_why_ we coach; why we coach the way we do
Interesting conversation with a couple of parents after our last coaching session before Christmas with one of their sons.
“My son annoys me so much – his grip is so low on the bat handle, and he won’t change it.”
[An acute, and accurate technical observation.]
– can he hit the ball?
“Yes”
– consistently, and with reasonable power?
“Yes”
– what do you want to change, then?
It’s a common enough refrain from managers and coaches after a heavy defeat, or at the end of an unsuccessful season – we will have to go back to the drawing board/training ground, or (in the modern idiom) get back to our “processes”…
Perfectly understandable, and certainly not wrong.
But what to do when you have just recorded a winning season? When teams have won divisional titles and promotions, when the Colts section has dominated County age group competitions, and produced players who now expect to score runs in senior cricket.
Back to the drawing board, I say!
When you are strong, that is the time to put in the hard yards to make next season, and the seasons to follow, even better. (more…)
I spent last Sunday with a group of football coaches from the FA East region, finding out about the FA’s new initiative, “England’s DNA”.
With presentations and coaching demonstrations on “who we are”, “the future player”, “how we coach”, “how we play” and “how we support”, the day offered both theoretical and practical guidance as to how the FA expects its coaches to develop the Future Player – from grassroots to the international stage.
For all the fanfare around the “DNA”, perhaps most revealing was the statement, in an introductory video, that there was, in fact, no fixed model – as soon as a document is written, it goes out of date (or evolves, to maintain the biological metaphor).
What was offered was a framework, beyond the “4 corners” (see below) for the philosophical grounding of football coaching.
It sounds quite high-powered – in fact, it was practical and realistic, and there are definitely lessons to be learnt.
The Teesra 