21 GAMEDAY COACHING TIPS YOU CAN USE TOMORROW - DAVID SHARKEY

                                       

These points come from an article from David Sharkey, an English teacher and Rugby coach from the UK, but is relevant to coaching for any sport.

At the local level a lot of coaches spend so much time making player changes on their coaching boards they sometimes fail to pay attention to other aspects of the coaching at a more deeper level on gameday, which is understandable sometimes with so much going on.

Here are some pointers to enhance the gameday coaching experience for your players and hopefgully lead to better success.

1. Be a calm and calculating influence
2. It's the players job to bring the emotion, not the coach, but they need to know that
3. Focus on controllablesfor on and off field
4. Have as many positive conversations as you can
5. Develop a coaching language of your own and rehearsal it prior to games...

For access to the other 16 pointers in this training/coaching article, register for a level 1 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

HALF GROUND + MID BOX GAME

                                              

This is just a little twist on a basic half ground game with 2 even teams.

Usually it works like basketball and bring the ball out of defense to the middle of the ground then you play transittion offense to get it back into the forward 50 and score.

Nothing extra ground breaking for this one other except that we will incentivize where we try and score from and when.

For full access to this training drill and many more register for a level 3 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

THE INNER GAME JOURNAL - STEFAN MAUK

I've been posting a fair bit on the psychological aspect of performance lately and 1 thing I say a lot is that don't just think thoughts, but write them down to make them "real".

I can almost guarantee that by writing it down, which obviously takes way longer to do then to simply think it, you will unconsciously dive deeper into those thoughts and you're more likely to come up with more and/or better solutions to them.

In fact a lot of my posts is me simply trying to organise my own thoughts and research and then putting a framework together for that particulaur subject.

AFL players do a heap of work in this space with Scott Pendlebury and Harry Taylor being 2 of the biggest proponents of journal keeping before and after each game, using them to go back to when they play those team's again.

And this brings me to The Inner Game Journal.

This is the brain child of current Adelaide United Soccer player Stefan Mauk who you can also follow on twitter.

It starts off with ample space for you to think about what your real goals are, what they look and feel like, and who inspires them.

It forces you to dive deeper then basic superficial goals like "win my team's best and fairest this year"and to actually look at the tactical, technical, physical and psychological processes behind what will drive those kind of results.

After that, on a weekly basis you'll lay out a basic plan, log your data into the daily pages and then reflect on everything at the end of each week.

Over time as you fill in more and more and weeks you can then go back and try to find positive and negative patterns that start to emerge, allowing to fine tune your preperation for each week's game so you can be at your best more often.

I have an excel spreadhseet that has every single training session I've performed since 2015 - journalling is essential for consistent performance over long periods of time and takes zero resources to complete, except 5 - 10mins per day.

"You don't need more time, you need more focus".

I think a lot of players avoid goal setting for fear of not reaching them but journalling is different - it's the process, not the result.

Journalling is the map from where you are now to whatever your goal is and needs far more attention then simply coming up with your end goal.

It takes away the absolutism language we hear a lot of in local/amateur football (must, have to etc) that really sets everyone up to fail because if we don't acheive the must or have to, then we deem it as a fail and a negative experience.

All these relatively small isolated failures do add up over the long term and can wreck complete havoc with players and teams confidence levels and is probably a huge reason as to why team's drop games they shouldn't at various times of the season.

You can check out the Inner Game Journal here where they currently have an end of financial year 30% off sale!

SKILL DEVELOPMENT - DAN ABRAHAMS

                                            

Skill development at the top of all sport pyramids and footy is no different.

The ability to attain, stabillise, replicate and then add variability to those foundation skills is what seperates us from the elites.

A lot of local/amateur players have endurance, speed and strength but they often alck the skill required to compete consistently at the upper levels of football.

I think a lot of coaches believe thwet basic repetition is what builds skill but that could not be further from the truth and yopu'll disocver some other ways to develop and stabilie skill through some of Dan's tweets here.

SKILL – the skill in your feet/hands is mediated by confidence...skill competence is little without confidence...confidence is built daily through positive action, through memories of your best performances and through relentless optimism

SKILL DEVELOPMENT – you need to repeat actions through building the habit of repetition practice...you need to add variability so make every task differnet...you need to space the same learning opportunities to help them forget...you need to play games that include the practice of the skills required within games...you need to add feedback from an expert...you need to add consequence as emotion disrupts execution which is what you facein games

REPETITION – repetition is still important to skill development as it is retrieval and the more you help players retrieve the behaviours you’re coaching them, the stronger the memory trace of those behaviours become...retrieval drives skill...skill is variability under pressure

SKILL ACQUISITION – repetition is only the foundation of skill development but to acquire new skills you need variability, spacing and interweaving while mixing up variability with randomness, which is the secret transfer sauce

ISOLATED TRAINING – theory intrinsic load = the techniqueto be learned...extraneous load = the manner and structure in which technique is learned...isolated training reduces extraneous load thus improving learning

FLUENCY – players start to find an activity easy because they become familiar with the task conditions so to counter fluency, put in desireable difficulties such as interleaving activities, tough individual tasks and activities that test for understanding

BLOCK PRACTICE – can be an effective way to scaffold for players if done optimally and should probably include player cognition (mental engagement), accurate movement repetitions, coach feedback, player feedback and be alongside spacing/interleaving

MULTI-KICK DRILL

What we have here is a drill that includes 4 specific scenario kicks used a lot during a game so is very representative of what happens on a Saturday.

