Football Training

This week at football training I wanted to start incorporating fitness into the training sessions as the team haven’t yet touched on it and felt it was now necessary to start as we are playing tougher opponents in weeks to come. My aim for the session was to have 1/3 of it training fitness,1/3 technical and the last 1/3 of training being a match.

The component I looked at was interval training where players would be sprinting and then walking. The drill was set up so that everyone was paired up and you would race someone to introduce competition to decrease the chance of people becoming bored. The drill starts by doing 10 sprints over 20 yards, then 8 sprints over 30 yards, then 5 sprints over 40 yards and finally 1 sprint over 60 yards. To gain full potential from this drill each player needs to put 100% into the sprints. The distances are sport specific to football as ‘According to match analysis the maximal sprinting distance is on average 20-30m’ (Withers et al. 1984) therefore the distances I picked should be relevant. A picture of the drill is below (Black square: Participant, Red Square: 20, 30, 40, 60 yards, Black Line: Path of the participant sprinting, Red Line: Path of the participant walking back)

To change things round for the players, the second drill was a possession grid where all players were split into two teams. The aim is to keep the ball between your team for as long as possible whilst the other team are trying to retrieve possession. Differentiation is often added to this drill, such as limited amount of passes and changing team sizes. This drill is to improve passing, movement and special awareness.

I finished training off with a match till the end of training. I wanted to see what was worked on in the possession grid to take effect in the match, and therefore the rule of limited touches remained. This should make players pass more and produce more 1/2 passes to get around the pitch.

Overall I thought that training went very well, the majority of players felt the strain of the sprints post training, therefore it had an effect on their body and was an effective drill. Everything went to plan during this training session therefore I have no weaknesses this week. But this could be because the drills were fairly simple and not complex therefore the margin for error was small.

Withers, R. T, Maricic, Z, Wasilewski, S and Kelly, L. (1984) Match analysis of Australian professional soccer players. J. Hum. Movement Studies pp 159-176

Jolf - Junior golf

We had professional coaches form Jolf (Junior golf) come into one of our workshops for a practical session. They came in to coach me and other students on the course one of their introduction sessions to golf and show us the way they coach them.

To start the practical the coaches gave every student a double sided sheet of paper which consisted of various activities. The first activity consisted statements, we had to agree or disagree with these statements. Some examples of the statements are below:

·         At the beginning of a session the coach should demonstrate and explain the techniques that s/he would like the group to learn.

·         When setting up golf games for children it is important that we set them up so that they can hit the target most of the time. High success rates are important.

·         In group golf coaching, children should be put in groups according to how well they play golf; for example, beginners with beginners.

(JOLF, 2012)

For the second activity session we were split into four groups, two groups who participated and two groups who observed. My group was the participation group so we were partnered up and each group went to an activity (numerous activities had already been set up prior to us turning up). For the first ‘coaching session’ the Jolf coaches didn’t give us instructions on any of the activities therefore the activities were open for were as easy or as hard as the participants made it. At each activity station there were three different sized and weighted balls and also numerous sized and weighted clubs. This again allowed the participants to use their imagination on the difficulty. I thought this was a good way of coaching as it allows the participants to think on their feet and be imaginative. Each pair went round each of the activities and then the session was complete. The coaches then gave us questions to reflect on the session and asked how it went. For the participants who took part in the activities first they would have found that the coaches were standing off and observing the sessions rather than getting involved and speaking about right/wrong techniques etc. This is because one of their coaching philosophies is that they disagree with the term ‘it is important that children hold the club using the correct conventional grip right from the start. We do not want bad habits to develop’ (JOLF, 2012). Within reason I can agree with the Jolf coaches on this but with a technical sport like golf I personally believe that technique is a very important factor which can improve performances and therefore if a child has bad technique I feel that coaches in golf should help correct their technique.The third activity was the same as the second activity but the groups were now switched over so the people who participated in activity two now observed and visa versa. This time what I observed was that coaches were talking to participants and giving them ideas in which they could develop the activity if they felt the participants could go on and do something harder.

The fourth activity was then questioning on how the session went and they gave us their coaching philosophies. These were what we either agreed with or disagreed with at the beginning of the session. Therefore it was to see if we had the same views as them and then the coaches explained on why they coach this way, such as not correcting technique etc. 

I enjoyed the session as it was different from the normal practical coaching sessions. Like I said I didn’t agree with everything they said about their coaching philosophies such as the technique one. I also thought the coaches were fairly quiet which is not good as I was struggling to hear them for parts of the session and therefore I was losing interest and focused on other things rather than what they had to say. I feel that the Jolf coaches should be vocal and ensure everyone can hear them so that people like me pay attention. 

References 

JOLF – Junior Golf. 2012. JOLF – Junior Golf. [ONLINE] Available at:http://www.jolfisjuniorgolf.co.uk/. [Accessed 20 November 2012].

Trials and first coaching session

During the first few weeks back at Uclan the football club had to organise trials for the freshers and any new players wanting to try and get into one of the university teams. We attended the freshers fare to advertise the club and we received 150+ contact details of players who wanted to trial. The committee then sat down to arrange enough trials throughout September and the start of October. Due to the weather, all grass pitches were unplayable so we were limited to two astroturf pitches. We separated all the lads into trials over two/three weeks and gave them two trials each so the captains can get a fair look at every player for their teams. For the 6^th team we recruited three new players to help strengthen our squad.

