In this Live Webinar replay, UEFA A licensed coaches Dan Wright and Dave Wright share some of their favourite small sided games for youth football. Dan and Dave present a number of practices, including lead in games, adaptations and reasons behind some of their top small sided games for discussion with coaches in the room. The practices presented are adaptable and the guys share ideas as to how they could be adjusted for various player numbers or ages, as well as tackling questions from guests…
task design
Coaches around the world are having to innovate with their session design as football training kicks off in some nations after the global pandemic. In this article, PDP Coaching Advisor, James Coutts shares some practical ideas for sessions that allow for social distancing. Like many coaches preparing to get back onto the grass I started designing my sessions for the various groups I’d be working with as football resumes with a whole new remit – social distancing. Most sessions I’d implemented prior to the Covid-19…
In this article, PDP Technical Advisor, Dan Wright wades into the opposed vs. unopposed practice debate. Dan shares his perspective on why this may be a redundant argument if we are to ensure that every player gets the individual support they require to maximise their potential. Each day I scroll through social media and see a similar discussion taking place. Every. Single. Day. The ‘unopposed versus opposed’ debate. Now, very quickly I will attempt to share with you my opinion on this and the context…
How do you decide what coaching practices to deliver? And what process do you follow when designing the practice? Fulham FC Head of Coaching and regular PDP contributor, Ben Bartlett shares an article from Hive Learning which provides steps 1 and 2 of the 6 stage process he uses to design effective coaching practices. “We must help coaches understand and rationalise why they coach and behave in the way they do rather than settling for mimicking others”. With clubs and coaches dedicating significant amounts of time…
Sara Santos, Sergio Jiménez, Jaime Sampaio, Nuno Leite The Big Idea When you sit a spell and think over the major point of session planning in sports, you can’t avoid the big idea of transformation. Hence, such training programs are inherently designed around re-creation and hope. Faith in unknown possibilities is something like the observation of the American inventor, philosopher, and architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1993) that, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” If players and coaches…
Game-based learning has enormous benefits in terms of decision-making and skill acquisition. PE Teacher, blogger and regular PDP contributor, Sporticus shares his fantastic article on the advantages of manipulating games and the environment and how coaches can adjust conditions in order to help young players improve their skills. At the heart of a games based approach to teaching is the challenge to the centrality of learning isolated and decontextualised techniques that will ‘allow’ the child to play. Instead of starting with the practice…
The question this week comes from Michael: “I am interested to know how to build practice sessions when you only have two days of training per week of 90 minutes each. How many components should I have within my sessions for my U10 team?” Your Turn: Ask PDP Anything Do you have a coaching question that we might be able to help with? We would love to hear from you! Here’s what you can do: 1. Tweet your questions to us @playerdp, or contact us on our Facebook…
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.