ACTIVITY #12/35 FROM COLLINGWOOD 2023 PRE-SEASON TRAINING ACTIVITIES

ACTIVITY #12 - FORWARD HANDBALL RECEIVE

The green player is a coach/player who mans the mark each time there is a mark in the middle and the marker/man on the mark both stay in the middle.

Start with the middle player kicking to the corner then they switch to the opposite corner who will in turn kick back into the middle.

 

The player who first received the kick from the middle passes through the middle of the grid (40 - 50 x 20m or so) to receive a forward of the man on the mark handball and kicks to their diagonal corner station and repeat.

The 2 stations who receive the kick from the middle are the ones who pass through the middle for the handball receive.

For all 35 training activities taken directly from Collingwood's 2023 Pre-Season campaign, purchase from https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/ and I'll email out a PDF version to you.

35 COLLINGWOOD 2023 PRE-SEASON TRAINING ACTIVITIES (NEW PRODUCT)

                                         

I found a Collingwood superfan on Twitter (give her a follow, she's a ripper) who goes to many, if not all of their training sessions and drops comments on who's training, those who aren't and those doing rehab while also commenting on the better performers of that day.

She also takes a heap of footage of training and from watching all her video posts from the first pre-season session back in November up until now (i.e. bloody lots of them!), I've been able to compile 35 different training activities from Collingwood's 2023 pre-season, all for your coaching pleasure.

There are various themes throughout the training activities, not necessarily exact game plan type of stuff, but the use of forward handballs and pressing from the front defense was a highlight of their play last season, and I expect to be right at the forefront of what they do again this season. 

This is a stand alone product which anyone can purchase as a 1 time purchase and there is no membership needed to do so.

I'll also be updating this as any new Collingwood training activities come to light.

You can purchase your copy from this link - https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/.

COACHES CALL - KICK OUT

Let's try something new today.

Below I've laid out a kick out scenario from an AFLW game from 2023.

All I'm going to do is give you some information on the scenario and then I want you to devise a strategy/tactics to achieve the desired outcome.

• Red team has 5 players 
• Green team has 4 players
• Green has 1 player who has to be in the end zone area (50m line to end line) at all times but allow 2 - 3secs for a teammate to replace them if they decide to come out and defend.
• The red team is trying to get the ball to a teammate for a mark in either of the black shaded boxes.
• If the defense can win the ball then they try to score 
• The red team can score 1 point for every kick/mark they can make + 2pts for getting the ball in either goal square while green team score the usual 6pts for a goal through the big sticks.
• Once either team scores then the ball starts back at the kick out
• 1 game = 2 halves of 5 - 6mins and then the total score wins the game

Now it's your call - how would you go about making this happen?

CONE DRILLS TIME OF DEATH: TODAY!

                                                     

I've posted about my loathing levels of cone drills plenty of times previously, yet continue to be a staple of local football at all levels and ages even with the mammoth amount of evidence that for skill development and game intelligence, they are simply awful.

4 days ago a study was released on Twitter titled "Exploring the Effects of of Task with Different Decision-Making Levels on Ball Control, Passing Performance and External Load in Youth Football" and it SHOULD signal the death of cone-to-cone passing drills, at least I can hope it does anyway. 

The study used Soccer but it all holds true for pretty much any team-ball-invasion sport.

PRE-TESTING

Players were put through a 4v4 small sided game on a 40 x 30m pitch x 6mins and were graded on control behavior (execution, kicking the ball into motor space,body orientation, appropriateness) + passing behavior (decision, execution, offensive position, free from opposition, rhythum and tempo), receiving a 1 or 0 point rating if successful or unsuccessful during the 6min game.

INTERVENTION

After 2 minutes of rest, players were split into 3 groups for activities involving low, moderate and hard decision making.

The low decision making group performed...

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4 (+4) v 4 POSSESSION RONDO

                                                     

This training activity focuses heavily on maintaining possession by utilising wide and/or central options.

Start by creating 3 teams of 4 in different colors and make sure they know the focus of the activity.

The scoring system is what will drive the behaviors in this activity of which I mention in the training video and I'll also lay it out below but feel free to fiddle with the scoring as you please depending on what your learning outcomes are...

For full access to this training activity and heaps of others, register for a level 3 membership at https://aussierulestraining.com/membership-account/membership-levels/. 

STARTING OUT WITH A CONSTRAINTS-LED APPROACH

                                                      

These points were made by various coaches to a Twitter thread by Philip O'Callaghan, a tennis coach who posts a lot about coaching with a constraints-led approach (CLA), a method I've also posted plenty on.

Take your best 6 - 8 points from here and start your own journey with CLA and watch player engagement, learning and thus performance take a huge leap in 2023.

