The art of coaching

by Adam Clark | Mar 18, 2022 | Coaching Blog

When you step on to the field to lead a training session or game, it’s important to consider all of the external factors regarding the occasion. The factors will influence the environment and possibly the outcome, so it could some what hinder the process of the team.

While taking all the external factors of the game into consideration, it’s important not to come away from the objectivity and your team values (intentions – that you have set out). We may, on occasion have to adapt, but it’s important to keep our intentions in place and clear, in order to contribute to the overall objective.

The communication from the lead coach/manager is vitally important, as guiding the team will be his/her responsibility. Guiding a process and getting the players to execute this, is what the person in charge needs the players to do, so if they don’t understand what’s needed for the challenge, it could be a symptom of future failure for the team.

Some of the external factors that will need to be taken into consideration, could be;

The fans – Are they supportive of something, or negative?
The facilities – Do you have world class access, or nothing available for your team to use?
The weather – Is it hot or cold, or possibly windy or raining?
The press – Are they trying to apply additional pressure?
The occasion – Is it a fixture that has a lot resting on the result?
The referee – Is he or she making decisions, that you deem correct or possibly wrong?

While the list isn’t exclusive to all coaches, for every occasion, these factors should always be taken into consideration. Having poor weather for example, could influence the playing surface, which could then in turn, effect the style of play that you may wish to execute.

Upon experiencing an external factor, the coach will have a decision to make. This will be based on their own opinion (subjective) of what they may possibly propose and how they will deal with it.

Alongside this subjective application, we have the universal references of football. As we know, the game has a set format (independent of the age group) and a set of rules outlined by the football association. These don’t change and will always been in place, to allow all players to execute football actions, within a controlled environment.

Your role now, as the coach or manager during the planning process, is a key one. What do you take as your starting point? The external factors surrounding you, or the objective facts of the game?

We should always take the game as a starting point, as this is universal and can’t be effected in any circumstance. If the weather is poor, the rules will stay the same, thus meaning, the ‘how’ in which things are executed, needs to be adapted.

Being adaptable while coaching, is part of the profession and will no doubt be experienced very early on in your career. This subjective application that you use, can help you make correct decisions and allow you to experience other outcomes, that may enable you to learn further.

The problem with taking subjective application as a starting point, is that you may fall into the ‘flavour of the month’, or only get so far. If it’s only your opinion and other staff and players know this, then surely their opinion is also equal? This could create very grey areas and allow players to put responsibility, completely outside of themselves.

Taking the game as the starting point will help you and allow for objectivity to shine through. The game (objective), in addition to your application (subjective), will give you the, ‘art of coaching’.

Your players

by Adam Clark | Mar 11, 2022 | Coaching Blog

Upon planning your training session or match day squad, you will have to consider a number of factors as well what players will be involved. Some get confused of what football actually is, so to summarise, it is a players sport and it’s their decisions, which will shape the outcome of the team.

Too often throughout football, coaches use a variety of different starting points that can cause confusion and mis – guide the process that they are intending. Some of the starting points used, could be;

Taking the coaches favoured formation to begin planning
Considering what form the team has been in
The severity of the fixture that is being played
Choosing principles and a ‘how’, above the ‘what’

While the above isn’t exclusive to one coach or organisation, I have experienced the above along my own journey. For some (myself included), you may not know or have known (once upon time), the actual starting point you used or actually need.

Without going too far ahead, we need to look at our players. These are the most important aspect of the game, as their decisions will influence what actually happens. Where do the players fit though, in our hierarchy of planning?

Before planning a training session or picking the starting team, you have to consider the playing ability, above everything else.

What are your players capable of?
What do they struggle with?
Where are your best units of communication?
Who needs support, under the different pressures the game produces?

Once you know what the capabilities of your players are, you can then consider the next step in the process of implementing your team intentions. Taking the capabilities in to account, can also be summarised as, the ability your players have, in executing football actions.

How may you set up your team in attack, in order to build up?
Which actions do you want your players to execute, when you lose the ball?

