TASK SIMPLIFICATION TRAINING ACTIVITY

Yesterday I posted about task simplification and all the why's, what's and when's around it and today we get to the how with a real-world example I used this week with my senior women's team.

For a bit of background, we did some game-sim the session before without any real instructions from me except the how to score to let me see the players' natural tendencies.

What I saw was constant kicking to the same spot it the play/ball came from even though 1 team's was goal was set up to use as much space, width especially, as possible and really stretch the other team on defense.

After we talked very briefly about kicking off the line and how we'll work on that next session so here we are.

At the next session I designed this training activity with a focus on kick decision-making based on a lot of the principles I wrote about yesterday:

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TASK SIMPLIFICATION

                                         

Traditional skill acquisition practices goes something like this, using kicking as an example:

1 - Stationary kicking to a stationary target

2 - Cone-to-cone kicking drills

3 - Games

There might be some game-based practice somewhere between stages 2 and 3, but it's still not as prevalent as it should be so let's get to work on that.

There is a time and space for all 3 (or 4) of those stages above but coaches often lack the understanding of when and how to move from 1 stage to the next.

During stages 1 and 2 specifically, coaches tend to deconstruct the skill where they break down teeny tiny components of the skill and then try and have the learner put those alterations back into their action, to cement a single technique when kicking.

2 major problems with this approach is that the skill deconstruction is usually carried out via internal cues (arm here, foot here etc) which only takes focus away from the full action/technique required for the skill, plus you'll never perform the same kick twice in a game of football so only being able to kick 1 way isn't going to serve your players too well on game day where adaptability is king.

When designing practice coaches often seem more concerned with task design, ensuring that the drill/activity addresses a problem from the game, in an isolated fashion that lacks game representation.

Game representation refers to designing training activities that maintain game information to some, or usually high, degree.

The most important game information as it pertains to footy are things like opposition, time, space, ball location and consequence.

Any skill acquisition activity that doesn't include at least 1 of these is not training skill at it's core - which is player adaptability.

OK, so far we have made the following points...

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CORRECTING MISTAKES

 

These notes come from Soccer coach Bernat Mosquera who has some great threads on his Twitter page and is definitely worth a follow.

Giving feedback/correcting mistakes also act as major constraints for player performance because what a coach says to a player will then also dictate where they look, what they look for and that informs their proceeding actions, so coaches need to know exactly how and when to do so.

The points below will help you understand why mistakes happen in the first place and then once you know the why, then you go ahead and tackle the how to correct them.

• Often coaches critique player technical actions without considering the game cycle/context
• What a player does before receiving the ball greatly impacts their actions
• Focus should be on where to move/how to receive v how to execute the technical action where it usually is like when we train a corridor kick but the player is already standing there on a cone that tells them to stand there but in games they are still lost in regards to how to create and the timing to utilise that space in a game without being detected by the opposition
• The receiver needs to find a space then use the correct timing  time to move into it
• The ball carrier needs to identify advantages and then exploit them.
• It’s crucial to understand that a player’s perception of space/time is the key to improving their decision making but are we helping them create/manage space/time better? Not with cones we're not
• Perception enables players to uncover various game options based on a situation but perception goals vary with each scenario
• Perception is also the key when receiving the ball, especially while the ball travels to us and during possession
• When receiving, if you can perceive spaces and understand their advantages, they can make better decisions about where/how to move while creating more space for a successful ball reception by optimising their timing/direction/place
• When the ball is travelling to the player they must assess the immediate space around them to adjust their reception which leads to more options, granting them more space/time
• When in possession, perception should focus on identifying/exploiting advantages and only after this analysis should the player execute the action.
• Execution is the final step, not the 1^st step
• Coach correction/feedback should also guide players in recognising key game references
• Helping players understand how the ball, teammates and the opposition interact/influence space/time, can help them discover new opportunities to exploit
• Technical execution is often a consequence of good perception/decision making

KICKING THROUGH A KICK OUT DEFENSIVE ZONE

                                       

Score source stats from the 2024 AFL season showed that Port Adelaide averaged the highest point total average in the league at 6.3pts/game and they also reached the highest single game total of 26 points.

