The REAL Coaching Blog 2

http://au.fourfourtwo.com/blogs.aspx?CIaBEID=2135

I read with interest both Andy’s latest blog and the feedback he was given and the main point is that as coaches, we are all unique. We all have our own style that we take with us. You may be the local Fergie, hairdryer at the ready or perhaps Rafa is more your style, leaving the players to guess what’s going on, or maybe you are one step ahead of the local pack, in possession of the master plan and the special one oozes through your veins.
The most important thing that you need to have is your own style, something that is unique to you and something that you will be remembered by. Structure and organisation are two key ingredients that you must possess, the third and by the far the most important is developing relationships.
You need to know the players you are working with, where they are coming from and where they go when they leave your care. This is essential to all players regardless of age or ability, to a large extent the younger, the less developed and the more disadvantaged deserve your attention most of all.
When they turn up for one of your sessions, be there. Now, I don’t just mean be there in being there, I mean really be there for them. When you are taking your session you need be there for the session, 100% organised and 100% committed to the group you are working with regardless of where you are, who you are working with, or what you have just been doing.
The local u12 side deserves the same attention to detail that van Ship would put in to the Melbourne Derby or Pep will put in when Mourinho’s men come calling this year. I know that they are full time coaches, have a coaching staff to back them up and maybe a few million more reasons to be prepared than you do, but those kids deserve it.
You should have a session plan for every session that you take and it should have a purpose and an outcome. You should know where the team is and where they are going and your session will sit in that slot. Maybe between a one nil away loss and the return fixture, maybe the last training session prior to the start of the season it doesn’t matter when it is, there is always something that will guide the session and an outcome that should follow otherwise you are just filling time or rather wasting both theirs and your time.
Planning the session is simple and requires
about 5 minutes using a template like this.
What are your goal/s for the session?
How do you decide on what they should be?
How are you going to break up the session?
How much time are you going to spend on each element?
And what resources do you need for implementing the session?
The best way to plan your resources is to overlap and reuse an area or an a teaching tool. That way you don’t have to hire a mini van or borrow your dads Ute to get the gear to training, and if you forget something you can do without it. I will talk about this in a later blog.
So, how do you decide what to focus on for the session? What is your main goal? The best way to do this is to think about what you need to improve on from last weeks game or training session if it is preseason. You will need to think about what the team did well? What area/s does the team need to improve? What did individual; players do well? And what areas do individual players need to improve on?
It is the answers to these questions that will give you the opportunity to direct your focus. You need to remember that you can’t do everything in one session.
For an all round approach when choosing your drills focus on one area that was good, focus on one area that needs improvement, and focus on one drill from the last training session to reinforce the learning for your players.