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.