Once the trial period was over we then started training on Monday nights. I had planned the first training session of the year and incorporated fitness, technical and game based drills to get the team started again for the new season. When we arrived at the sports arena I was told that our pitch had been taken by the 4^th team to further trial players for their team, meaning we were left without a full training (9 a-side pitches/third of an astro) space for training. I was unprepared for this arrangement and we were forced to train in a 7 a-side cage. This put most of my plans out the window and therefore I could only use the fitness plans for the training, therefore the training session now consisted of varied fitness for 20-30 minutes followed by some passing drills and then into 5/6 a side games. In addition to this, 6 random lads turned up to the training sessions expecting to be trialed and as we are the bottom team of the club the extra lads had to join in with my team (Me and the captain then have to judge these players of their ability and if they are good enough we push them up a team etc). Due to the space we had and numbers of players we had to train/trial I changed the training session yet again. This time I scraped any further training exercises that was left to do and changed training into 5 a side games, two teams would start with one sat out. Games would last five minutes max and each team would stay on for two games. This way my existing players are getting game time to get their form and fitness back and I can look at the players who have turned up to see if they are good enough to make my or a higher team. Unfortunately all the players that turned up for ‘trials’ were not good enough to make the 6th team therefore I had to tell them that they were unable to join the team.

Looking back on the training session I feel I dealt with the situation fairly well as I was given two bits of bad news which affected my training session. I had to act fast and spontaneously to come up with a new training session on the smaller pitch we had. Then when more people arrived and we had 18 players on a 7 a-side pitch I then had to act fast to change things and keep people from standing around, therefore the best thing to do was to just play small sided matches.

The weakness of this session for me is one of my overall weaknesses from my first post, the fact that I use the same drills and can’t find new ones or don’t have the access to new drills. This has let me down by not being adaptable to new/different drills instead I changed it to 6 a-side matches. If I had numerous drills in my head that I could have used I could have changed it up and eventually progressed into a match rather than going straight into matches when numbers became too many.

Due to this I am going to focus on looking into drills, were the amount of people shouldn't matter on the learning outcome. Drills where everyone can be involved and not standing around and mainly, drills where participants are interested and enjoying themselves. I can do this by looking on Youtube at coaching sessions or asking other coaches for advice.

1st Post of the Year

I am a second year sports coaching student at the University of Central Lancashire. I am part of the university football team and play and coach for their 6^th team, as a coach I take all training sessions and organise the team for matches.

In my blogs you will read a reflection of most of my coaching sessions and university practical lessons I take part in. I will be reflecting on my performance as a coach and how I can improve week by week, if things go wrong within my coaching sessions then I will post about them and say why I and others thought they went wrong. For example: Drills being boring for participants as they are too easy and I have no progressions for the group to make things more difficult. 

In this post you will read a brief overview of myself, going over my strengths and weaknesses as a coach and my expectations of the year:

What are your coaching strengths (S)/weaknesses (W) and why?

S) Once I am with a group of people who I know I enter my comfort zone and have more belief in myself as a coach. This is because I get friendly with the participants and feel more comfortable to speak in front of them as I now know them.

S) I have coached most age groups from ages 4/5-40+ therefore I know how to treat different age groups. Coaching different age groups has allowed me to understand how to coach and speak to people depending on their age and understanding the ‘wants’ from participants so sessions are more fun for children and more serious for adults.

S) I understand the rules of most sports therefore if I was asked to coach hockey, football, rugby, cricket, tennis etc. I could find coaching points and get them across to participants. This is because I have been involved with sport all my life and at some point up to now I have played most sports either for college teams or weekend teams.

W) When I am coaching a new group of people I get nervous. This is because I don’t know anyone and therefore as first sessions are about making positive impressions to people taking part or watching a coach needs to do everything correctly.

W) The drills I do may become repetitive meaning I use them regularly and for participants this may become boring. This happens because I find it hard to discover new drills and games for sessions I coach weekly. I look over the google and youtube to find videos of drills but find it difficult to find ones I can use with the group I coach.

What are your main aims/objectives for the module (based on point 1)?

My main aims for this module are to reflect on every coaching session I coach. Every time I post a weakness on a coaching session, I hope to reflect on this weakness and see how I can improve on it and reduce the chance of it happening again. Such as being more prepared, more informative etc. Having spoken about my weaknesses above, I also want to look at these and once the module is over, hope that these are no longer weaknesses of mine.

How will you achieve/work towards them during the module?

I will work towards my aims for the module by reflecting on my performance as a coach. For example: If in a session I have come unprepared and not planned anything, this will be a weakness of the session and therefore I will write about this in the blog and how it affected the participants. While writing about this I will be writing reasons why this happened and following the post I can reflect on the weakness and question myself how I can improve and how I can prevent it from happening again.

What are you looking forward to on the module?

On this module I am looking forward to the new experience of blogging, reflecting on each coaching session I do which will allow me to pick out my main weaknesses as a coach and allow me to build on them and hopefully stop them being weaknesses for me. Also the module will allow me to point out errors I make within coaching, again allowing me to reflect on what went wrong within training sessions.