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Gordon MacLelland, CEO of Working With Parents in Sport, outlines the key elements for an effective communication policy between the coach and parents.

He identifies the key difficulties, practicalities and what parents want to hear and when.

It is part of a series of podcasts on working effectively with parents.

To find out more visit Working With Parents In Sport.

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Mark is head coach of Scottish Premiership one club, the Currie Chieftains. He is also co-founder of Coach Logic, a collaborative video analysis platform for sports. Their mantra is to #connectthegame through video. 

In this pod we talk about the how video analysis can be used positively by coaches, recognising that it can come with some health warnings and pitfalls. 

Here are some of the areas we cover:

• From a novice coach's point of view, where do you start when you look at footage
• What is meant by "priming" the player through video
• Filming effectively with your phone
• Examples of how we can watch back footage more effectively
• Questions around players who are "off the ball"
• Effectively communicate our findings
• How to avoid too many "targets"
• Positive outcomes which makes players who want to be on film
• Ways to keep all the different positions involved, even if they have less "ball time" than others.
• How to use video of yourself to improve your own coaching

Due to the extraordinary circumstances that face clubs, Coach Logic are offering their platform free to coaches for the next three months ('til June 2020).

For more on Coach Logic, click here.

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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Ged Hall coaches across a wide range of ages and abilities. A deep thinker about his coaching, he shares with us practical solutions and thoughts around what a good training session might look like.

Ged is a DPP coach with Sale Sharks, youth development manager with Sandbach RFC and a coach at Haberdashers’ Abraham Darby School.

In this podcast, we delve into:

• What does practice design really look like
• Getting the right balance between planned and unplanned
• What mastery means for different age groups
• Defining purpose
• What does your coaching plan look like on a piece of A4 paper
• How long should run an activity for - getting your timings right
• How to use skills zones at the right time
• Coach interventions: when, how and what should be said
• The detail of coaching the tackle
• Contesting possession: what might a good practice session look like
• What mistakes do you see your players making and how do you help them resolve them
• Creating "shape" even in a chaotic game - why that might work

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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Sophie Spence, former Irish XV’s and 7’s rugby international player and now coach of Penclawdd Men’s Division 1 team, talks about her coaching journey as a converted netball player with Liza "Bird" Burgess.
 
Her passion, love and enthusiasm for the game shines through the podcast, along with her relentless drive to become a better coach.

In the pod, Bird and Sophie discuss:

• Moving late from netball to rugby, and how sports skills can transfer
• From international rugby player into coaching, women's and men's
• Moving the game into becoming professional
• Advice to aspiring coaches
• How to learn from listening to others, and being vulnerable
• Frustrations in developing the game
• Creating a girls rugby academy
• The differences between women's and men's rugby coaching
• Coaching a men's team in Wales

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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Are your training sessions giving the players the best learning? Is your coaching allowing them to become more creative?

Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendrick are leading experts in the learning world. In their latest book, How Learning Happens, they introduce us to 28 giants of educational research and their findings on how we learn and what we need to learn effectively, efficiently, and enjoyably.

Using Paul and Carl's expertise, we translate their findings into sporting contexts.

Here are some of the many areas we cover:

• The difference between playing and learning
• How the coach can intervene in play to enhance learning
• The inefficiency of discovery learning
• What's too much coaching
• How spaced practice can accelerate learning
• The key differences for learning between the classroom and the training ground
• What does "expressing yourself" really mean - and where it can go wrong
• Why we might have to suppress fun and playfulness at times
• Motivation and success - the myth
• Why you should be thinking more about your retrieval practices
• Why schools don't kill creativity and what lessons you can learn from that
• Top tips on practice design
• Learning why what you do works, so can keep doing it, or change to doing something else

How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice is out now (4th March 2020). Click here to order.

And as a special offer to our listeners, you get a 20% discount if you apply this code: BSE20

Paul A. Kirschner is Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at the Open University of the Netherlands as well as Guest Professor at the Thomas More University of Applied Science in Belgium.

