SPECIFIC SKILL DRILLS (SYDNEY SWANS)

ALL coaches should be extra familiar with the SAID principle.

What?

You're not?

Simply outrageous.

Put your learnin' hat on then.

Specific

Adaptation to

Imposed

Demands

Right now I want you to think of all the footy drills you run for your players.

I bet not 1 of them focus on 1 specific task to be carried out with perfection.

Even basic handball drills can be displayed poorly and why is that?

My humble opinion put forward that the main reasons for this is:

• There has been no expectations set before doing the drill
• There has been no context mentioned in relation to the drill
• There has been no goal or end result mentioned for the drill

With these 3 points not being mentioned and all that said is to "go straight into 5 star handball, even up the groups" it can become a cluster quite quickly, even for the simplest of skill drills.

If anything else is mentioned then it's usually "get the talk up", bit if this is a skill drill then is the aim to work on the specific skill or training talk and evening up the groups?

Too often coaches just set a drill with the belief every single player there, all of various levels of experience and playing age, know exactly what you want to happen.

This is a simply ridiculous assumption to make and if there has been some instruction about the drill, there's too many points to focus on and most of them aren't anywhere as near as important as making the actual handball the way it needs to be executed.

The problem is that local/amateur training is far too general in nature.

Every drill is general as we try and condense as much "footy" into a single drill as possible and sure there is a time and place for that, but only after a specific skill has been "mastered" in isolation.

Yes this takes time and resources like more coaches but to simply ignore it totally because of these reasons is why grassroots footy is still 10 - 20 years behind the AFL - but it doesn't have to be.

I'm a Swans supporter who I follow on Twitter and earlier this year they posted a quick snap shot of their training and here's what was going on...

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