HOW TO MAKE 2021 YOUR BEST FOOTBALL YEAR EVER

Fair to say year 2020 was a bit off with zero footy being played in the heartland of Aussie Rules here in Victoria.

With that came full jealousy to all the other states that were able to get some football in.

I lost my old man suddenly mid-year which was tough and has led to me taking stock of everything moving forward.

2021 brings with it similar challenges but to take a slightly different look at the last 12 months or so it has also provided a much needed opportunity for everyone to reset a little.

To find what's ultimately important to you and to rediscover what really makes you happy.

For me it's footy and music at the moment.

On the footy side I'm definitely intent on coaching in 2021, either at my current club or somewhere else, or possible in the private sectior somewhere.

It's fair to say that I've done enough research on the matter and I really need to put it into action and see how it works in reality.

Music is just a home thing but I've made great strides in my guitar playing (I think) and I've got myself a keyboard I'm teaching myself how to play as well.

Being self taught leaves a lot of gaps in my playing but I can do enough to get by.

Getting back to coaching I've plenty of people asking why I don't offer much 1on1 training and to be honest I just don't rate too highly for football outside of anything in the physical co-active and possibly technical co-active but that's a huge grey area in itself.

If all you can do as a coach or a player is 1on1 training then of course it's better than nothing but if you can get as little as 3 - 4 other mates involved than you can introduce true decision making activities and very easily take your football to a whole new level.

I had great plans to start up some in-person training this year with the focus being on teaching tactics and patterns of play to youth footballers and I hope to give it another try this year.

If you've read my most recent posts you'll have read that decision making is based on many things but is the most important aspect of football.

Having a team tactic that is instilled in all players means this some decision making is already made for all players at that point in time.

If a long ball is going into our backline to a free teammate who will mark the ball, than before the ball even reaches them, all other teammates know what to do next and start making position from any point on the ground.

The ball player already knows what they are going to do before they even mark the football and their teammates are already moving into position to make this happen.

The decision has been made before the ball has even been marked.

Without having to go back off the mark and scan for all available options and then to process which options are the better choices only to have them dry up as time goes by, the ball can played immediately catching the opposition completely out of position and you've got a huge advantage and a major chance to score very quickly.

This is where I believe coaching should start for at almost all levels to some degree.

The days of kicking from cone to cone in a formation that is totally unrepresentative of the game have to go - with only 2 - 3hrs a week to training whatever you think you need to cover whatever you think you need to cover for football preparation, anything that isn't efficient has to be given a re-thought at the very least.

I'm not saying my way is the only and best way to coach - hell I haven't even coached my own team yet - but what I write is what I'll use when I do eventually coach.

With a huge focus on a game model that puts huge importance on aspects of the game requiring zero talent, each and every player will have game day roles that are ultra important for the team to play the best football they can week in and week out.

Players being given roles and feeling like an important part of the machine is vital for on and off field success - they'll be highly motivated to do what's required of them and they'll want to play football for the long term.

My method/s would go a long way to winning games of football but it's the teaching and inclusion part of how I mash it up that trumps how successful a team could be.

A coaches job is to create an environment that players want to be a part of and training that pushes players just slightly beyond their capabilities but still allows some success and allows for players to drop back a level when needed, and to make the environment psychologically safe to be able to do this, is where coaching is going whether you want it to or not.  

So if you want 2021 to be your best year of football ever, then join us at Aussie Rules Training, join other local/amateur coaches who are in the trenches just like you and receive the best Aussie Rules Football training and coaching content on the internet by taking up either of the memberships on the Register page.

Here's a quick look at some of the options:

- Level 1 - Training/Coaching Articles Only

- Level 2 - Training/Coaching Articles + Training Programs Only

- Level 3 - Training/Coaching Articles + Training Programs + Training Drills

- Footy Focus is an 8 week program for youth footballers with 4 challenges per week to complete spread over technical, physical and psychological co-actives.

- Develop Game Model is a 3 Zoom call (30mins each approx) + homework program where I guide you to build your very own game model for season 2021

- Season 2021 Package is a 12mth option that runs from October 2020 to September 2021

- Various pre-made packages of drills

Definitely something there for every coach of any level.

DECISION MAKING PART 2

 Here's another take on decision making that can be added to the framework from yesterday's post.

These notes are taken from an article from Peter Motzenbecker, a Soccer coach from the US and quite detailed and worth a read in itself.

