Philosophy & Methodology

Ben Ashby Coaching Philosophy & Methodology

A coaching philosophy is a set of principles and values that a coach sets their beliefs by. It can be an overall aim for sessions.

My philosophy can be adapted to suit different players age and ability.   

   

‘I aim to develop individuals as part of a team technically & and tactically who are able to meet the demands of the game’

‘Teams should have the qualities and understanding of how to play through or round teams whilst dominating possession’

Technical

Technically players should execute the technical requirements of the game with both feet effectively and efficiently.

Technically players should be able to manipulate the ball with a variety of surfaces in a number of ways.

Players need to be able to efficiently and effectively manoeuvre in tight areas quickly to allow them to evade opposition and create opportunities for others by bypassing opposition players out of the game.

Players should be able to execute a range of passing over varying distances.

Shooting should be able to executed from different distances from a range of angles with no comprise on quality and power. 

Physically

Players should possess high levels of aerobic endurance, agility, power, strength and speed.

These are the needs to be able to affect the game more positively when combined with the technical aspects of the game.

When levels of the components of fitness decrease the effectiveness and ability to execute the technical requirements also lower in tandem. 

Methodology

Players should be coached in a variety of ways to ensure players have an opportunity to express themselves and discover ‘what works’ for them as players.

Players still need to be guided to through what is required through effective guidance and modelling. 

Development of 5-12 Yr Olds

With the development of the EPPP it naturally splits Child/Youth Development into stages of development.

Players at this age need development of the fundamental movements with emphasis of balance and agility. Players should have a heavy emphasis on technical development, so skills and manipulation of the ball becomes ingrained.

Players should be allowed freedom and be guided through making decisions. This will allow players to become better thinkers and encouraged to be creative.

Players will be able be to recognise when the execution of skill is required due to changing environment they are playing through past experiences of success and failure. 

Development of 12-16 Yr Olds

Players of this age need to start having some more physical development, certainly at the latter end of this development cycle. This should be done predominantly through self loading exercises, improvements to speed and agility should also be focussed on. Improvements to the players endurance capacity can be developed through manipulation on training session intensity.

Players of this age need to start having some game principles introduced to them. Effective demonstration of how to execute skills and techniques within game related practices are key, this allows for players to bridge together key components of skill acquisition to tactical knowledge.  

Understanding of positional roles and responsibilities should be developed without ring fencing individuals into specific positions. 

Development of 16 -18 Yr Olds

Players by now should be technical ability proficient. They should be able manipulate and execute a range of skills with both feet and ease. Players should also have an understanding of the requirements to full fill a number of positions and be comfortable playing in those positions in small captions of the 11v11 game.

At this stage players should have specific training plans that develop physical in differences whilst still progressing players as athletes.

Players are now needing the development of the 11v11 game delivered and the principles of play in both attack and defence.

Players should be clear in specific individual responsibilities of what to do, when in possession and out of possession, and have a clear understanding and be able to explain some common questions, how, why and when. I.E Pressing the opposition. How to press? When to press? And Why press the ball?

Players will start to favour and be more effective in specific positions. But still be effective in a number of roles.

Washed out work

Thankfully this week I finally was able to deliver productive coaching sessions after the previous weeks constant downpour. Like many coaches when weather is like this they are needing to adapt to their environment and show some flexibility in their work. 

My role as Head of Football at BCA College offers great opportunities as a coach aiming to develop and be a well rounded and educated coach. Having to manage 70 odd (55 male & 15 female) 16-19 year old players as part of our Football Education Academy certainly offers a number of challenges in maintaining an equilibrium to individuals and the groups happiness and expectations. 

Certainly a 'understanding' of the social and psychological cornerstone of the Indivduals development will be of benefit to productivity to myself (& in my opinion other coaches) & the players. 

