4 THINGS I LEARNED FROM THE ADVANCED CERTIFICATE IN COACHING FUNDAMENTAL AFL SKILLS COURSE

3 weeks or so ago I took part in a course run by AFL Sportsready on the coaching fundamentals of AFL skills.

It was presented by Austin Stubs over at AFLHP Coaching who has worked at pretty much every level of football you can imagine, including the AFL, last employed at Essendon FC before the Covid cuts.

Here are 4 things I picked up from the course and have put to immediate use.

1. ABILITY v SKILL

If you're into doing player ratings of some description then you first need to know what you're dealing with in regards to that actual player and what they're natural attributes are versus what can actually be developed, so it's important to know the difference between ability and skill.

Ability

• Inherited Traits
• Hand Eye Coordination
• Reaction Time
• Strength/Energy System Qualities (strength, power, speed, endurance, flexibility etc)

Skill

• Developed with Practice
• Game Specific Sporting Actions
• Decision Making

All things can be improved with a consistency of long term training but that's rarely seen at the local/amateur level so you need to decide the balance on raising the floor (building weaknesses) v raising the roof (enhancing strengths even further).

2. STABILITY OF ENVIRONMENT

This can broken down into types of play:

Closed play is where the player with the ball is free to do what they want with the ball with zero constraints on them such as time, space or pressure.

An example of this is when a player takes a mark and goes back for their kick - they have no physical pressure on them as they perform the skill, they have all the space they need to execute the skill and they have ample time to do it in.

Open play is when the player with the ball is in a continuous motion so if the player above kicks to a short option who then turns and plays on immediately.

From playing on this player now has increased the physical pressure that can be applied as they now can be tackled, the options up the field become less stable as the time required to find the right option and execute the skill has now been decreased.

Simply using these 2 terms can help you greatly in the development of training scenarios around each type of play.

3. STAGES OF LEARNING

There are 3 stages of learning:

Cognitive

• Understand/Develop Basic Movement Patterns

Associative

• Refine Movement Patterns/Associate Environmental Cues

Autonomous

• Automatic

A general but not quite correct way to look at them are beginner, intermediate and advanced stages of development but again it's important to know where each player sits to determine what drills you use for certain players.

The days of using the same drill for every player on your list at the same time HAS to go as it's a major time waster as you're only adequately challenging a fraction of your playing list in any 1 drill.

4. ADDING SKILLS

This was probably the biggest thing for me as I it's something I recognised was missing from my own game years ago.

It specifically involves adding an extra skill, or movement, to something you already have to make it more effective.

It might be something like being able to handle the ball in your opposite hand to open options both sides of you versus 1 side, it might taking extra time to nail down the specifics of your team's game model so you can improve your positions and the ability to receive ball in time and space or simply adding a side step your repertoire to shake free a defender coming at you again allowing for more time, space and technical execution of the next disposal.

If the course comes around for a round 2, which I think it has already has (?), then I strongly suggest taking it up for coaches of all levels, grades and abilities.