Here are my notes from it.

• Environment, coach, team, club and the team's game model all play a part in decision making
• Coaches can provide principles/patterns/cues that players can follow as well as feedback that players can take in/learn from with suggestions for the future, but they can never make the decision for the player
• Perception-action coupling is a good place to start but even that can be added to as 1v1 requires a lot of information processing, let alone with plenty other moving parts going on around you
• Feedback should be based on the decision making process over the actual outcome meaning if a player misses an in-board kick from half back, that the decision (correct) is applauded more than the skill error is shunned.
• Perception-decision-execution is probably a better way to go, which separates the decision from the execution
• Saying players were "unlucky" provides zero information on the actual decisions made in that instance and is usually said by coaches who can't work out what actually happened and/or how to fix it so you're better off saying nothing
• Players need conscious awareness of what’s around them, the physical references of the field (space, teammates, opposition, ball, goals, lines etc) and they need to be able to recognise patterns/cues which can both be self conscious and learned from repetitious training
• A game model teaching patterns/cues is a must but must also allow freedom to play within it
• You can’t be too game model based as you’re useless when you can't play to it (environment, opposition, manpower), but you also can't be married to the "best players" model because you'll useless again when they are not in form or they are unavailable.
• Drills allow each player to see how every other player plays that particular pattern which also allows them to play off of that better during games (being predictably unpredictable)
• Being "automatic" enhances creativity and better decision making and those who aren’t automatic for whatever reason, use too much energy/attention on simple decisions and also results players having less potential solutions to problems and low in-game variability (give someone a hammer and they'll try and hammer everything).
• Don't shy away from skill work but build a foundation in what skills are needed for your game model then allow creativity around that.
• Everything you do at training needs to be stored and then to become subconscious
• The progression of decision making is:

1 – Feedback Driven and Immediate Outcome Based Decision Making

• This is the starting point where if you see "x" then you do "y" and "x" happens

2 – Instinctual Decision Making

• This is subconscious decision making which is you have done "x" thousands of times and it is the right solution for "y"

3 – Conscious Decision Making

• Being able to consciously process information that has been instinctual and breaking down why you do "x" when you see "y" and contemplating other ways to solve "y" based on triggers/cues/patterns etc

All this leaves us with:

Perception – Visualisation – Decision - Deception – Execution

• During the visualisation stage the player sees multiple possibilities
• During deception the player is able to disguise their action via ball/body manipulation

DECISION MAKING PART 1

These notes were taken from an info graphic that I came across about a week ago from UK UEFA Soccer Coach Michael Loftman and I reckon it allows to easily and simply breakdown what goes into each and every decision a player makes on the ground.

Almost every local/amateur coach could improve their output dramatically if they look to really break down how and why things happen and it's only then that you can find the weak link in the chain and then begin to improve upon it.

Let's use this Dusty Martin game vision piece I used for another post on my IG from the 2019 Grand Final.

The 9 phases of decsion making in this framework are:

- Orientation

- Searching

- Perception

- Anticipation

- Prediction

- Attention

- Selection

- Adaptation

- Action

To find out what they are and how Dusty moves through all of them in less than 10secs over multiple game actions, register for a Level 1 membership or purchasing the Season 2021 Package at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/. 

25 COACHING TIPS FROM 25 COACHES

Below you'll find 25 tips from 25 coaches from all different sports and area's of life of which I've tried to link to their socials so you can give them a follow if you desire. 

I'm sure you can easily put half of these into action in your very first training session for 2021.

