The Teesra

Category: coaching

  • A Constraint-Led Approach – a new addition to the coaching toolkit?

    I am (I call myself) a cricket coach – I work with people who want to play “better” cricket, however “better” might be defined.

    In that role, I try to help players to develop their playing techniques, and, along the way, to build individual motivation and resilience.  Occasionally, I will talk with them about (appropriate) physical development – play other sports to develop all-round physicality; don’t build so much muscle in the gym that you lose flexibility.

    But I am also interested in how to become a better coach, which has led me to follow a range of conversations and blogs on coaching pedagogy.

    I am not going to pretend that I understand the concept of nonlinear pedagogy (yet), and my exploration of socio cultural constraints within coaching probably missed any number of (academic) points.

    But a series of posts (including this, and this, both from ConnectedCoaches.org) on applying the Constraint-Led Approach (CLA) in coaching has piqued my interest.  Coaches are encouraged to modify the drill or game to force the player(s) to develop enhanced responses.

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  • Grooving that stroke…does music help?

    Interesting net session yesterday, working with a batsman to get ready for the new season.  Lots of work on grooving the bat path, a little on developing bat speed.

    We were next to a group who had set up a (small) speaker in their net, and played music during their practice.

    https://twitter.com/TheTeesra/status/844130132881235968

    This could have been a distraction – we generally practice in a controlled (even slightly sterile) environment, where the only sounds are bat on ball, or ball on canvas, or occasionally the slap of skipping ropes and bouncing medballs – but I saw real benefits from having the music playing.

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  • Three years with the Legends and Masters – cricket coaching with 4-year olds

    Back in 2014, I started coaching at the MCC Cricket Academy, and was assigned to support a coach delivering a “Little Legends” session for a group of 3-5 year olds.

    Not really cricket, I thought – more 45 minutes of childcare, with a cricketing theme, perhaps, but not really cricket coaching.

    I found out later that some of my new colleagues had directly requested not to be scheduled to work with the Little Legends, and I could understand why. But as the new coach, I didn’t think I could get away with opting out.

    Three years later, I find myself leading the delivery for 5 weekly sessions for 5s and under. And the more I do, the more I appreciate the value of coaching the very young players in the Academy’s Little Legends (pre-school) and Mini Masters (Reception) programmes.

    What changed?

    I remembered one of the first pieces of advice I was given when I first trained as a coach – always coach the player, not the skill. And I also remembered how much I enjoy playing games.

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