I've got 100's of pages of research I've compiled over about 20 years on training and coaching just sitting there, with the intention of being used as content but rarely does.
As I'm in the middle of packing and then moving house next week, this is the perfect opportunity to utilise some of it.
This new series is called "1 Liners from my Research Files" which is exactly what it suggests.
In the next few weeks there will also be posts on learning, teaching, sport psychology and other aspects of sports coaching.
Today I've pulled all 1 line pieces of info from my files on everything youth development, training and coaching + I'll link to Twitter accounts of those I have noted the author of so feel free to check each of them out and greatly extend your learning space.
Training Don’ts (Shane Smith) x long runs, large sided games, aggressive instructions, long lines, demanding silence, long warm ups, long duration stretching, having only a winning focus, being too serious, focusing on skill technique over coaching, making it about you
Shane Smith – consider those who don’t get a lot of the ball in games, who don’t stand out or are too shy to call for a pass and give them extra time, encouragement and opportunities
Be child centered, be holistic, be inclusive, fun/safe, prioritise the love of the sport over learning the sport, focus on fundamental skills over sport specific skills, engage parents positively, plan progressive programs, use different methods to enhance learning, use competition in a developmental way
.01% of youth athletes will be world champs but 99.9% will hopefully be lifelong supporters/lovers/contributors to their sport, so coach accordingly
Grant Jenkins – kids don’t specialise at school so why should they at sport?
Because a kick out is a closed play action and about the only time where time isn't a factor besides set shot goal kicking, it's 1 of the most controllable moments of the game.
Most teams will defend a kick out with a 3/4/5/5 zone or something similar so what you'll be kicking into is pretty much the same.
The most important thing to do as the offensive team is determine where the ball is going to be kicked, whose going to be directly involved and then what the other players do off the ball.
Otherwise you have 17 players calling for the 1 ball, and there's actually too much information for the kicker which can be as bad as not enough information, and decision making can be greatly affected.
Not much to this one really,just set it up and go although you'd have some of your own strategies/tactics you'd want to use off of a kick out so include them in your cueing when explaining the activity.
Footy's back and about time as my brothers fill the family chat with every cricket game happening on earth when footy isn't on and it's going on right now!
Collingwood had their first hit out against opposition today so I tuned in to see what they kept from last year and anything new I could find in the game style.
Although North Melbourne dominated the game for various reasons (wanted/needed to more, ridiculous center clearance work and fast handball chains from defense for deep forward entries), the Pies still showed their best is going to be up there, without important players and managed game time for others.
Below is a 12min video from today showing staples from last year such as:
I've posted about mastery v ego before so in a nutshell it's:
Mastery - locating, finding and completing a pass to the best, usually most open and easy target available.
Ego - ignoring the most open and easy target to attempt a pass with a low chance of being completed and that puts our team at a huge disadvantage if not completed.
1 will usually go unnoticed but does wonders for your team's performance and the other is all about being noticed by everyone, and bragging about it later.
These notes touch on the different levels of mastery, compiled by Paul Gamble, who I'm pretty sure I've posted notes of before.
You'll have players in all of these 5 categories and it's your job as coach to know which players are in what category and then how you'll coach differently to reach and improve them.
Identifying what stage you’re at can help reveal blind spots and weak areas, and what it will take to get to the next stage
The 5 stages are novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert
Novices are entirely reliant on what they’re explicitly taught and blindly follow procedures/templates for how to practice, irrespective of it’s quality
Advanced athletes are more aware of the gap between what they’re taught and what works in practice, and they start to recognise scenarios and how they each require a variation of the plan, but their pattern matching is flawed/prone to error
Competent athletes are deliberate and analytical in their approach who can now formulate plans to fit the situation but tend to rigidly follow through with the plan once in motion and can't switch course as the situation evolves
Proficient athletes are less formulaic and can now custom-fit to each situation while improvising and being highly adaptable/flexible in their responses to unforeseen developments
Experts are fluid, adaptable, intuitive in how they practice/make decisions on the fly and have superior judgement/tacit knowledge which means they see things others don’t and detect anomalies sooner
I would strongly guess that most of your players are in the top 2, possible 3 categories but also, what category do you, the coach, sit in, and what do you need to do to also move up a level or 2?
The player movements/formations that will allow this to occur frequently will be evident in future posts as we reach the end of the loop which starts this new loop (that made sense didn't it?), but of course it helps immensely if you have a great contested mark in your defensive 6 but still, we should have equal or more numbers than the opposition from how we're setting up...
These notes come from this Gaelic football Twitter site, that looks at what we're actually all aiming for during and from training - learning.
There's so much focus on the "doing" of training but that's mainly because that's what coaches know - they know what they want to see and design their activities for that to happen but that rarely equates to actual learning and thus, minimal transfer to games.
I post a lot on teaching/learning which I get from reading a lot of school-teaching and learning science content, and I strongly urge you to get your hands on some of this too because you haven't taught anything until it's learnt, and in footy that learning is presented in how players perform in games, not in training.
Here's a 10-step framework you can use to ignite your players' level of learning from your own training.
A couple of weeks ago I dropped the first edition of this and with pre-season being the time to road test and refine new training activities, here's another 20.
Remember, these are training activities that I just have a short description of with no videos, images or diagrams but you'll still be able to follow them so lets get to activities 21 - 40.
Again the starting formation is up to you and is hugely dependent on if you have a dominant tap ruck or not which can be out of your control, but what happens after that is still very controllable so here's what I would like to happen...
I've got a file over 100 pages that I constantly take and add to which makes up the training activities membership.
