The writings of Australian PE Teacher and Author
Shane Pill introduced me to a lot of the aspects of using the games based approach discussed below.
Even in the best of times during local/amateur footy, you need to be extremely efficient with your training as you only have 3 - 4hrs a week of training time.
With the current restrictions you have, at best, half of that meaning now you need to be super-ultra efficient.
This is going to have to mean that you are going to have use small sided games and/or game sense drills which are essentially the same thing.
The biggest issue with passing/cone to cone drills is that there is zero context, which is crucial for training transfer to games.
For example a kick to a 45 degree leading target is not the same as the exact same kick during a game with opposition, moving parts and the huge psychological aspect of games compared to training.
Games actually set the scene for skill development as it contexctualises the tactics and strategies which in turn allows players to contectualise the skill/s.
Traditional training isolates tiny aspects of the game and trains them repeatedly until "success" is achieved but at what point of any game do you get the chance to do this?
Not in any game I've ever played in that's for sure.
Playing in games provide players with far more, and better, learning opportunities and it also forces players to learn the consequences of their actions, to interact with others and simply spend time a game simulated environment and its within this environment that players will be exposed to scenario after scenario of ever changing conditions, exactly like games.
As a coach your best move is to allow players all the responsibility during games to self organise around the game, enabling players to discover and refine what they learn during games but ensure that you are still teaching through the games based approach to enhance something the player/s can already perceive or do.
The coach is the architect of the game and the designer of the learning environment where you can manipulate the environment, the players, the space, the complexity and the rules of the game to allow for accelerated learning to occur.
As games usually have opposition and decisions are being made on the fly then more than not they can look a little "messy" but that's exactly where you wnat these games played because if anything is too clean then it's not at a challenging enough level to the players and limited learning is being attained.
By altering the constraints of the game as mentioned above the coach can set the game at the correct level of the group who have to adapt to more complex conditions and hopefully leads to an improved level of performance.
The coach is in charge of deciding what level of skill is acceptable and if whatever mistakes are being made is acceptable because of learning errors or if the constraints have been set higher the player's capabilities.
Constraints can be increased or decreased at any time and if teams are "uneven" then you can even have different constraints per team to even things up somewhat.
Teaching games for understanding (TGFU) consists of 6 stages and can be used to guide the coach through a games based approach effectively rather than throwing a ball out there and letting players at it.
Stage 1 is the game form consisting of its basic rules but you can add rules and modifications as needed to keep player engagement and learning at an adequate level.
Stage 2 is game appreciation where players learn the game by playing the game and again you can add/layer more rules/modifications as player adapt to the new playing conditions, essentially not letting them fully adapt to a single set of game constraints.
Stage 3 is tactical awareness where players start to develop tactics based around the current rules/modifications and it's at this point that the coach can start asking questions and/or make observations around the game play such as the key principles, moments, tactics and skills. This can help the coach make further modifications can also provide them more questions to ask later.
Stage 4 is tactical talk which refers to asking the players questions to gauge their understanding of the game and can guide you on what to do next.
Stage 5 is skill execution where the coach can now make rules to rely on skill level now that players are familiar with the game and have become aware of what opportunities the game provides.
Stage 6 is where the coach can now use game performance to assess each player that helps to develop the next game.
In the last 2 weeks I have filmed and loaded more than 100 videos of training drills, most of them specific for small groups that I'll be putting up regularly as part of the
level 3 membership package and at just $17/month I don't know why you wouldn't, so look out for those starting next week.