Having intentions in place, gives direction to ‘how’ you want the game to be played. While this doesn’t mean there are any guarantees of success, it allows for more objective feedback to be sought and gives the players responsibly of aligning their intentions, with that of the team.

Would you request that your brand new under 7 team that hasn’t played before, take part in a training session, that Pep Guardiola designed for his Manchester City players? Then when it goes wrong, do you question the ability of certain individuals? While this could be something that you’ve previously seen in the past, it clearly isn’t the best starting point you could take.

While deciding on your team intentions, can your players;

Achieve these desired outcomes, in order to assist with the team objective?
Execute what you’re requesting?
If this plan (a) doesn’t work, what is your plan (b)?
How often do you evaluate and adapt these intentions?

Lastly, you have to implement a playing formation which is a tool used to execute your team intentions, while also taking into consideration the abilities of your players. A previous post found here, highlights this information; https://www.parktopro.com/formations/

From reading this brief blog, I hope you can now understand the importance of your players and how you could assist them, in contributing to your team objectives.

Training exercises

by Adam Clark | Mar 4, 2022 | Coaching Blog

For a training session to be a success, we can use a variety of practices that will combine in order, to contribute to the overall objective.
Whether you have a small area to train in once per week, or you have the opportunity to train on a full size pitch, there is no reason to not design an effective training session and have practices to suit.

Before we go any further, we need to define the different practices that you could use;

Kicking exercise – Unopposed, without any interference.

Passing exercise – Opposed, with at least 2 players on the same team.

Possession exercise – Opposed, with the objective being, keeping the ball.

Position exercise – Opposed, with goals present.

Tactical exercise – Opposed, with a larger format used (more players & bigger space).

As you can see from the above, there are 5 different practices that you could opt to use within your training session.

Each exercise will have it’s own benefits, with some better suited to a certain age group than others. Before you decide what exercise you want to use, you may want to decide on the following questions;

How big is the training area that you have at your disposal?
How many players are attending?
What is the objective of the session?
How are you planning on achieving this?
What football actions will the players be required to execute?
Is there a scoring system that you wish to implement?

There are plenty more questions you could ask yourself, while anticipating all the external factors. These could be the weather, training area/surface and equipment that is available, to name a few.
By anticipating the external factors, you are then giving yourself a much better opportunity to prepare accordingly.

Once you have acknowledged the external factors, what next?

You will need an intention that you wish to work to and by doing this, you give yourself direction in achieving the respective objective. Maybe you could consider the following?

Where does this moment of the game take place on the field?
Who are the key players in making this happen?
What is your team intention in this part of the field?
Which actions will the players need to execute?
When could this moment of the game take place?
Why does this happen, during the game?

By answering some or all of the above questions, you should be able to visualise what you would want, in your training session. Now, the question is how are you going to achieve this?

If you take the objectivity from football and then use your subjective application (external factors considered), you now have the art of coaching. This will need to be applied, in order for you to execute the desired practices. If you opt to use one training session, opposed to another, this is completely your choice. What you as a coach needs to understand though, is that some exercises will benefit the team better than others. You also have to consider the players within these exercises and this is what we will look at next week!

Searching for objectivity

by Adam Clark | Feb 25, 2022 | Coaching Blog

The football coaching world can be a very subjective place. There are hundreds of thousands of videos and articles online, which deliver all types of messages. These could be recipes on how to play a certain way, or there could be explanations on how Guardiola sets his Manchester City team up.
What is apparent in a lot of this content, is that the message is largely on ‘how’ a coach did, or is doing something.

The question now for you is, by reading and observing all of this available content, could it help you become a better coach?

While observing ‘how’ another coach implements a certain idea, the observer in question needs to understand a number of things;

Are these your players?
Are your external factors the same?
Do the abilities in your squad replicate that of said players?
The recording or passage of text, is someone else’s subjective observation. Does this correlate with your application?

….the list could go on…..