Usually a training activity will have videos and/or images included to it but today we're going streamline!
These are training activities that I just have a short description of with no videos, images or diagrams but you'll still be able to follow them so strap in.
I literally just recorded this off the TV 2mins ago, with the TNT crew off Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O' Neal and Ernie Johnson talking about the boost that comes with being named a first-time all-star, and the first game coming off of that which in this case is Jalen Brunson and Tyrone Maxey with both having huge games today after the announcement.
The part that was really interesting was when they were talking about confidence but I want to break this down into a specific skill acquisition terms which may help you in your own quest of developing your own, or your players' skill development.
Here's the video:
KENNY'S CAR ANAOLOGY
If I ever had to explain affordances to a complete stranger, I always thought I'd use this analogy for ease of explanation, so points to the Jet on this one but I'd like a stab at breaking this down even more.
As Kenny says, you're driving on the freeway and you want to change lanes and whoever has the most confidence will do it first.
What initially develops this confidence in the first place though?
First you've got individual action capabilities which is what you are capable of at different levels of confidence.
Then you've got affordances which are the opportunity of action/s that are available to me right now.
Ill park this here for now.
ALL-STARS SEE THE SAME THINGS AS EVERYONE ELSE BUT HAVE THE CONFIDENCE
At the elite level most players will perceive the same (as Kenny mentions - "we all the saw the guys' open"), or similar things, in a single play as they have all received elite-level coaching, but the best players see and then act on them far quicker.
At local level footy this is extremely varied and has huge implications on the 2 points above - action capabilities/affordances.
"I CAN MAKE THIS PASS" (Barkley)
This is a great example of knowing one's action capabilities in that moment of time.
Charles saw the teammate open, and deciding on the passing option based on his body position, confidence levels and what action capabilities he posses there and then, whipped this pass off down the court (54sec mark):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFoOjZYeKe4
CAR ANALOGY PART 2
Getting back to this, personally I drive shit-box with poor acceleration so if I'm wanting to change lanes here's my process, linking with Kenny's process from above.
I'm assertive, but not aggressive driver and will change lanes/overtake when needed with high confidence I can do so at any time but that alone can decide when I can do these actions on the road.
With my poor acceleration, I need to have what I perceive as enough space and time to do so, with the action capabilities I have (poor acceleration).
If I'm in a brand new car with great acceleration, I'm now seeing the exact same affordances (space and time) but with far better acceleration capabilities now have higher confidence to use smaller gaps in space and time to make the same move, and this opens up far more affordances to me as a result.
PICKED AS AN ALL-STAR
If you are able to make it to the level of an NBA all-star, then that represents that you have been able consistently perform at an extremely high level over a decent period of time.
This banking of repeated high performances has been based on developing your own action capabilities (rounding out your game etc) which presents more affordances for you to potentially act on (greater skill set).
At extreme times of performance you are in the zone, or in a state of flow which surpasses what even high confidence is, as it is an unconscious action for the most part.
Everything feels effortless, you can't miss, you;re racking up possessions at will, you're seeing everything before it happens and unfortunately you actually remember much of the process of how it happened and is hard to replicate.
In Barkley's case here, he had 43 points in a game at Madison Square Garden against as a New York team lead by Patrick Ewing - it's fair to say he had surpassed confidence and entered a flow state at some point during this game and that pass above showed that specifically.
PUT THIS IN FOOTY TERMS PLEASE
Players will often see the same thing, but it's who see's it first and then acts on before anyone else that is better-performed. For example I have the ball and see a free option to pass to but at the same time an opposition player also see's them open. I need my kick to get there before the opposition player but can I kick it low/hard enough to do that or does my action capabilities not allow this and it's a loopy/slow kick that gets cut off?
On the other hand I'll be the defender in the above scenario. The free player is a wide option but I'm also keeping an eye on a more central option, essentially caught in between them and non-committal to either. I'm angling towards the central option and giving teasing distance to the kicker, I'm close enough to where I feel I am fast enough to get there if they decide to kick there. I'm not really worried about them going the wide option as it's to a less dangerous spot for us to defend. Now the kicker has my decision to make above - can I dart that central kick without it being cut off or do I need to go the safe option,based on my action capabilities?
Going deeper, I have already hit a central option this quarter so my confidence is higher then before so if I see a similar affordance/option again, my current perception of my action capabilities provide me the confidence to give it another crack.
If I had missed that affordance/target earlier, then my current perception of my action capabilities can decrease and that affordance is now closed to me, as I look for more open/safer affordances/targets to kick to - this is what we perceive as confidence.
When we are high on confidence our action capabilities increase which then also increases the amount of, and type of, affordances we see.
If this is repeated over time then hopefully this will allow us at times, to enter a flow state during games, but you'll rarely stay in it for the entire game, especially footy which is over about 3hrs from the start of prep to post-game such as Richmond's Nathan Brown kicking 5 goals in the last quarter v Collingwood to win the game after being goal-less to 3 quarter time.
Here's a framework you can use to guide skill acquisition development which I'll go into next week:
1 - What are their current confidence levels (decided by a million factors!)
2 - What information/affordances are they perceiving/processing during the game?
3 - What individual action capabilities do they have to choose from to use in this situation, based on first 3 points?
4 - What action did they choose?
5 - Was it successful? Unsuccessful?
6 - Does confidence increase/decrease because of the outcome?
Small group personal training done the right way. Train in a group - do YOUR OWN program. PT studio located in the heart of South Yarra on Surrey Road North, just off Toorak Road. 1on1 personal training also available. Don't do everyone else's program, get personal with your training.
