this cone to that cone is the definition of a drill - a predetermined sequence of actions that cannot be deviated from.
They possess zero context to what occurs in games as there is no opposition, no consequence and no decision making taking place - all that a game has in abundance.
A training activity is something that is full of information that is representative of the a game consisting of interactions between teammates and opposition.
Decision's now need to be made constantly in regards to navigating the constraints of space and time on top of everything else.
Above all, skill is the ability to adapt to ever-changing conditions and all cone-to-cone kicking does is rehearse an already adequate foundational technique.
TRAINING AT THE MOMENT
Players get there, have a very casual kick with a teammate or 2, run a lap and then go into handball to kicking lanes or off the fence stuff with a player/coach out the front delivering the ball to them in a variety of ways.
Sure it's just the warm up portion of the session but it's still not representative of the game so as we only have 2 - 3hrs per week to train, why not make it as jam-packed with game information as we can.
This WILL require you as coach to shift from your current coaching habits and your players as well but change needs to come from the top and that's you.
At this point of the session you don't need ramp decision-making and complexity to its maximum but you at least want to start with it included in your "warm up" training activities (remember no drills!)
WHEN/HOW TO START?
When? My suggestion is your very 1st session of pre-season in the that's coming up in the next few weeks.
How? Try and gamify your current crop of drills to make them training activities.
Add decision-making into the activity via the use of opposition which doesn't mean 18v18 but having some opposition apply some pressure to what you're doing is what you're after.
This might be as simple as someone coming to stand the mark after each mark or running 4 players off 1 end and handballing through to the other end with opposition forcing them to make decisions, not necessarily lay them out with bone-crunching tackles.
PROGRESSION
As the session continues then ramp up complexity which means add more moving parts which now be adding more defenders to stand all marks, or as many as possible which forces the offensive team to search for more solutions as there will be less "obvious" options to take up.
You might alter the space that if opened up will provide more space and time for the ball carrier, or you might close it down to take both of those things away.
You might call play on after 8secs or after 5secs, depending on what you want to see happen.
There's so many ways to constrain the 1 training activity but the holy grail lies in the coach knowing what to manipulate and when, to keep challenging players if/as they solve the previous constraint consistently which may occur in the very first session or in take multiple sessions.
ACTION PLAN
1 - Challenge yourself to design your entire 1st pre-season training session around training activities, not drills.
2 - Get to work on altering your training drills into activities
3 - If you need any assistance doing this or would like me to look over what you've come up with then feel free to contact me through Facebook PM or Twitter PM.
