SKILL DEVELOPMENT - DAN ABRAHAMS

                                            

Skill development at the top of all sport pyramids and footy is no different.

The ability to attain, stabillise, replicate and then add variability to those foundation skills is what seperates us from the elites.

A lot of local/amateur players have endurance, speed and strength but they often alck the skill required to compete consistently at the upper levels of football.

I think a lot of coaches believe thwet basic repetition is what builds skill but that could not be further from the truth and yopu'll disocver some other ways to develop and stabilie skill through some of Dan's tweets here.

SKILL – the skill in your feet/hands is mediated by confidence...skill competence is little without confidence...confidence is built daily through positive action, through memories of your best performances and through relentless optimism

SKILL DEVELOPMENT – you need to repeat actions through building the habit of repetition practice...you need to add variability so make every task differnet...you need to space the same learning opportunities to help them forget...you need to play games that include the practice of the skills required within games...you need to add feedback from an expert...you need to add consequence as emotion disrupts execution which is what you facein games

REPETITION – repetition is still important to skill development as it is retrieval and the more you help players retrieve the behaviours you’re coaching them, the stronger the memory trace of those behaviours become...retrieval drives skill...skill is variability under pressure

SKILL ACQUISITION – repetition is only the foundation of skill development but to acquire new skills you need variability, spacing and interweaving while mixing up variability with randomness, which is the secret transfer sauce

ISOLATED TRAINING – theory intrinsic load = the techniqueto be learned...extraneous load = the manner and structure in which technique is learned...isolated training reduces extraneous load thus improving learning

FLUENCY – players start to find an activity easy because they become familiar with the task conditions so to counter fluency, put in desireable difficulties such as interleaving activities, tough individual tasks and activities that test for understanding

BLOCK PRACTICE – can be an effective way to scaffold for players if done optimally and should probably include player cognition (mental engagement), accurate movement repetitions, coach feedback, player feedback and be alongside spacing/interleaving