1. Patience is the key, embrace the chaos, don’t stop them right on the cusp of learning, allow messiness
2. Be willing to explore practice design giving yourself some grace/patience and keep learning/exploring
3. Embrace mistakes
4. Start with an activity you already use, think about the mistakes usually made during it and try to think of some constraints that can help you address them instead of explicit feedback
5. Work with the end in mind and what behaviors you’d like to emerge from the task/learning environment and are they similar to those in games
6. What is the issue that you’re team is doing wrong, what are some of the underlying issues/rate limiters that may be the cause, understand how to use constraints to afford – create a learning environment for the players, revisit the big picture – has it improved and be patient
7. Think of constraints as situations, not limitations breaking down elements to a single focus and reward more points for the constraint you’ve added, less points any other way and don’t lose realism
8. Link constraints to behaviors/habits you want to create/develop in attack/defense for each age group you coach (intentional/deliberate practice)
9. Know various types of constraints (technical, tactical, team rules, in/out of possession etc), know when to use them, know how to use them (setting problem solving tasks for players to sort out themselves)
10. Read the play for the coachable moments, focus your aim with effective question’s to check for understanding
11. 1^st consideration x will this constraint restrict their options or promote exploration/steer towards a new solution (aim for new solution/s)
12. Why do you want to try an approach and if CLA is what you think will work best then try it, make mistakes and learn from them and get a peer to help you review
13. 1^st understand rules and create principles for the game while working with layers of principles/intentions as intentions drive solutions
14. Be patient, trust the process and constantly ask yourself what the purpose of the activity is and how can you change/adapt it to make the outcome/s stronger
15. Don’t be blinded by your own coaching biases by forcing a CLA to create outcomes that only you want to see by allowing creativity to guide your design (constraining to constrain v constraining to afford)
16. Realise that session/task design is the only thing in your control as coach
17. Go slow, think about how you want your team to play and build the opposition so they provide problems for your focus team that helps draw out your style of play (constrain attack to work on defense and vice versa)
18. What are your constraints trying to achieve
19. The rules are the most important constraints and then how can they exploit the rules to their advantage which is the role of tactics
20. Don’t rush, give yourself time to do some research, be curious, pay attention and link up with people to support you while understanding your sport, your athletes and the constraints involved and staying open to what emerges
21. Constraint to afford which is to create a situation (constrain the action) where the player has the opportunity to investigate a new movement/skill opportunity (affordance)
22. Empower your athletes and change from coach to a designer/gardener
23. Ease the grip on what you think you know and attend to what is emerging
24. Take what you're doing now and add a defender/s, add a time component, change field size, have 4 games playing at once instead of 1, keep it simple to start with and let the players explore
25. Constraint to afford, do not over-constrain, do not force a singular solution to problems, focus attention on intentions and do not force it
26. Enjoy not being tied to a plan – prepared no planned
27. Explain to players/parents your moving to CLA, understand that you/they won’t see immediate results and realise you will make mistakes creating environments
28. Create a safe environment where mistakes are OK and failing can help improve performance/learning
29. Set a specific goal and create congruent scenarios
30. Simplicity is key
31. Dig deeper as it’s not just about playing small sided games with an incentive or 2
32. Write your plan in pencil
33. Reward points for things you value with a basketball example being pass x 1pt, post pass x 2pts, backdoor pass x 3pts, lay up x 10pts, catch and shoot x 10pts, steals x 3pts etc and once 1 team hits 100 total points, then the opposition gets 1 possession to score for the win
34. Guide them where to look but not what to see
35. Create affordances rather than overlimiting the range of possible solutions
36. Patience, CLA increases realist encounters in an activity but it also means less success before consistent solutions are discovered through a loop of constraints - high struggle - exploration - less struggle -  solution/s
37. Start with a game and simplify/modify to encourage exploration of a set of skills you want your players to improve but modifications don't have to be complex and might jut be extra points for specific actions/outcomes
38. Create an environment that heightens the athletes awareness of the "flaw" where the environment gives the player the feedback, not the coach, then peel back the constraint to test its impact on the player but be strategic with it   

GAME/TRAINING SCENARIOS - PRESSING FORWARDS TRIPLE LAYER

Scores from turn over is easily the largest scoring source in the AFL and I'd suspect holds true in local footy.

Forcing the opposition to turn the ball over as close to your goal is the most effective way to do this as the closer to your goal you can force a turnover, the better chance of scoring you have off the back of it, playing a forward half game and simply starving them of any easy footy and hopefully, even getting it to their own forward half.

Richmond put a huge emphasise on pressing forward to the ball carrier in their premiership years with the mantra of "If you're going to make a mistake, make a mistake coming forward" and I'm also here for it.

If you're the closest player to the ball carrier and you're running away from them then they are under no pressure in having to dispose of the footy plus they're also gaining territory with every step.

This is the perfect time to apply huge pressure coming forward towards them and taking away their space which will wreck havoc with their decision making as now they might have to handball instead of kick and it's that lag time in changing the decision and executing it that's your opening.

Here's a scenario you can try to carry this out using 3 or even 4 layers of frontal pressure...

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