Carl Hendrick teaches at Wellington College, UK, and holds a PhD in Education from King’s College London.

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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Mark Saltmarsh, who is Head of Education and Age Grade Rugby at the RFU, tells us how the "Half a game" rule (HGR) has worked so far, and what have been the challenges.

Mark gives an honest assessment of the current roll-out, with plenty of practical ways to make it work for all clubs.

We covered:

• The principles behind the rule
• Why have a rule when good coaches should be doing this already
• Some of the main issues that have caused problems: cup games, keen players becoming demotivated
• The role of sanctions 
• How conversations before games make it easier to implement
• How HGR is being integrated into courses.

For more resources on HGR go to the RFU website. Click here.

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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Mark Bennett MBE, a leading coach and coach developer, explains how he helps coaches to help players to think for themselves. He has very powerful methods to work across all levels of the game, to suit the player in front of you.

In this podcast, we explored these areas:

• What is meant by a coachable player
• How to make players think for themselves
• What tools to use, with players and with coaches
• The rule of three - how it is for you, not for them
• What to set as targets so there are intrinsic
• How to work with mixed ability groups
• Creating Ninjas in your coaching world

Mark is a former British Commando and senior instructor with the Army Physical Training Corps. He has had over 30 years of practice and research into developing his coaching and learning consultancy, Performance Development Systems (PDS).

He currently works as a consultant, coach trainer and mentor with various professional and national sport organizations, teams and universities around the world, as well as schools and community sports.

For more information and to contact him to see if he can help you, visit:

www.pdscoaching.com

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

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Geraint Davies, who coaches level 5 men's club rugby and school teams from under 11 upwards, also publishes some of the best video analysis of top professional games on YouTube. He is currently just completing his level 4 coaching award.

In the podcast, Geraint explains...

• The benefits you and your teams get from reviewing video footage from top class games.
• How you translate what you see in the footage into training design.
• How you can vary your feedback on the footage to suit different age groups.
• Different ways to introduce a new technique or tactic.
• The right focus on when you are watching back videos.
• How can we watch our games in real time.

You can visit his YouTube channel
Or contact him via Twitter

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

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Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

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Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion and world-renowned educational speaker, shows us how we can use simple and effective techniques on the practice ground. He has worked with sports organisations as well as his crucial work in the classroom context to create better learning outcomes.

He's studied thousands of hours footage and observed teachers and coaches in wide range of situations. His work is a reflection of the best practice at work.

In this podcast, we discuss:

• Why the classroom and sports field share so much common ground
• Why most weekly planning goes wrong
• How to mix up your training programme to create deeper learning
• How to correct mistakes effectively and quickly
• Using "Cold calling" for engagement and your own checkpoints
• Using "Turn and talk" to improve communication skills
• Using "Wait time" to help feedback
• How to avoid "rounding up" poor answers

To find out more about Teach Like a Champion, go to 
https://teachlikeachampion.com
Also, his sports blog
https://teachlikeachampion.com/category/blog/coaching-and-practice/

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

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Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

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Wilbur Kraak, a senior lecturer and rugby researcher at Department of Sport Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa, has recently published his findings on the effects of a skills specific coaching education programme on the skill level of mini-rugby players.

Working with Jacques Basson, their conclusions shed further light on what good practice design looks like and what we should be encouraging coaches to focus on.

In this podcast, I ask Wilbur about

• The background to the research
• How they split the coaches and teams into a control group and experimental group
• What skills were they measuring and how?
• How they upskilled the coaches of the experimental group and how they reacted to this
• What skills programme did they follow and how would they improve on that
• What is meant by the fundamentals in movement skills and game skills?
• Which skills really improved, more than expected
• confirm or change views on what practice design looks like

Effect of a skills specific coaching education programme on the skill level of mini-rugby players | Basson | South African Journal for Research in Sport, Physical Education and Recreation https://ajol.info/index.php/sajrs/article/view/191634

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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