#033 Keeping it Real – Top Tips for Session Design
Reader, I am lucky to be working in a role as Head of Coaching at a club with a great group of engaged and curious coaches. This means that every week, I spend time working with, observing and feeding back to coaches working from U13 to senior football. One area I am constantly focussing on is supporting coaches to ensure their practice design is realistic, that it looks like the game. When speaking with coach developers, and through my own experience in formal coach education, organisational errors and a lack of realism tend to be one of the most common issues when it comes to sessions failing. I was fortunate to go through my UEFA A License with some top educators and coaching colleagues, and always remember a quote from Ted Dale, former National Coach Developer at The FA. Ted said, “Who is James Bond in your practice?” This means, who is the star of the show? If James Bond is the lead actor, who are the supporting actors and what roles do they play? If I am building a session around my central midfield, what players do they need to excel or be challenged? In order to support representative task design with my group of coaches, I established a practice design checklist for the coaches at the start of the season. It consists of several questions and reminders:
Is there direction?
Is there a consequence?
Is there an opponent?
Is there a goal?
Does the practice allow for transition?
These questions don’t always have to be answered with a ‘yes’ but they are very helpful if you have limited contact time with developing players in a grassroots setting. If we can set tasks that ask the players to solve problems, we are usually on the right track.
Three things to consider.
When planning your session do you try to ensure every part of the practice looks like the game?
If practice design is a spectrum, how often and why do you move across this spectrum?
Watch player behaviour and engagement in your session. If players aren’t active, they may disengage and if there is an organisational error, players will expose it which can be helpful in your future session design.
One thing for you to try this week.
Plan a session using the practice design checklist above with at least three different activities and then reflect on how it went, what you would change and you could even gauge the players views on it.
One critical resource on the topic.
To better understand some of the ideas in this newsletter check out our course, Foundations of Session Design by clicking here. All PDP Members get 40% off our courses and this course will provide a comprehensive guide to designing high quality sessions for players of all ages.
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