I attended the SportInMind Football Psychology Workshop, with Dan Abrahams, partly because I have just started onto the football coaching pathway, but mostly because I am becoming more and more interested in what Dan describes as “human and performance psychology – the internal that drives the external.”
And I have to say that Dan did exactly what he set out to do – challenged (in a good way) my own approach to how I coach. (more…)
Debate on LinkedIn Cricket Coaches Worldwide group on the merits (or otherwise) of formal S&C training for young players.
The consensus view is that a 10-year-old would do best to simply play games, ride a bike, climb trees (can I say that without including a Health&Safety warning?). I do agree, but with one proviso. A lot of 10 year olds I see simply do not have the basic athletic movement patterns needed to benefit from games-based “fitness” programmes.
So the coach has the responsibility of ensuring his players have acquired “physical literacy” before they try to move on to more structured S&C training. (more…)
Back in November, David Hinchliffe proposed a novel way of getting the most from net practice, with what he described as the “horror movie” approach. I suggested adding a camera, to give the Blair Witch net session.
I have been looking for more ways to make net practice more competitive, and more realistic, but I don’t think our 1st XI will take kindly to “consequence” nets (5 press ups if you get bowled), and if we implement “if you are out, you’re out” net practice might finish rather early!
So we have been trying the “head hunter” net – setting the bowlers the task of identifying and ruthlessly exploiting any weakness they can in the batsmen. And the results so far have been interesting. (more…)
The Teesra 