While only you know the answers to these questions and it would be extremely rare, if you were able to say ‘yes’, to any of the above.

So, now where would your approach take you in order for you to discover objective truth, in order to help yourself improve? By using objectivity as a starting point, you know that what your processing is truth and can be applied to your players, regardless of their abilities.

A number of methods you could use, in searching for an objective starting point could be;

Learning what the game of football is
What can be universally applied in South America, as well as Asia?
What are all footballers taking part in, independent of their abilities?
Is the objective of the game the same across the globe?

By answering these questions to yourself, you will see that you have given yourself an objective starting point. This isn’t going to improve you as a coach over night, but it what it will do, is give you further understanding of the game itself.

If you know that the game is 11 vs 11 and the objective of the game is to score at least 1 more goal than the opponent, then you already have a foundation to build on.

How do you ensure you know what your processing is objective, though?

Is it someone’s interpretation of the game, through their own eyes? Do they use words like, I use or I think??
Is the language they’re using non-contextual? In other words, are they using descriptions that aren’t in action language, non – use of verbs?
Is the report or imagery, purely their own description of a certain scenario?

If any of your answers to the above are ‘yes’, you will be falling into the whirlwind of subjective jargon that has taken over the coaching world.

Learn about what football is, alter your lenses and change your viewpoint. By doing this, you will understand so much more and really be able to improve your players! Copy and paste coaching and flavours of the month, can only get you so far. What are you going to do when you reach your glass ceiling?

What do you coach?

by Adam Clark | Feb 17, 2022 | Coaching Blog

Every week a coach takes to the field, to coach their respective team and in some cases, leads them in a fixture in the following days.
For some this is voluntary and others, it’s paid. One thing that is the same for both coaches, is what they’re coaching…or should be, in this case.

At the start of the training session, a coach should have some sort of plan that can be used to execute a given intention. Whether this is achieved or not, is another discussion, but as long as the intention is there, we have a starting point.
The next question is, what are the coaches intentions based upon? Was it last weeks result, pressure from the parents or just a ‘feeling’, that the coach had? While none of the previous mentioned are objective, they are familiar as we know and are often used as a subjective starting point.
Each coach has there own application of doing things (subjective), but if you also use a subjective factor from outside of facts (objectivity), you will eventually encounter some chaos. Subjectivity + subjectivity…..
By using this start point, you are also leaving many things open to interpretation and why would your opinion be more suited, than some else’s?

From reading the above passage, a subjective starting point, probably isn’t the best idea. If you did use this approach, my question would be; what are you coaching and how did you come to that decision?

Firstly, before any coach steps onto the touch line or into any training arena, they should have an understanding of the sport that they are participating in. If a coach doesn’t know a lot about football (bare brain), what could the players possibly learn from this person?
Imagine that someone walked into a cockpit of an aeroplane, with no experience or very minimal training. How could they possibly begin to understand the job that they have signed up for?
If you take the game of football for example, the weight on the shoulders of the coach is extremely different that that of the pilot. As we know, if a coach makes a wrong decision, no one will die….

We can’t use this as an excuse though and must have a higher bar. How could we achieve this?

Coaches will have to take a certification of some sort, before being ‘licensed’ and allowed to lead a certain group. These certifications are different, depending on what federation you use and what pathway you to choose to take. One thing they all should have in common though, is what content they provide.
At the end of the course and in most cases, coaches are given their certification, independent of their competency levels.

Back on the grass with their respective clubs, the coaches now need to deliver a training session that will aid the learning of all and hopefully improve performance.

What starting point does the coach need for this?
What is the coach going to instruct and how is it going to effect all players?
What information do you know on the given topic?

If you don’t know the ‘what’, how can you expect to coach the ‘what’? The ‘what’ in our case is football….

This question should be reflected on, by all coaches at every opportunity available. Stepping onto the pitch and coaching can be daunting enough, but going onto the field and not knowing ‘what to do’ or ‘what to say’, leaves you in a very difficult position.