It combines 4 different scenarios into the single activity so players need to perform different kicks within the same drill but specific kicks that are required in most teams game models/plans.

Here's what the set up will look like...

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BUILDING COMPETITiVENESS - DAN ABRAHAMS

In all grades of footy, but especially youth and junior levels of football, building competitiveness and aggressiveness can be extremley hard, not that everyone HAS to have both of these qualities at those young ages but if they can start told develop them then my personal opinion is that they will be more likely to stay in footy/sport for the long term.

Again, give Dan a follow and receive gems like these every day, he generally posts 3 times a day every day!

BUILD COMPETITIVENESS – help your players them understand what motivates them (ego, winning, experience, purpose, values, mastery)...help them work on mental skills (attention, intensity, intent)...help them mentally rehearse effectively...help them build confidence/energy

HELP PLAYERS COMPETE BETTER – set acheiveable goals that help players focus on controllable tasks rather than uncontrollable performance factors...build player confidence by helping players choose 3 things that help them feel confident...practice self talk via a positive/energetic inner voice

PLAYER COMPETETIVENESS – help your players develop several motivational drivers (internal to external)...help your players learn your game model using desirerable difficulties (learning style)...help them build developmental frameworks and test those frameworks in training

TAKING CHARGE – don’t fail to take charge of yourself on the ground and defintely don't let things like the opposition, conditions and technical mistakes take charge of you

EFFORT – is less of a choice when players lack self belief, are uncertain about responsibilities, experience anxiety, can’t shift attention and/or feel threatened by coaches...it becomes more of a choice with mental skills in a positive environment

BODY LANGUAGE/MINDSET – a small shift in body language can make a big differnece to mindset...when players are distracted they can refocus by holding themselves attentive...when losing intensity they can re-energise themselves through positive gestures...when they drop in confidence they can execute with intent

COMPETETIVENESS – help players find their optimal state and help them focus on the pleasure of experiencing playing in this mental state...make this their number 1 objective/goal to achieve

 

GAME INTELLIGENCE - DAN ABRAHAMS

All sports contain 4 co-actives being psychological, physical, technical and tactical and they are all entwined where the decision you make to solve a particular problem via 1 specific co-active, is dependant on where the other 3 are at at that point in time, and this is an ever changing landscape throughout 4 quarters of football.

These next tweets from Dan Abrahams will cover a variety of aspects of sport which I bunched together to form this game intelligence post.

GAME INTELLIGENCE – footballers with desire, passion and character will always win the ball back...footballers with intelligence, knowledge and mental skill will rarely give it away

SEEING – is helped/hindered by attention/intent, intensity/confidence, thoughts/feelings, sensations/emotions and mood/motivation meaning everything you see on the ground is influenced from within

GAMES – comprises of motor behaviour, decision making, feelings of pressure and interpersonal support so have every activity at training involve as many of these as possible by creating tough activities that stretch these demands on your players 

SMART SOLUTION v HARDER WORK – have specific goals/training session...accept that mistakes/failure will happen...striving for internal motivation...develop performance/mindset feedback loops

MASTERY – search, decide, execute and engage repeated over and over will develop mastery..practice so much that your execution becomes automated...play so much that your decisions are made in an instant...commit fully to visually searching

NOT FOLLOWING GAME MODEL – if players aren't following the game model then some useful mental markers to watch for include what are the players paying attention to, have they dropped in intensity, are they overly activated and are they executing with inhibition

TACTIAL/PSYCHOLOGICAL – players don’t react, they predict, which is quicker...tactical execution is driven mentally via your capacity to execute the cognitive cycle (search-decide-execute) with speed and accuracy and this is mediated by affect (feelings of pleaseantness to unpleasantness and feelings of idleness to activated)...football is a game of feeling

TRAINING DECISION MAKING – ask your players to take the time after training to reflect on their decision making, asking what experiences led you to make the decisions you made and what were you seeing/sensing at that time, which can help develop skilled anticipation

PREDICTIVE BRAIN – is mediated by experiences/expectations (refer to some posts above)

DECISION MAKING – in 1  study they had 1 group solving puzzles for money and the other solving them for nothing but the money group finished up as soon as the time limit was reached, where the group recieving continued until they were finished...this shows that engaging in an activity for the sake of engagement (interestm enjoyment and/or challenge) is a more powerful motivator than engaging in an activity for a reward/means to an end...this is a form of self determination theory...intrinisic motivation (or extrinsic motivation that is deeply integrated into values/identity) offers higher quality motivation than extrinsic motivation alone, so help more players identify with and, enjoy games/activities, they are interested in because they'll be far more motivated to engage in them

META ACTIVITIES COGNITION – create an activity with problems that earn players rewards when solved but only if they can explain how they’ve solved the problem to help them think of themselves as thinkers/learners