NOTE – I don’t want to add negative connotations to female sports and ACL injuries as there are far more sportswomen who haven’t done ACL’s then who have but there was recently a study that showed clinicians should stop overtreating and where 1 session of high quality education, advice and a self management plan was...
YOUTH FOOTBALL SERIES #6- CHANGING GAME SPEED IN THE SAME ACTION DRILL
Something you’ll see in all levels of football, but plenty of in youth football ranks, is a player in possession of the ball on the burst but unable to see anything on the field apart from length, resulting in simply kicking the ball as long as they can to whoever is there. A unique skill...
YOUTH FOOTBALL SERIES #5 – EVERYTHING DOESN’T NEED TO GO ONLY FORWARDS ALL THE TIME
In the hastiness of coaches and parents yelling “go, go, go!” from the sidelines on each and every possession, youth footballers will feel that they are in extremely time sensitive situations and thus their vision will be tunneled and often the ball simply goes down the field in a straight line, whether there is a...
YOUTH FOOTBALL SERIES #4 – SLOW DOWN WHEN NEEDED
A pretty big focus I bring to my coaching is to slow down either through the ball carrier purposefully taking time to dispose the ball from a mark, or as a team to possess the ball using 100% options for as long as they can. All I say during these activities is basically ” find...
YOUTH FOOTBALL SERIES #3 – NO VOICE, NO FOOTBALL
I’m sure this is an “issue”, if you can call it that, in all youth and junior football clubs everywhere and I saw it both young and older groups that we ran. It’s not that they don’t ever talk as we had some presentations and some them talked to all players, parents and coaches like...
YOUTH FOOTBALL SERIES #2 – FIND THE SPACE TRAINING DRILL
#1 of the Youth Football Series looked at finding where you can get the next possession and an example that occurred in one of my football programs last week and this continues on a bit from that. Once you’ve anticipated where you think the ball movement pattern will go to, you then need to work...
SLOW PLAY TRAINING DRILL – PATIENCE 2
Back in October I posted my first crack at developing a slow play training drill called Patience but I ran this version with youth footballers this week and I think it works better because of the slight alteration. Most players of all ages are far too eager to simply play on without knowing who and...
YOUTH FOOTBALL SERIES #1 – WHERE CAN YOU FIND THE NEXT POSSESSION?
With everything finally back open in Melbourne, my youth football coaching work has opened back up so for the last 4 weeks I’ve been literally all over Melbourne doing that from Ascot Vale to South Morang to Sandringham to Box Hill to Bulleen to Mulgrave an finally finishing off all the way out at Doreen...
NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: DO THIS!
This is the final post to wrap up this study so hopefully over the last 14 posts you’ve learned a little bit about how to gain game information off of your players, who don’t see what you see and don’t feel what you feel in that given moment. This can help coaches better understand their...
NEXT LEVEL COACHING – DECISION MAKING DURING GAMES: KNOWLEDGE OF OPPOSITION + DECLARATIVE KNOWLEDGE + ELITE v AMATEURS
No new terms today. KNOWLEDGE OF OPPOSITION Knowledge of the opposition’s tactical and individual tendencies can also guide perceptual strategies to make effective decisions during fast and slow thought Being consciously aware of movement tendencies can be detrimental to anticipatory performance as you are looking for specific information only and ignoring other information that could...