1. Culture (Daniel Abrahams) – award points for idea's and extra points for idea’s executed to incentivize ambition and also try to seperate the outcome from the process where a pass might be intercepted but it was still the right pass to make, rewarding the process irrespective of outcome
2. Skill Level (Steve Magness) – determines what possibilities for action you perceive in your environment and with greater skill level and variability, the more choices you have to act on
3. Chess and Sport (Fergus Connolly) – Chess makes you think beyond the first step and can also be reactionary to other moves in real time where you always need to consider other person’s intentions while thinking of long term outcomes and the final end game
4. Differential Learning (Tim Buszard) – refers to practive where you explore as many movement solutions as possible regardless of how impractical they might seem, exploring the limits of your capabilities which harnesses creativity
5. Leaders in Decision Making (Ed Smith) – decision makers often shy away from risk when the odds are against them, playing it safe to lose conventially but if you want to be differnet/better you have to bear the risk of being differnet and worse
6. Coaching (Rafa Benitez) – in his 1st session he told the squad to start running around the pitch but called them back after 20m and then said "Next time I ask you to do something, ask me why"
7. Learning (Mark Enser) – leads to motivation, not the other way around so provide an initial taste of success, avoid overload, scaffold to success, continue to model and build on what they know
8. Scenarios (Rugby Strength Coach) – are we pushing athletes past worse case scenarios into never case scenarios through the current use of testing/conditioning?
9. Ammo v Elite (Craig Edwards) – amateur players practice until they get it right but elite players practice until they can’t get it wrong
10. Learning Environments (Shawn Myszka) – experience the game in slices with game based learning environments centering around action/movements but also on what information is present so the learner becomes attuned to ony the most relevant information. The game is a great place to gain experience but athletes need opportunities to search for other functional solutions such as a player who prefers to using physical solutions being forced to search for movement/space availability solutions by the constraints of the environment/task
11. Game Model (Cody Royle) – you prob don’t win because of how good your game model is but because your players have consistency with whatever game model you do have and can therefore maintain a greater intensity for longer, essentially helping your players perceive, believe and then embody 5% faster, more consistently and  with more intensity, at what they’re already good at
12. Creativity (Amy Brann) – is intelligence having fun
13. Internal v External Focus (Tim Gallwey) – refers to what the body is doing in flight v what the ball is doing in flight with the concentrated mind having no room for thinking what the body is doing and 99times out 100 you’ll ask a struggling player what they were thinking and they’ll talk about the mechanics of their sport but it’s the complete opposite when you’re playing well where you don't feel anything internal in your body at all
14. Decision Making (Andy Ryland) – if your drill progression isn't increasing/layering speed, space, complexity, chaos and decision making then are you actually improving skill at all?
15. Habit Loop (James Clear) – reminder (the initial trigger/cue) + response (the behaviour/action/response) + reward (the outcome of the behaviour) = alarm goes off for training  and you get up or you don’t + you get more sleep or less training today. You need to identify your positive and negative habit loops
16. Constraints (Dr Matt Jordan) – internal constraints x how do you move when fatigued, how do you move when you can only generate 180Nm of knee extension torque, how do you move with anteriot/posterior knee instability etc? Task constraints x how do you move carrying an unaccustomed load? Environmental constraints x how do you move in a contract year, how do you move in front of a crowd and how do you move in the cold?
17. Beliefs (Ben Hunt Davis) – some things you can control and somethings you can’t so don’t dwell on them and resolve to focusing on what matters. The 3 key sources for your beliefs are personal memories (past successes etc), role models (who else has done this and how did they do it etc) and metaphors/analogies (stories etc)
18. Culture (Ryan Holiday) – you can only control thr effort, not the results
19. Psychology (Alex Hutchinson) – even in elite runners mental fatigue can decrease performance after a 45min computer task so no phones pre-game!
20. Psychological Safety (Dr Michael Gervais) – no one wants to look bad but when the fear of looking bad is stronger then the desire to learn, which is often accompanied by being uncomfortable, ungraceful, akward and clunky, that’s where we find coaches/players stripping potential but you gotta look bad at some point to learn
21. Variability (Adam Omiecinski) – how can you achieve a stable movement in a dynamic environment like sport because even as the earth tilts our center of mass changes?
22. Leadership (Scot Prohaska) – the 6 lanes of performance are psychological (emotional intelligence), sensory motor (vision/perceptual/rea skills), technical (repeat/accuracy/int), tactical, physical and recovery/restoration.These are backed up by courage, honor, respect, responsibility, communication, confidence, perseverance, innovation, ambition, learning and leadership
23. Space/Time (Matt Gordon) –if you understand it then you can position yourself to receive the ball giving you more to execute the skill so you can work a lot on skills but it’s only 1 small way to manipulate time/space
24. Ement (Jorg Van Der Breggen) – obsessing about winning is a loser’s game so you must create the best possible conditions for success then let go of the outcome
25. Efficiency v Effectiveness (Peter Drucker) - efficiency is doing the thing right, effectiveness is doing the right thing

PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY (THE RICHMOND METHOD)

Ever since the outrageous turnaround from Richmond 2016 to Richmond 2017 and to now, we've heard a lot about their culture and how it is such a major driver of their on and off field success of recent years.

