NEXT LEVEL COACHING - GAMES BASED MODEL (NICK GIES)

                                             

The points highlighted in this post comes from an article from Canadian performance coach Nick Gies, who has extensive experience with youth development that this is aimed at, as well as NHL, CFL and UFC athletes.

• The best coaches talk the least while still getting what they want out of their players, acting more as facilitators by guiding athletes through well-thought out session plans an allowing for room for exploration and mistakes
• Motor learning models include Yerkes-Dodson law, Newell’s 3 Stages of Learning and the Challenge Point Framework
• When learning a new skill there needs to be periods of stability to teach and solidify previous learning, as well as periods of chaos and uncertaintly to expand learning
• As an athletes skill set improves (towards mastery) the relative challenge of training should increase to stretch their abilities while slightly reducing the frequency of stable/predictive elements, as the stimulus they provide decreases as you improve
• Novice/developmental athletes need to constantly navigate between stabilty/chaotic environments
• If a drill is too comfortable then engagement will decrease and thus no learning will take place but if it’s too hard then athletes will  revert back to what’s comfortable and thus no exploration will take place either so you need an optimal level of stimulation to maintain engagement while exploring new movement solutions
• Athletes need enough time and exposure with a movement skill before it becomes automated
• Periodic manipulation of environmental constraints must occur to cause an athlete to adaptaively detect/generate correct movement solutions
• The appropriate difficulty for a beginner would be inappropriate for an expert and vice versa
• As an athlete gets better at perception-action (more stable), the task difficulty needs to increase (more chaotic)
• Handball tag game
• Games Based Approach x design/manipulate practice games/activities with a specific focus, use of question's, opportunities for player dialogue, building of a supportive socio-moral environment
• Games Based Approach can also improve tactical awareness/decision making while also increasing psychological profile (emotions, feelings, attitudes etc)
• Simply tweak classic games to incorporate the specific skills you want to target like tag and ball games
• Other options include having the coach tell team captains what the game/rules are and they must relay it to their teams for communication, listening and engagement
• Limit who can speak during the game
• Use a bias scoring system (opposite foot goals x 3pts instead of 1 etc.)
• For buy in have players choose the rules of different games
• For engagement, attunement an communication have every player keep track of your team’s score then stop the game and say "team 1 your score on 1,2, 3..." and everyone calls out the score at the same time and if 1 player says the wrong/different score, then they lose all their teams points
• To help new and quite players' communication and overall team strategy, give them player "superpowers"
• Add in special bonuses like 10-20sec power ups for acheiving smaller tasks relating to the bigger task (video games based approach)
• Layer games so as players exceed levels they move to a new one or having players run to a cone and back before coming back upon turnover so their team neds to play with an outnumber and players learn to play under psychological stress
• Cone Scramble Game x the ball carrier tries to get to a cone that no one is on but everyone moves to cover them so they can’t
• Use open ended questions and involve the players in the problem solving process and don’t even give them a solution, letting then decide and see how it goes which show you who the real leaders are