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Skill Acquisition

How our players acquire skills through formal practice and informal play.

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

Possession has become a huge trend in football coaching. But are we educating our young players to retain the ball well enough? Is our practice design representative of the game? PDP Technical Advisor, Dan Wright discusses how we can help our players master 1v1s and cites Renato Sanches & Alexis Sanchez as examples of players excelling in this area. Most coaches practice 1v1’s but are we doing it right and more importantly are we meeting the demands of the game? Recently I analysed two players,…

What is the cognitive process of elite athletes working at their peak? In this article, researcher Dr. Laurie Rauch discusses the various levels of thought, conscious and subconscious, behind human movement in sport.   An athlete’s movement on the sports field is largely an automatic process that is coordinated subconsciously. The only voluntary part of movement is its intended goal (Rauch et al. 2013); the movement itself essentially consists of a chain of reflexes (Evarts 1980), (Lacquaniti et al. 2012). Indeed, thinking or reasoning about…

What are the benefits of learners exploring their environment and self-correcting? How can a coach guide this discovery? Founder of TOVO Academy in Barcelona, Todd Beane shares his excellent blog on the idea of discovery learning.   I have six children and thus have personally funded a human laboratory in learning and chaos. Those of you with more than two children will understand this blog. I say more than two because once we have three or more children as a couple we are in a…

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

How important is adaptability and context in your coaching approach? UEFA A licensed coach, Dan Wright discusses the idea of creating a flexible framework for players to explore and how coaching is never black or white.   Coaches like principles when teaching the game, they are a quick and straightforward way to transfer your understanding of the game to your players, but are they dangerous?  A few weeks ago, I posted a tweet which discussed a scenario around the passing options of a fullback in a…

Human movement is a fascinating topic and Player Development Project is fortunate enough to have discovered a group of researchers applying ideas of Taijiquan (Tai Chi) in a football context in South Africa. Researcher, Dr. Laurie Rauch discusses some of the science behind human movement in sport.   An athlete’s movement on the sports field is largely an automatic process. Coordination of movement best left to subcortical brain structures. Thinking kept to a minimum. The only conscious part of movement should be the goal of the…

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

Keith Davids, Duarte Araújo, Vanda Correia, and Luis Vilar The Big Idea For this research reviewer, who is also an ex-youth soccer coach, occasionally there are uncomfortable moments arising from summarizing research papers for our PDP coaches and readers.  This is one of those moments.  You see, this paper essentially points out to modern youth football coaches the crucial differences between coaching the practice and coaching the game. We confess to this:  Our personal coaching history is testimony to the weaknesses of traditional coaching practices.  They were something…

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

PDP Video Session Plans are adaptable sessions designed by academy coach, Dave Wright. All sessions show key focus points, set up, and progressions so you can use them in your next practice.

FA Lead National Goalkeeping Coach and England U21 Goalkeeping Coach, Tim Dittmer, brings a wealth of wisdom to his dual role as coach and coach developer.  In this interview with the 32-year-old, Player Development Project finds a coach already wise well beyond his years.    In normal lore, it is thought that we grow wiser as we grow older.  But Dittmer has somehow figured out that wisdom isn’t necessarily a result of a long life.  Wisdom is measured by what we are willing to learn,…

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