For added context, the 5th placed team,the Western Bulldogs averaged 5.5pts/game and Sydney 13th at 3.3.

So as far as the AFL goes, scoring from kick outs is extremely hard so a more-process driven data piece showing what you're achieving from kick outs is probably where your possession chain is broken.

In local/amateur football pretty much every team runs with the same zone defense on kick outs being a 3/5/5 and then 3/1 or 2/2 behind those first 3 lines.

Most teams are able to sort this out with the ample time it takes to get the ball from over the fence, back into play and then to kick out, only to then see the ball bombed as far as it can go to a pack of players from both teams to a 50/50 contest at best - hardly a potential score source!

What I propose here is to really test the opposition's zone defense.

Do they balance the gaps between they're lines correctly?

If you break 1 line of defense, then does the next one collapse opening up another 1 behind it?

If we use short kicks to short options in effort to move the opposition (not the ball), can they move collectively to keep gaps from opening up?

Do they move at all after the initial kick out?

Can we string together 3 - 4 short kicks in pretty quick succession to get them unorganised and then take advantage of that?

Below are the most common kick out locations, not including long bombs that anyone can do, and then how you can train them specifically using Rondo training activities.

Rondo's are a popular Soccer training activity that can be performed a million different ways but the most common form that we see in football is the old 4v1 or 4v2 with the offensive players forming a square around the 1 or 2 defenders in the middle - that's pretty much as far we we tend to go with Rondo's but they are a great post-warm up activity to use that includes all players thinking and moving all the time, plenty of touches and are a very easy way to set up, verbalise and get going to maintain ball-rolling time.

They're played in 360 degrees so there's no specific end to go to, you're just trying to utilise those players in the middle because that's the most dangerous position on the ground, to avoid getting stuck along the boundary which is what the opposition want.

SHORT KICK OUT TO THE SIDE...

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GROUND BALL PROGRESSION

                                                       

My new team I'm in charge of is a rebooted team but is essentially a start-up with no carry over of players from the initial team from pre-Covid. 

We have solid numbers but a lot of beginners at football but we're still aiming to grade ourselves into division 2 if we possibly can, otherwise division 3 and no big deal.

Regardless of where we end up I've watched games from both divisions from 2024 and like most local/amateur football of all ages, abilities, experience and genders, the ball is on the ground for 70 - 90% of the time.

That means that ground balls are king and any success you achieve in football will be correlated to ground ball wins and that's what we intend to be strong at in 2o25.

Over our last 2 training sessions we have already put a huge emphasise on ground balls but no by low-context lane work ground balls, no, we've identified some of the most common ground ball actions used I games and have started to focus on them.

What we want to teach them is to not slow right down and stop to groundball as that's just gives time for trailing opposition to get get close enough to apply perceived or physical pressure and there's some coaching cues I use to hopefully avoid that from happening.  

2 GROUP GROUND BALL...

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DAD COACHING DONE PROPERLY

                                                      

While I was doing my sprinting session at my local footy ground this week there was a "dad-coach" with his daughter practicing kicking.

Before I go further just be sure that one of my 2 all-time favorite things these days is seeing girls kicking the footy in their own time and the connection dad's have been able to make with their daughters through footy.

One of my biggest reasons for coaching and continuing this site year on year is that I believe every who wants to be coached, should be able to do so at a high level.

We were training about 25m away from each other so I was able to hear close to everything he said to her although his intentions were super, the method is an outdated one and more than that - probably how he was taught, which is usually the biggest factor with dad coaches, regardless of if those methods are effective or not...

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STRUCTURING MY OWN COACHING FOR 2025

I've been appointed a head coach of a senior women's team here in Melbourne and I simply cannot wait to get stuck into it!

It's a re-booted women's team that disbanded after Covid so we're essentially a start-up team as the club structure and personnel has completely changed during that time period.

It is also a club that I have had no prior affiliation with prior to this appointment.

After being officially appointed in mid-to late November it was time to get to work.

