Coaching Convention Reflections – Rahul and Yichen

Rahul Berry

It was truly a very unique experience for me. I got the opportunity to learn from various professional coaches and former professional players. It was great to see the numerous field sessions that were taking place and I really got to see different approaches that were taken by all the coaches during field sessions.

Empowering Players

• Focus on teaching players to make their own decisions during field sessions. Let them play freely and offer coaching points as the session continues on.
• Design activities that provide more game like experiences for the players.

Goalkeepers

• During goalkeeper sessions, find ways where you can get all goalkeepers involved in the session. Goalkeepers have evolved in modern playing trends, isolated training no longer supports the role of the keeper as an integral player involved in ball possession and defending spaces.
• Goalkeepers are being evolved into more than just being shot stoppers and being more involved as playing from the back with their feet as this provides an advantage to transition from build up to attacking into the opponents half of the field.

Culture

• Creating a positive environment for all players by building connections players and parents not only during training sessions but also outside of the sport.
• If a player seems unmotivated during training sessions offer guidance to better support them, providing interventions of support and empathy rather than traditional scolding for effort.

Yichen

The convention was a great experience, offering a variety of different styles from elite coaches from around the world and from different coaching experiences (college, club, professional), and the level of preparation and details which goes into the session design and layout for layering between activity transitions.

Competitive Environment

• Competitive environments simulate the intensity and decision-making demands of real match situations, however, consideration must be for the learning to take place where cognitive processing isn’t overlooked for physical performance.
  • Competitive environments allow players to make mistakes where it’s better for the players to learn.
    • Setup the practice with pressure (time, space, opponents)
    • Set individual targets and challenges for a psychological consideration of training
    • Add more things or restrictions step by step

Methodology – Rondos

Rondo training is valuable and could have several forms

• Technical Skill Refinement
  • Ball control and First touch
  • Passing
  • Movement
• Teamwork and Communication
• High Pressure game like scenarios
• Practice the technical skill
• Practice Transition
  • Manipulating the rate of transitions to effect the physical component (increased transitions for power and strength resulting from more accelerations and decelerations; fewer transitions for speed)
• Practice the Communication
  • Verbal communication for roles and responsibilities, non-verbal communication of player and ball movement.
• Set competitions and challenges for teams to compete against each other.

Leadership Environment

• Decentralized the leadership – Empower players with responsibilities
  • Delegate tasks to players
• Giving players ownership of something in training
  • Rotate captains
  • Captains to maintain the discipline in training
  • Captains to set standards in effort and team culture