These notes are taken from an article by Laura Delizonna who is an executive coach with an expertise in psychological safety to optimise team performance who has actually written an entire book on the subject.

At local/amateur level we have so much to focus on that culture is hopefully just something "that happens" off the back of other things we do but there has to be a focus on it to get it started and here's how psychological safety is the very first step in doing that.

• There’s no team without trust
• Psychological safety is knowing you won’t get punished when you make a mistake
• Allows for moderate risk taking, speaking your mind, creativity and sticking your neck out without fear which is the type of behaviour that leads to breakthroughs
• In uncertain environments the brain processes a provocation by a coach/boss as a life or death threat and the amygdale, which is the alarm bell in the brain, ignites the fight or flight response hijacking higher brain centers which is to act first and think later which can lead to brain structure shutting down perspective/analytical reasoning so when you need it the most it's not available
• Fight or flight is great for life threatening episodes but is a terrible in strategic thinking situations
• Success in 2021 and beyond depends on the broaden and build mode of positive emotion (trust, curiosity, confidence, inspiration) which allows us to solve complex problems and to foster cooperative relationships
• We become more open-minded, resilient, motivated and persistent when we feel safe
• Humor increases as does solution finding divergent thinking – a cognitive process underlying creativity
• When environments are challenging but not threatening, oxytocins levels in our brains rise to elicit trust and trust making behaviour
• Approach conflict as a collaborator not an adversary (how can we achieve a mutually desirable outcome?)
• Speak human to human as everyone pretty much has/wants the same issues/things as you (hopes, anxieties, vulnerabilities, friends, family, children v feeling respected, appreciated, competent, peace, joy, happiness)
• Anticipate reactions and plan countermoves
• Replace blame with curiosity (what do they know/sense, are they seeing/predicting etc)
• Ask for feedback on delivery
• Measure psych safety

In football terms this can be as simple as changing some age old training "habits" that coaches and players have that are long overdue to be given the flick such as these 2 below:

Running Punishments

• you want your players to run during games but at training they often run because of something that has gone wrong so it's associated with a bad experience and thus it will not become 2nd nature like you want it to

Ball Hits the Ground Turnover

• we're local/amateur footballers and to think the ball never hits the ground in a game is delusional and you need to train what DOES happen over what you WANT to happen, especially if it's our your team's grasp. I remember the great Sam Mitchell (Hawthorn scum unfortunately) had the ball coming through the middle of the ground and had nothing forward to go to and looked sideways. He saw that a teammate was running off to the interchange bench so he just kicked the ball out there for the player coming on to run onto. The smartest kick and VFL/AFL history would have been deemed a turnover at footy training and the ball given to the opposition. If the ball hits the ground but can still be played by the offensive team without interference then let it go for god's sake!

There are 2 simple examples of psychological safety that you can instill in your very first training session for 2021 - can you think of some others? If so post them below.

SEASON 2021 PACKAGE NOW AVAILABLE FOR XMAS

I've just made up a package that will consist of all posts from levels 1, 2 and 3 from September 2020 (this year) that will run through to September 2021 (next year), giving you a full "footy seasons" worth of training/coaching articles, training programs and training drills to make 2021 your best season yet.

This package is a 1-time payment of $150 that can be made here titled "Season 2021 Package".

I'll be back dating the posts I have already posted for this off/pre-season.

This package will be taken down on Xmas eve so if you're a player, coach or a football club, treat yourself a little after a tough year!

SO WHEN CAN I USE CONE-TO-CONE DRILLS?

I've laid it on cone-to-cone drills pretty hard long enough as 99% of the time they are just simply no good and not even remotely representative of a game, of which I've discussed adnauseam in previous posts.

That being said if you aren't part of the solution then you're part of the problem so here are how they can be used within a training structure.

THE PROBLEM + THE SOLUTION...

If you would like access to this training/coaching article and many more than register for a level 1 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

3 GAME COMBO TRAINING DRILL

Today I watched a training drill from an Irish Gaelic coach today and thought how similar it looked to 1 I have already posted but also how I could make that previous drill also more game representative and wholla - the 3 Game Combo training drill is born.

This is definitely one of the best drills I have!

Players Required: Everyone who trains that night divided into 2 teams and then 3 mini-teams for each team.

