Self-Aware Coaching Series: Your plan frees your mind
When you plan a training session you are establishing your intentions of how you are going to behave within the training session. This includes absolutely everything you are going to do from where you are going to place the cones to how you are going to interact with you players.
It’s important to establish your intentions because in doing so you are leaving less opportunity for your behavior to fall victim to entropy. You can lead your training session with an assurance that you know how you are going to behave, and you have considered all potential situations.
MAX POLAND
Max is a young coach from Colorado. Recently, Max went through the Training Session Workshop where I interviewed him prior to his training session to establish his intentions. He then filmed himself coaching and, as a group, we reviewed how closely aligned his intentions were with what actually happened.
Max’s Intentions (plan)
In his pre-session interview, Max said he planned to direct attention to the ‘timing’, ’tempo’, ‘cue’, ‘moment’, and ‘speed’ (of actions). Some of the actions he was looking to see that would be indicative of solving that situation were bounce passes, certain sequences (up-back-through).
Max planned on intervening by freezing to paint the picture of sequences that would be helpful and sequences that wouldn’t be. He primarily wanted to direct their attention towards the sequences that the boys were having success with so that they would be able gain confidence by seeing their competence.
He specifically discussed how he also wanted to “coach in the flow positionally to try to keep them to play with two 9s and a 10 in possession rather than having a 9 drop too deep because they want to just move the ball.”
As you will see, this is something that occurred frequently in the training session.
THE ADDITIONAL PURPOSE OF A PLAN
So far we have discussed the benefits of the planning process in terms of clarifying our intentions. By pre-establishing our intentions, we are more likely to behave how we would like to behave. However, there is an additional purpose to planning your training sessions.
Deliberate planning only gets you what's in your plan. However, all the ‘growth’ is found in the unexpected within the session.
We can use our training session design to create conditions for the experience. For example, by using certain stipulations or conditions within each activity, players will behave in distinct, often, creative and unexpected ways.
A good training session plan can facilitate good conditions for things to emerge – by freeing up your mind from needing to think about navigating the planned parts. That is to say, we create conditions for behaviors to emerge naturally without our interference.
The better you plan, the more your brain is apt to look for the ‘creative’ stuff. The ‘surprising’. The ‘unpredictable’. Your plan is the conditions you create. When done properly, this frees your brain to interact with the unexpected. We uncover that at its core, it’s about crafting experiences with conditions.
BACK TO MAX
Let’s look at this practically. Max had a fantastic plan. He had accounted for everything. His session was as he had intended it. He even had planned for what he thought would happen (players passing to move the ball). However, he planned to consistently intervene with verbal interactions, or ‘coaching in the flow.’
What would have happened if he had created conditions to discourage players from passing the ball for the sake of passing it?
As he had mentioned, he knew his players would organize themselves with two players closer to the ball (like two 10s) instead of two players higher and one sitting deep (like two 9s).
Instead of planning of a way to interject himself onto the session to preemptively mitigate the expected behavior (two 10s instead of two 9s), Max could have created conditions in which two 9s emerged naturally. He could then direct his attention towards embracing what emerged from these conditions.
Because the structure was an important condition to the interactions, what are some ways that Max could have used constraints to standardize the structure in order to allow him to direct his attention elsewhere?
This is the creative process of a coach: Creating constraints to allow for other elements to emerge.
The activity was 3v3 game where each team was trying to score in their respective goal. There were 2 neutral players on each side of the goal to be used for the team building up. The line in the middle served as an offside line. It’s a great activity but with the Max’s structural preference it needed something more.
To free Max’s attention from the structure of the activity (two 9s and one 10), Max could have constrained the positioning with two zones to further encourage the players to have two players high and one low. By having such constraints, Max could have been free to observe the interactions which emerged.
Something else Max noticed only after watching back his training session was how the activities he planned for the session interacted with each other. Knowing what we know about the structural needs, how did the traditional rondo condition the players behavior for the 3v3+4 activity?
If the rondo required the players to position themselves with two players low and one high then it makes sense for the players to continue with that structure into the next activity. However, as you can see different interactions emerge from different structures, and that can also be a good thing.
Every football experience is rich with learning opportunities. We know this to be true for players but we forget that as coaches we can grow from every session. By going through a process like this where you become aware of yourself, you can discover so much. This is what true coach development looks like.