The reason I place understanding in quotation marks is down to the fact that without actually being a certified psychologist, are we ever going to be able to have a true understanding of the impact to players these session ideas have. Thier are so many variables to this and so many contrasting personalities to work with. Yes as a coach you can place procedures and practices to encourage development to this cornerstone, an awareness of differentiation will also benefit. The issue is that this is subjective to the coach who is delivering the session & to their own beliefs & experiences. 

I think many would agree that whilst planning sessions that as a coach you have a firm idea of your aim and the technical and tactical requirements. It may be easy to neglect the social and psychological cornerstones why? Thought for these areas of players development is a recent concept and during many coaches development and training there perhaps hasn't been enough bridging, reflecting and sharing of thoughts. This perhaps leads to a lack of understanding of the benefits and different processes. The beauty of the new FA Youth Modules requires you to reflect more deeply in this area. 

I try and use the FA coaches app for my planning. I am one to use technology in my work as to the opportunities it opens up. The beauty of the app though it allows you to question yourself around the 4 corner model from the FA. My challenge to coaches is can you analyse the value of the right hand side of the 4 corner model. 

MY WEEK 

I was glad on Monday that the pitch area were not resident to any ducks or large puddles which meant that I could work with my groups.

This terms aim is to improve the individuals and teams creativity and understanding of the attacking principles of the game. 

My introductory session was individual ball manipulation. Exercises that place an aerobic strain and there is a constant focus through moving the ball in a wide range of ways. The benefits to invidual competency with the ball can be drastic if done constantly over a period of time. 

The previous week didn't allow much opportunity to train due to the weather so I wanted to overwork the players physically. I then set out two teams in a possession challenge against each other, constantly changing the challenge by increasing or decreasing the number of defenders allowed to pressure the ball. 

Finally the session finished with 3 v 3 games on areas small and intense. Each game was played on a 25x25 with 2 goals at each end. 

Tuesday I allowed my players within my group to create take their own warm up. Always a uncomfortable concept for coaches. Giving players ownership though can pleasantly surprise you. Opportunities to stretch others by increasing the ownership and leadership from them increases the rewards to those individuals in that social & psychological corners. 

I then placed on 25x25 a game 4v4 with 4 teams playing against each other. The environment naturally poses players under special constraints requiring vision, awareness and creativity to pay within those tight areas.

I then went into a directional practice that looked more similar to the game. This allowed players to play in a manner and with similarity to which we approach games. When working and developing young players coaches can be drawn into delivering great technical sessions that develop its participants but then in games ask players to demonstrate performances that represent game management where by results are key in senior levels of the game. Game management in young players will develop if they are given the freedom to express themselves, make their own mistakes and piece together different parts of their game. 

This also allowed me to check the players recall on the principles of defending that we covered in the first term. 

Players where overloaded when defending, discipline and shape had to be demonstrated but when possession was gained players needed creativity and movement to create overloads within the playing area. Players discovered quickly that they had to disperse quickly and ball movement needed to with a high tempo, & the risk on the ball had to be high up the pitch to lower the chance of the opposition punishing them. 

Weekends Thoughts

One of the major reasons for wanting to blog is that it will give me a better opportunity to reflect on my performance as a football coach. It will open feedback possibilities and to share best practice from Coaches, Teachers and others that feel they can contribute and share their views on my work and performance.

This will in turn evolve me as a person and as a coach. That path to excellence and working with and at the best continues.

Individuals have to possess a certain amount of resilience and self belief to take on feedback from strangers. Look at Joe Hart for instance, he has had his critics lately and has shown great character to return as the permanent force in between the sticks for Man City.

I wonder how much of the feedback Pellegrini was receiving, and viewing in the press and from sections of Hart's critics made Pellegrini drop Hart from his number 1 role. Managers have two options in my opinion. 1 - back your number 1 publicly and personally and continue to play them, What long term detriment could this have on the team? Could the individuals psychological state be negatively affected in turn affecting performance?
Or 2 drop your number 1.Then what message does this send out to your number 2 goalkeeper?
Is this carried out to give your original number a kick up the rear?

