Our 2nd guest for our summer football course, is now confirmed. We’re pleased to announce that Nick Bignall will again be in attendance, but on this occasion he’ll be coaching with Park to Pro.
During the Easter Football Course, Nick came in as a guest and shared some of his past experiences playing professionally at Reading & Southampton, to name a few. The children were extremely receptive and enjoyed the Q & A session that he ran.
Adam said, “Nick was very complimentary of what was set up previously, during his last visit with us. We have discussed a number of new opportunities, with one being his attendance on our summer football course. He was happy to commit, so I’m delighted that he will be with us for the full week’.
We are still taking bookings for what promises to be an excellent summer. There are still more guests to be announced, so please don’t hesitate in securing your place now, via our holiday courses tab found at the top of this page!
Due to a number of extremely busy months and updating CPD via a course format, the month of June has given us the opportunity to bring out our next blog post. This will now be a regular occurrence, with plenty of content coming your way in the future months.
How do we coach football?
In the last blog, what is football coaching?, we clarified the context to ensure there is a clear foundation for the topic in this blog, how to coach football?
The previous situation was designed and can be found on the following link;
Before the training session takes place, you need to use the power of reflection to plan what you intend to do. By doing this, you will be prepared and be in position to diagnose competency levels, while awaiting the opportunity to coach.
If, for whatever reason you are unable to reflect appropriately before the training session, you could well rely on subjective experiences, to execute your intentions. “When I was playing, this is how we did it” – so this coach in question may well use this approach. There could be a problem with this though? The players in your squad aren’t you and have completely different external factors, so why would you use this approach?
In order for us to plan and execute a session appropriately, we will use a 3 step process and then focus on one of these steps. They are;
Reflecting FOR action – Before the training session and planning ahead
Reflecting IN action – During the training session and the decision of what to coach
Reflecting ON action – After the training session and the evaluation
Today we will focus on reflecting IN action and how we can use this to improve our training sessions.
In the previous blog we looked at the player in training who missed a number of opportunities, that could possibly have led to scoring a goal. We need to try and diagnose the exact fault and what we could possibly do, to help this player in the future.
A few pop up’s may now occur in your brain…
Is the player low on confidence?
Was he not focused enough?
Those are just 2 of the many questions that I’m sure all coaches would’ve heard previously. If we were to use those as a starting point, how could we possibly help the player?
Coach, “are you low on confidence?”
Player, “yes”
One question that you should then ask yourself is, how do you train confidence??? This is a non-contextual word and clearly doesn’t mean anything, within a football context.
As coaches we need to improve a players performance in whatever way we can. From a theoretical understanding, to the language we use, along with the execution of coaching actions, this all matters and has high importance.
So, we are now at the training session and the player in question has now missed a number of goal scoring opportunities. There are two things we have to consider now….number one is the situation. Did you reflect for action and design a session that has the situations you so desire in it? If the situation is correct, then the desired behaviours will have a better chance at being provoked. If the situation wasn’t quite clear enough, then anything could happen as the game is chaotic and unpredictable.
On this occasion, we will say that the situation is correct. The question now is how can we coach this player?
For this opportunity to present itself, you must have recognised that something wasn’t quite right and incompetence was shown, triggering a pop up in your brain. This is a good sign, as there will be some kind of alarm bell ringing and a reference being activated. You’ve seen something, you’re now aware and you want to address the situation. How do we now get the required information from our brain, into the players brain??
To give us the best opportunity of this being successful, we will use reference coaching. This is where we have information (references) stored in or brain and wish to download them into the receivers brain.
By using a variety of questions (verbal communication) and visual examples (non-verbal communication), we can give the information to the player. They then have to store this in their own brain and create their own references, which they can utilise in the future. The questions you could use to observe if learning has taken place, could be;
“How can you help him/her?”
“What can you see?”
“By doing this, what impact could it have on others?”
Using these examples can tell you as a coach where the competency levels are at with this player and how much game intelligence they have.
Check the next blog, where we discuss the process of a ‘trial’.
Park to Pro tips;
1 – Try and understand what the difference is between situation and reference coaching.
2 – Designing the correct situation to provoke your players behaviour is vital.
3 – Learn the 3 reflection moments, as these will make planning & evaluations easier.
4 – Explore what references you have in your brain and if they are objective/subjective.
Park to Pro is delighted to announce that Andy Maciel will be joining us as a guest, on the first week of our summer football course.
Previously of Chelsea and Crystal Palace, Andy has a passion in developing players and assisting their journey to the next level.
Andy founded his own football coaching business a number of years ago. He has studied extensively in Catalunya & is now UK partner of the Cruyff Football (Possession Football) methodology developed by Albert Capellas (former Barcelona academy manager – see pic above).
During his visit, he will be hosting a Q and A, as well a coaching masterclass, executing the C14 Methodology which has possession, position & pressing as it’s pillars.
Adam said, “I recently met Andy on a football course and his passion to develop young players his obvious to see. He is extremely humble, knowledgable and eager to help others, so it was a no ‘brainer’ in asking him to join us”.
We are very much looking forward to introducing Andy to all of our players on the course and extracting as much information as possible!
After the success of this years, ‘Coach Mentorship Programme’, Park to Pro are pleased to announce that the pathway will be expanding. We will now be offering a three separate pathways, dependant on the competencies of the respective coach.
In the past 8 months, our coaches have had private sessions with Pro License coaches, as well as coaches from Europe. All have provided excellent insight into their work, which has allowed our coaches to draw their own conclusions and apply. As well as this there has been a variety of topics covered on a monthly basis, from football coaching theory to football language.
In ‘next seasons’ edition there will be further topics introduced, including set pieces and analysing football actions. There is also a brand new pathway, which includes an introduction to coaching for those taking their first steps into the sport.
Adam Clark, the head of coaching and player development at Park to Pro, said; “This year has had it’s challenges we can’t deny that. But, during those bleak winter months our coaches still regularly met up via zoom and discussed a wide range of topics. This year has been a great success and I’m looking forward to growing next season. We have a lot more topics available for all coaches, as well as provisional plans to visit professional clubs in the UK and Europe. Being able to offer coaches these opportunities is important to the game and their own development.
Our introduction to coaching course has kicked off this month, with a topic on, ‘what is football coaching?’. In September our level 1 and level 2 courses will commence.
If you would like further information on how we can you as a coach, please email enquiries@parktopro.com and you will be sent full information on what you be learning and how you can apply it.
We’re delighted to confirm the venue and dates for our popular summer football courses.
Playing host to the upcoming events will be St.Georges Girls School, based in Ascot. The facility has space for 3 full size football pitches, tennis courts and a pavilion for our exclusive use. The fun will be taking place over 2 separate weeks from, Monday 26th July – Friday 30th July and Monday 23rd August – Friday 27th August.
Throughout both weeks there will be a theme of, ‘reflecting on your own performance’, where the coaching team will teach the children (of all ages) on methods they can use. These will be in relation to before, during and after training/games, within our football course context. As well as this, there will be coaching masterclasses and position specific workshops available every day, to ensure that the players take the most from the occasion.
All players that attend the course will receive plenty of information on how they can improve their game, while also having access to both of our Panna Arena’s, football tennis equipment and our new….speed gun!!
Full details for the summer will be released on Monday 14th June.
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