I've always got training/game day coaching stuff ready to go but with zero players that mattered very little so the focus went directly to recruitment, contacting as many local players from around our club as possible as well as taking all new player inquiries.

There 3 divisions to the women's league we're in but we;re hoping to make the jump directly to division 2 via the grading games to start the season as we feel that's a far more sustainable option for the women's program going forward.

Currently we have anywhere from 15 - 30 players as we're finding where men already know if and where they're playing for season 2025, it is not the case for women but we're hoping for more certainty in the coming weeks as we start training and gather some on-field momentum.

There are 3 divisions to the women's section of the league we play in but we're hoping to make the jump directly to division 2 via the grading games to start the season as we feel that's a far more sustainable option for the women's program going forward.

We'll definitely have a team that's for sure but at the moment we feel we need 3 - 4 more top-tier players to achieve the goal of reaching division 2 this season goal but it's not the end of the world if we don't reach it.

Women tend to have a greater social ties to their current clubs then men which is a bit of a barrier for us as we don't have a current program in place but we'll work around as best as we can and cultivate our own culture to create those string social ties with the players we currently have and the new one's yet to jump on board.

The club, and in particular the President and Committee have been excellent so far, providing everything I've needed so far and are definitely altering the culture of the club for the better, already attracting 2 ex-AFL players and multiple high quality local football recruits well-known across Melbourne and the women's program is another cog in the engine to be a relevant football club again. 

So now with training schedules for next weekend and us being a touch behind everyone else who trained pre-Xmas and are already an established team, last week and this week has been fully focused back to the on'field side of things.

This is always an ongoing with me as I research, learn and update my procedures/philosophy but now it needs to be all consolidated and streamlined to it's absolute maximum so it's fit for the players to read, process, understand and then implement and this is probably the toughest part of coaching. 

I have a framework that I'm currently working through that will detail everything I'll focus on, what that will look like and the timeline for each of those focuses.

That part will malleable as I can't really set in-stone a game model without knowing my players action capabilities, which was the focus of our single pre-Xmas session and the first couple of sessions starting this year.

I've created training activities that are game-based but require a heavy dose of the specific technical skill/s I'm assessing such as:

• Kicking (long and short)
• Handballing (in congestion)
• Marking (unopposed)
• Reading the Play (defense-bias)
• Contest (ball hunting/ground balls)

As all activities are games-based I can also assess decision-making during game simulation,not relying on cone-to-cone unopposed planned technique rehearsal abilities to all of a sudden carry over into live opposed unplanned skill execution during games.

Once individual and collective action capabilities have been assessed at their current level then I can pitch them against my preferred game model and then questions that need to be answered are:

Will they match up?

If they don't match up, are they close enough to start work right away on specific aspects of the game model?

If they are well off what is needed for my preferred game model, do I think that we can improve them to a standard that would allow my current preferred game model to be used?

If not, then do I change the game model to fit my players capabilities?

A lot of times local coaches have a game plan and that's it, regardless of who they're working with, or they find out way too late that it can't work and than have to try and change on the fly which is hard to do and simply confusing for the players.

All that being said a lot of my game model is structure based and ensuring that everyone has and knows their role/s away from the ball,which is 99% of footy and therefore the area that yields the highest and easiest amount of improvement.

I should have this framework all filled out in the next week or 2 and then I can go to work on delivering the game model to the players which needs to be carried in a way that is simple for them to understand, not too complex for them to process, designing training activities that constrain-to-afford those specific game actions/interactions and allows a high degree of success in the process.

I will use the many teaching and learning techniques I've researched in the past such as challenge point, the use of constraints, scoring systems to incentivise the actions we want to practice and get repetition without repetition in and being highly aware of cognitive load at all times.

This is all in a quest to be ultra-efficient with each and every second we have together and also to maximise engagement, enjoyment, motivation and thus, fun!

So that's where I'm up to so far - plenty of work to do and not enough time to do it in (always the case!) but we'll give it a crack anyway.

Let me know how your own coaching process is developing for season 2025.