Balls Required: 3

Space Required: half of the ground

Drill Level: Moderate to Hard

To access this training drill and plenty of others to take your pre-season to levels not seen in your current league then register for a level 3 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

WHY TACTICS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF COACHING (PART 2)

Earlier this week I posted part 1 of a 2 part video on why I believe tactics are the most important aspect of coaching, especially at local/amatuer level where elite levels of skill and running ability aren't seen too often.

Below is the link for part 2 of the video as well as a PDF of the slides.

Video Link

PDF Document - tactics2

WHY TACTICS ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF COACHING (2 PART VIDEO)

We had a Xmas lunch function this past weekend for the footy club and I got into discussions with the new President who I've played along side for years in regards to training and how I think it should look like.

That was after about 10 beers so I thought I'd lay it our properly so here it is.

It's a 2 part 25min video (part 1 today and part 2 tomorrow) detailing why I beleive teaching your game model and it's tactics is the very first thing you should do and how everything else we train for has to come off of the back of the game model to transfer to game day.

Tomorrow with part 2 I'll attach a PDF of the original presentation I made up for it as it's a bit hard to see the writing on the boards I had in the videos.

Like always let me know your comments and feedback.

You can see part 1 here.

INTRODUCING/TEACHING TACTICS

I've come to the personal realisation and opinion that everything starts with the tactical co-active.

From a technical standpoint there will be specific kicks and handballs that you need to be able to do in each tactical game moment with the prime example being an in-board kick that needs to be low, flat and hard with anything being outside of that bandwidth flirting with danger of being intercepted by the opposition.

From a psychological stand point, knowing what type of skill's you need specifically in this situation and then training them accordingly will provide players with confidence in those situations.

From a tactical stand point already knowing where you're meant to go and that there will be a teammate where you expect them to be makes decision making easier and thus, faster.

From a physical standpoint with less psychological stress comes less perceived physical stress so players will feel less fatigued for longer throughout games.

So you'll end up with players who will be able to make the correct decision quickly, with great and variable skill level under less fatigue more often than the opposition.

Sounds like a winning formula, yeah? 

This is how you can go about teaching tactics of which I'll use a switch kick in the backline for an example.

One of our main tactics in the seniors last year was "in 1 way and out the other" which was a huge driver for our winning premiership in a division 4 competition where huge running distances aren't seen to often so if you expand the ground than you'll find a lot of space to work in at some point.

In the ressies though the coach and I just couldn't get the players to do with as much frequency and thus success as the seniors were able to do it and we get done in the first week of finals when we probably shouldn't have.

We tried to train it up in the back end of the season but waited too long and a lack of continuity of layers throughout the season didn't help either.

We did make strides when we wanted to though in the only final we played we goaled after marking deep in their backline and doing exactly what I'm about to lay out below but on a majorly windy day the confidence to do that again just wasn't there.

Here's a sequence you can use to teach tactics to make a bit easier and less daunting for you and you're players.

STEP 1...

To continue reading this training/coaching article and gaining access to plenty of others then register for a level 1 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

GAME SIMULATION ONLY SESSION

 

We train to get better at games, that's a given.

The biggest problem that we all know is there is that you can't just play games of football each and every week for fear of injury so we need to find other ways to train simulated under similar but different, conditions.

My personal belief is that every 3 or 4 weeks you want to use a game simulation only session to get a look at how the concepts you've been working on are transferring to actual game play, you know the point of training.  

You can't train concepts under conditions not prepresenative of the game and wait until March for practice games to see whether what you've trained for all summer is working or not.

So I've made up a full ground, small team based game simulated session that looks like this.

Players Required: Everyone who trains that night divided into 2 - 3 groups and then divided into 4 - 6 teams.

Balls Required: 1 - 3

Space Required: 1/3rd of the ground length-wise per group

Drill Level: Moderate to Hard

I'll explain everything in the video so if you'd like access to this training drill and plenty of others than register for a level 3 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

TACTICAL COACHING CHECKLIST

 

Footy training is now a go-go with everyone finally being able to get back to business here in Melbourne, including my mob tomorrow night (rather keen...).

I thought I would put together a quick Tactical Coaching Checklist that you can use just to ensure that you're planning for the most common elements that occur in a game football so your team/players don't get too exposed during the season as if you base your training around most of these elements, there's not a situation that a player will encounter during a game that they wouldn't have encountered in training prior to that, or something closer to it.

STOPPAGE...

If you would like access to this coaching/training article and many more than register for a level 1 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.