COACHING ISSUES WITH A CONSTRAINTS-LED APPROACH

                                         

Back in February I posted about a Twitter thread put together by tennis coach Philip O 'Callaghan on how coaches can start implementing a constraints-led approach, which hopefully gave you some idea's on where to start doing this, with most local football coaching of all levels still sitting in the dark ages of "I say, you do" coaching methods which stifles creativity and usually involves zero decision making - 2 vital ingredients in game day success.

This thread by the same coach instead asks coaches who have started to expand their coaching process via a constraints-led approach, what issues they have ran into which shows other coaches that no 1 coach is perfect and everyone will in different stages of their coaching journey, and everyone will run into speed humps at different times and that it's OK to reach out and ask for help.

All elite coaches steal bits and pieces from other coaches!

Here is a list of issues you'll probably run into but everyone does...

• Session design for mixed abilities
• Developing players weak sides
• Ensuring enough touches for all players
• Setting different tasks players can choose from
• Scaling
• Addressing sociocultural constraints
• Doing what we’ve always done
• Other coaches at your club not happy with what you're doing
• A lack of examples to help you explore better
• Knowing when to be patient or change the activity (it's better to be overly patient than stepping too early)
• Teaching rather then critiquing
• Not making room for the voice of the player
• Stepping in too early
• Learn to be satisfied when the players learn it on their own off the back of your session design and constraints
• Establishing effective backward design
• Developing constraint situations that mirror game play but still build the essential skill/s players need to develop
• Keep it representative enough while reducing the task to a suitable level so that there are plenty of opportunities to explore the skill
• Becoming too reductionist (reduce without impoverishing)
• Co-coaches not familiar with a constraints-led approach
• Not being comfortable changing things on the fly
• Having different games for different player levels
• Designing activities that results in players focusing on solving the challenge but not the skill or the constraint you set out to develop (devise a scoring system devised around the constraint/skill being developed)
• Getting comfortable with the messiness of CLA
• Letting go of short term success to strengthen long term growth
• Keeping it fresh (slight changes in constraints during tasks)
• Get your constraints right and you're 85% of the way there