Goalkeepers are in the unfortunate position that their performance can be objectively interpreted without the need of fancy hi-tech performance analysis gizmo's through the number of goals the opposition score. Thus allowing everyone and anyone that has an interest in football give an opinion even though they may not see the whole performance. One of the potential risk of performance analysis, can be compared to an iceberg. The objective statistics are what you see above the service but below the surface is the rounded performance that may not be able to be recorded, such as vital communication with team mates that allow for vital clearances etc.

What I want is to become more resilient and better. Gain an insight to others thinking. I want to stretched and find answers through thinking, making links and considerations.

Saturdays adventure...

After the journey down to North Devon the weather was quite pleasant in fact, no rain and you could even see a blue sky.

The affair ended in a 0-0 draw and we came away from Bideford slightly disappointed not take all three points. On the other hand thankfully the assistant failed to notice a Bideford strike that was in fact was over the line. This would have been very gutting as we had the majority of possession and attacked with a real purpose forcing the home goalkeeper to make number of top draw saves.

One of my observations, and was very surprised to see from a team riding high in the league, that Bideford played with the lone target man up top and the wide players that vary rarely broke beyond making any attempt at a 3rd man run. The only threat beyond on the first ball was the number 10 playing just behind the striker. Defensively our midfield and defence worked very well and contained that threat early on. Offensively Bideford looked to claim set plays and use their physical presence to get something from the game.
We had to be patient and be clever to break the block, attempt to play round the sides to try and move the home teams Goliath like centre halves into areas where they where uncomfortable and then expose spaces in around their defenders.

What I am keen to learn is what others look for and take down when taking notes during games. This I know will differ dependant on your individual coaching style and situation.

I will record the opposition team shape and line up. I will then compose a number of notes as hints that I can use when speaking at half time or intervals. I try and recognise when making my observations any key patterns I.E does the goalkeeper always distribute in a certain manner and to a certain individual etc. One of my observations and strategies that needed to be encouraged offensively is if one of the centre halves has the ball, and we have width and height in possession, could we draw the lone centre forward to the ball for the pass square to our other centre halve, who has created some distance between him and his partner to create space, could they then step into the attack and impose on the midfield to try and create an overload in the midfield area.

We needed to ensure when out of possession we were closer and competed better to the 1st and 2nd ball, at times trying to win the 1st was a uphill task so need to compact areas anticipating for the 2nd ball. Our wide players worked tremendously hard narrowing our midfield when possession was lost and stretching play when possession was gained.

Thanks for taking your time to read, hope you have enjoyed. Until next time all the best! 

New Year New Focus

 

I am sat here travelling to what I expect will be a very wet Bideford, we have certainly encountered enough rain travelling down. The journey is made more comfortable courtesy of Barnes Coaches supplying us with the Swindon Town coach.

Now we have entered a new year it is, like many, a time to reflect on the last years mixture of achievements and failings. Time to re-assess our journeys on our way to meet our targets, time to re-focus our thoughts and knuckle down & work hard to meet out goals.

I have decided to blog as I want others to stretch and challenge my thoughts & the manner in which I approach tasks. I hope through my blogs people will be able to grasp the manner in which I work.

I believe that we live in a culture, especially when asked to give peer to peer feedback, that we don't like to offer or listen to negative feedback. We try glossing it up with re-naming this as 'areas for improvement' and other terms in order to make this process positive. Our natural instinct when being attacked is to stick up for ourselves. When anything negative verbally or through gestures is aimed towards us our instinct is to defend ourselves. This I have been guilty of as well.
What I want is to be challenged and to reflect on how someone's feedback can improve my approach and thought process.

I have changed my thought process of rather than be overly competitive and wish to be the best I want to work with, and at, the best level. I still want to strive for excellence and avoid stagnation in my personal development. I have opened up my mind to others opinion, and the best athletes, managers, coaches, practitioners of all different walks of life can take on board feedback and others opinion and reflect more in depth.

Maybe as a culture we don't need to become better at receiving negative feedback or 'areas for development' but try and be better reflectors.