SMALL SIDED GAMES AND HOW ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING THEM 6/6 - FORWARD PRESS GAME

Once you get your head around implementing small sided games for most of your training time then it's time to think about how you can build them around specific aspects of your game model.

Like cone to cone skill drills, which doesn't train skill, it trains technique, we tend to train team tactics, strategies and formations without any opposition at all, forgetting the great Mike Tyson quote - "everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face."

Center square formations, tap zones, kick out zone formations and the like trained without opposition ignores one of the most under-utilised coaching rules of training what you want to happen v training what actually happens, and what happens is that opposition will often not allow you to set up in the perfect formation you had Thursday night, and thus now your entering a scenario  that you've never been in before, and your lack of solutions and cohesion won't result in much, if any success.

Getting back to what we're here for though is a game called forward press game and it doesn't have layers like the others but rather rules that you can introduce in a layering system to scaffold the information to your players.

Here's a video of what it looks like and the rules under that...

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SMALL SIDED GAMES AND HOW ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING THEM 5/6 – 3v2 x 3

                                                    

This game has a focus on decision making, holding the football and only taking 100% options (for the most part).

One of the biggest issues in community football of pretty much every level is the wanting to go super-fast as much as possible and the age-old mantra of "your first option is always your best option" which gets ingrained into players psyche doesn't help either.

The best option is the best option, whether that's 1st, 2nd or 3rd.

I have a pretty strong hunch that if local teams focused on holding the ball off marks and free kicks for only 1-2 seconds longer then usual, that more and better quality options to maintain the footy will present themselves, as the slow tempo of play lulls the defense asleep and with the use of width of length built through your player movement, huge gaps for ball movement will open up guaranteed.

The game is full footy rules but you must keep within the boundaries of the game so you have to utilise only the space you have available.

The game is layered through either...

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SMALL SIDED GAMES AND HOW ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING THEM 4/6 - NETBALL FOOTY

I love the zone set up of under 8's footy and I believe it could, and probably should be, used in some shape or form in under 10's or even 12's footy, especially if we're gonna roll with using full ground games for kids that can only kick 15m.

This game uses zones similar to that but then also has a Netball influence in how players can move throughout zones, as being cemented to a single zone isn't really how footy is played anyway.

Here's how the starting formation looks and then the rules are listed below...

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SMALL SIDED GAMES AND HOW ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING IT 3/6 - BUILD UP GAME

The 3rd small sided game in this series is a game built around maintaining possession.

To maintain possession the ball carrier needs to wait until a suitable option comes up and for a good portion of this game, it will just be a matter of "taking your 8 (secs)" and this should present itself.

For players off the ball they need to create space with each other, just not on their own, to force defenders into the middle of 2 players and/or committing to 1 player to leave the next player open in a dominoes effect.

There are 4 layers to this game from start to finish.

Layer 1 is...

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SMALL SIDED GAMES AND HOW ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING IT 2/6 - 4v4 + NEUTRAL WINGERS

                                                              

This small sided game is one you would use to focus a on and encourage the use of width with your ball movement.

If you've read my Sydney Swans game style content as well as the Collingwood ball movement post from yesterday, using width for both player and ball movement is the secret to opening up space for continued movement deep into your own forward line.

I've set this up in the center square but use a square size fitting for your age and ability...

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JACK CRISP INTERVIEW ON COLLINGWOOD'S BALL MOVEMENT

The Pies are hot right now and after beating the Dees yesterday, have now entered the 8 and Jack Crisp gave some saucy info on their ball movement while being interviewed by On the Couch last night that I thought I'd clarify for those interested.

The interview clip is below.

Crisp highlights 4 aspects in the video being role compliance, wings keeping their perimeter (width), mids and half backs getting overlap run and forwards keeping length.

ROLE COMPLIANCE...

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SMALL SIDED GAMES AND HOW ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING IT PART 1/6

For the last week we've looking at trying to get coaches of all levels to start shifting away from traditional training methods of unopposed cone to cone drills that train what you want to happen, but not what does actually happen, in games.

This lack of perception-action coupling provides zero decision making from your players but then we expect them to read the play perfect and make the right decision over and over in a game, with the added psychological aspect on top of that which decreases cognitive load.

To put it bluntly, it's lazy and it needs to stop so over the next week or I'll post a bunch of small sided games you can use as soon as your next training session, with rules/constraints and layers to build on the base activity with added complexity.

As mentioned in earlier posts this week make sure that you're not just using these for the sake of it, they must have some representation to your games that you can relay to your players to give the activity meaning to them and thus motivation, intent and above all, learning, will be far stronger then traditional training.

3 ZONES, 3 GAMES...

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SMALL SIDED GAMES AND WHY ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING IT

                                             

In this series we've look at how to optimise your coaching through things like fishtanking, the OODA Loop, player problem-solving frameworks and a constraints-led approach which brings us to the question, what's the best way of implementing this?

Enter small sided games.

We've touched on some of things you should be doing when running small sided games but here's some more information on the why and how's of small sided games...

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THE CONSTRAINTS LED APPROACH AND WHY ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING IT

So far in the last week we've looked at fishtanking, the ooda loop and player problem-solving in a move to get us coaches to develop more iron clad frameworks around what we do to ensure sustained player development and retention.

Today we look at using the constraints led approach to player development which is pretty much the opposite of what most coaches in most sports do at a community level, but is far more effective for long term player learning and transfer which is kinda the point isn't it?

I've got easily 40 pages on this topic so I'll try make this as simple as possible below but feel free to hit me up if you want more clarification on things.

CLA is based around 3 different types of constraints being...

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PLAYER PROBLEM-SOLVING FRAMEWORK AND WHY ALL PLAYERS SHOULD BE DOING IT

In my opinion, one of the biggest, if not the biggest thing missing from local/amateur football, are framework/loops.

Last week I posted about the OODA Loop and how that can be used to up your coaching level and today we'll look a player driven framework which would usually be developed with a coach around a particular problem/weakness that the player wants/needs to improve upon.

I'm going to use an example of a play of my own from yesterday's game in a through belting with my over 35's team where I received a handball and hesitated before going into any action at all which to me felt like it was easily noticeable but from the outside maybe it wasn't but let's say that's a something I've done repeatedly that's holding me and my team back and we want to get on top of it 

STEP 1...

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OODA LOOP AND WHY ALL COACHES SHOULD BE DOING IT

                                                 

Looking outside of your immediate sport, and even sport in general, can expose you to new ways to do things and earlier this week I looked at the concept of fishtanking, and once you start doing than you you now start moving in new, and better, directions for superior coaching ad player learning.

The OODA loop, short for the observe, orient, decide and act cycle, comes from military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel, John Boyd.

It's a loop that we use everyday without knowing but can provide real clarity when broken down for a specific learning task.

For every action that occurs in a game, all 36 players are constantly going through this loop over and over again, seeing problems and coming up with solutions, to help their team win.

I'll put this in footy terms from here out.

O = Observe...

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