This has been a very challenging time for both players and coaches. Since mid-March 2020 players have been unable to train in very few group sessions (with contact) or play in games. However, as I have told our players on multiple occasions we have to all look at this situation as an opportunity.
There has never been another occasion when players have had unlimited time to focus on their own individual development – without the disruption of school or normal life. The players who maximize their training time during this period will be the ones who will have advanced their performance levels in relation to their peers and will be the most successful once team training and playing resumes.
During this timeframe we have supported our players with a detailed weekly training program (over 10 hours of content) that incorporates technical, tactical, physical and mental components. The detailed blog training content is supported with weekly LIVE zoom sessions and the players can also post videos of their training activities on an APP that we currently use. The feedback from players has been very positive and a lot of the players are achieving personal bests in their technical work.
I see a lot of players throughout the world posting random videos of themselves doing technical work but how many are following a regular and consistent plan that will develop all 4 pillars of youth development – technical/tactical/physical/mental.
There is a school of thought that we, as coaches, should be encouraging creativity more by facilitating our young players to be creative and come up with their own training activities – like our generation did many years ago.
I fully support that viewpoint but also believe that players can be more creative when given some ideas first – which they can then run with themselves. I am seeing proof of this in the training videos that the players are posting – they are adapting the activities to match the space that they have available and on many occasions adding their own “twist” to things.
If any players or coaches would like to learn more about how we have kept our players fully engaged during this period of lock-down activities then I am happy to answer any questions that you may have or help as best I can.
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can be contacted via Linkedin, Twitter @ianlearnperform or on Instagram ian_mcclurg_learn_perform