Articles by Coach Frank
Reader, “Invasion” games like soccer are defined by the need to make rapid, high-pressure decisions. Often, we try to train this by constantly speeding up our practices. However, fascinating research across team sports suggests that integrating “slow-time” teaching strategies can dramatically improve “high-speed” decision-making. The concept revolves around empowering players to “reflect-on-action” away from the physical intensity of the pitch. By engaging players in slow, deliberate theory…
Easter Special • Ends April 14 Take 50% Off Your Coaching Development Ready to level up? Through April 14, get 50% off any PDP Academy course or a PDP Membership. Just apply code EASTER26 at checkout. Join Premium Browse Academy Reader, When we think of 1v1s, we often focus on the player in possession dribbling and executing skills. However, teaching players how to effectively manage an opponent in wide areas is just as critical. This practice is a highly practical way to teach players how to…
Easter Special • Ends April 14 Take 50% Off Your Coaching Development Ready to level up? Through April 14, get 50% off any PDP Academy course or a PDP Membership. Just apply code EASTER26 at checkout. Join Premium Browse Academy Reader, Listen to the touchline of almost any football pitch on a game day, and you will likely hear a barrage of instructions that sound more suited to a battlefield than a sports match. Words like attack, defend, destroy, humiliate, and enemy are deeply ingrained in…
Easter Special • Ends April 14 Take 50% Off Your Coaching Development Ready to level up? Through April 14, get 50% off any annual PDP Membership or individual Academy course. Just apply code EASTER26 at checkout. Join Premium Browse Academy Reader, “I spend the entire 90 minutes looking for space on the pitch. I’m always between the opposition’s two holding midfielders and thinking, ‘The defence is here, so I get the ball and I go there to where the space is.'” Xavi What separates the best…
Reader, We all dream of our players striking the ball with the elegance of Kevin De Bruyne or dribbling with the balance of Lionel Messi. But the pursuit of an idealized, “textbook” technique is increasingly being challenged by modern skill-acquisition research. Nonlinear pedagogy teaches us that human beings are complex systems and their movement emerges from the interacting constraints of the individual, the task, and the environment. Because every player has different physical attributes,…
Reader, Have you ever run a training session that looked absolutely perfect, only to watch your team step onto the pitch on matchday and completely forget everything you worked on? This is a common frustration for coaches, and it usually comes down to the difference between performance (what happens in training) and learning (what is permanently retained and transferred to the game). Decades of research by cognitive psychologists, such as Dr. Robert Bjork at UCLA, have highlighted the concept…
Reader, We often talk about the importance of communication in coaching. Over the years, we have explored different intervention styles, from Q&A and guided discovery to drive-by coaching. However, there is an often-overlooked element of communication that can completely transform your learning environment: the pause. When a player makes a mistake or a session breaks down, our instinct as coaches is usually to jump in immediately and offer a solution or ask a question. This urge to “fix”…
Reader, How often do you arrive at training feeling stressed? You are racing from work, the traffic is bad, and you are worried about setting up cones before the first player arrives. Being an organised coach and following a session plan are fundamental to good coaching, but knowing how to efficiently set up can be the hardest part of the job for volunteers. To minimise stress and increase “ball-rolling time” for the players, we recommend using a simple framework developed by Rob Sherman…
Reader, We’ve all seen them: the “perfect” sessions. The cones are laid out in straight lines, the players move in predictable patterns, the ball never goes out of play, and it looks like a well-oiled machine. But does the game look like that? Football is chaotic. It involves weird bounces, bad pitches, miscommunications, and opponents who don’t follow the script. If our training sessions look too clean and ordered, we might be failing to prepare our players for the reality of the match. We…
Reader, When designing a session, it is easy to fall into the trap of trying to coach everyone at once. We stop the game to correct the left back, then stop it again to fix the striker’s run, and then again for the midfielder’s pass. The result? A disjointed session where no one gets into a flow. A brilliant concept shared by Ted Dale (former FA National Coach Developer) is to ask yourself one question when planning: “Who is James Bond in your practice?”. This means identifying the “star of…
Reader, One of the most common anxieties for grassroots coaches is the “perfect number” fallacy. We plan a session for 12 players (6v6), and then 11 turn up. Panic sets in. We scramble to find a drill that works for 11, or worse, we have one player sit out. Adaptability is a key element of effective coaching. In reality, the game of football is rarely perfectly balanced; players are sent off, injured, or caught out of position, creating temporary overloads. Instead of fearing odd numbers,…
[FIRST NAME GOES HERE], The first session back after a holiday break always carries a unique energy. There is often a mix of excitement to see friends, sluggishness from too much festivities, and perhaps a bit of “rust” when it comes to the first touch. As coaches, the temptation can be to hit the ground running immediately, to run the “Christmas pudding” off them with fitness drills or dive straight back into complex tactical work to make up for lost time. However, I believe the most…