Doing Something Doesn't Make You Better At it

When we go to the gym we are well aware that in order to get bigger and/or stronger, then we need to add weight weight to the bar, or increase the volume we train at, over time.

During training you break muscles down with tiny, tiny muscle tears and it;s recovery (food and sleep) that build them back up.

What also happens here s that body identifies the amount of stress it just went through (which to you is 3 x 12 reps at 30kgs for example), and in during the recovery process, builds itself back to a greater level also that the same amount of stress isn't as much work as the time before building a stronger and/or bigger muscle to do this.

For running you might run a 2km time trial and try and beat that time again and again.

That's pretty much the game.

This process of overload doesn't happen enough in other area's of football training - especially skill work.

You go to footy training and you kick the ball around and that's all well and good but does it mean you improved your kicking?

No way.

Not if you didn't attempt types of kicks you don't normally do like a stab pass.

One of the issues is kicking from cone to cone.

A little bit of cone kicking can be fine in the very initial stages of a warm up but after that you should be incorporating as much game simulated kicking as possible.

Incorporating game simulated kicking might come in the form of:

• Chaos Drills
• Decision Making Drills
• Kicking Under Pressure
• Kicking at Game Speed
• Tempo Game Style Kicking

You could even mix them together if you wanted to get extra fancy.

A while again I did a post of Skill Variability which refers to being able to display a skill many different ways but all at a very high level.

At my own club there are blokes who can do only 1 type of kick effectively, handball/kick on 1 side of the body or are better kicks from a stationary position rather then on the run.

This can hinder their effectiveness because unless they get the ball in the 1 perfect situation that suits them, the result of that skill might not be as good as it needs to be.

We all probably heard lat last year how the Western Bulldogs literally practice all different types of handballs that they us to keep the ball moving, as is their game style.

I won't say they won a premiership off the back of it, but it certainty helped them out a lot.

Th best way to implement is to sit down and plan.

Here's how you could organise a progression to master the stab pass.

1. Stationary Kick to Stationary Target
2. Stationary Kick to Moving Target
3. Moving Kick to Stationary Target
4. Moving Kick to Moving Target

That's your basic set up that you might focus on for 2 - 5 sessions each in your warm up time instead of lobbing balls from 60m out.

On top of that you would also incorporate different angles that you kick on and also different angled leads that you kick to - also focusing on the stab pass.

This might take an entire pre-season to get through this progression as you need to master each phase before moving onto the next one.

There will also be days where you lose it and when those days happen it;s best served to drop back to the previous phase, get your confidence back up and go again.

If you have performance gaps in your game, then let me know and I can give you a hand on sorting them out.