The Soccer Coaching Podcast

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Episode 3 – What is the `coaching environment`… and how important is it?

·         What do we mean by the environment? 

-          Not the weather or physical conditions.

-          It is the combination of Culture, Philosophy, Values, Expectations and Habits.

-          Its the intangibles (and tangibles) that impact on the practical and physical aspects of the session.

·         Is it important to consider these elements and if so why?

-          YES!!! – The environment is the engine that drives behaviour and behaviour drives development/performance and in turn development/performance drives outcomes!

Understanding your environment allows you to…

-          Clear idea of what the team/club is about.

-          Clear idea of what the ambitions of the team/club are.

-          Clear idea of how the team/club will try and meet these ambitions.

-          Provides a clear message to players, parents, coaches and everyone involved or impacted (including the opposition).

-          Help provide consistency.

-          Help to maximise the effectiveness of the sessions. The more you get the environment right the more you amplify the positives in the session. 

·         What makes up the environment?

-          It is a combination of Culture, Philosophy, Values (expectations) and habits.

·         What does each element actually mean and how does it impact on coaching?

-          Culture – This is the ideas, beliefs, behaviours, attitudes and actions that combined together provide a tangible illustration of the group! – What does your culture look like? How would someone outside your team/club describe your culture? Is your culture giving you the best opportunity to be successful?

For us….

Player centred, long term development, focusing on the player and the person and working equally on the character of the person as well as the technical and physical abilities of the player. Its outlined by our philosophy as a club and a team and is underpinned by our values in the hope we create the best habits.

-          Philosophy – This is the defined belief or attitude that SHOULD act as the guiding principle for the behaviour. Essentially its about setting your stall out as to what your overarching approach to what your trying to achieve will be. It should marry-up with your culture and be underpinned by your values.

 For us…

Serious Fun - play with purpose, non-instructional and more to facilitate and question

Maximum touches of the ball

Rotation

Decision Making/Problem solving

Dominate 1v1 (with and without the ball)

-          Values (expectations) – These are the things that you feel are the most important principles or standards of behaviour. More specific than the philosophy. These will underpin and support your philosophy and do the most to drive behaviour and good habits.

-          Habits – These are routine behaviours that are regularly repeated and tend to occur subconsciously. They can be heavily affected by routine and environment.

`We are what you repeatedly do` - Aristotle

For us…
Its about trying to create an environment where the culture, philosophy and values provide the best possible opportunity to create positive habits.

Environment (culture, philosophy, values)

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This episode was brought to you in association with our friends at Soccer Coach Weekly.

Established since 2006, Soccer Coach Weekly is a leading source of inspiration and advice for all grassroots coaches. Join thousands of youth soccer coaches, just like you, saving time and effort in their goal of having the most effective, enjoyable and successful coaching journey for them and their players. – https://www.soccercoachweekly.net/

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoyed the episode!

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In our last episode we spoke about the key ingredients that can make for a fun and effective coaching session. We came up with 10 elements that we felt should be considered and tried to explain why we believed they were important. If you haven’t already done so please do listen to episode one and let us know what you think.

As equally important as what goes into the training, is what goes into the match days. So for this episode Mark and I are delighted to have the super talented and experienced Mr Chris Fraser joining us to share his thoughts on this key topic! Chris has been preparing players and teams for match days for over 10 years and we know he feels passionately about the rights and wrong ways of going about it. I’ve had the privilege of seeing Chris coach and manage teams on numerous occasions and am always blown-away by his technical understanding and the manner and style in which he communicates and delivers this with players, parents, coaches and all those he’s impacting. 

I also know that Chris is in his element on the training pitch or in a muddy field surrounded by players… so sat here with a mic in his face and a list of questions from Mark and I is very much out of his comfort zone….so we are extremely grateful he’s willing to do this for us and we know its because of how passionate you are about football, coaching and this topic especially!

Q) How important do you see matches and how should they `fit` alongside the training plan?

Q) What preparation and considerations should there be before match day?

- Squad selection for the season. Too many subs?

Q) What about match day itself, how would this look and what’s the objective?

- warm ups being as important as the matches

- Using cones to show formation (micro pitch)

- ball Mastery importance in a warm up

- competitive 1v1’s key in warm ups

- game related SSG in your warm up over a rondo

- team challenges 

- individual challenges 

- coaching with the players on sidelines

- appropriate language and code words for your players

- discipline of your players

- performance over results

Q) How important are formations?

Q) What about immediate after the match?

Q) What role do parents have to play in match days and how can we as coaches influence and support their involvement?

- Honesty with parents and players preseason regarding a match day philosophy

This episode was brought to you in association with our friends at Soccer Coach Weekly.

Established since 2006, Soccer Coach Weekly is a leading source of inspiration and advice for all grassroots coaches. Join thousands of youth soccer coaches, just like you, saving time and effort in their goal of having the most effective, enjoyable and successful coaching journey for them and their players. – https://www.soccercoachweekly.net/

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoyed the episode!

Send us Fan Mail

In this episode we discuss the ingredients that help make for a fun and effective soccer coaching training session. We explore the ten things to consider for your sessions that may help maximise the learning and development potential of the session, and ensure your players are challenged, enjoy and get the most out of the training.

1) PLANNING – Session plans / Structure / Challenges / STEP / Progression / The Unexpected

2) A CLEAR THEME - Coaching points / Curriculum / The Why / LTDP

3) FREE-PLAY – SSG’s / Ownership / Warm-up / Coach Observation

4) TECHNICAL WORK – Having strong fundamental skills / Opposed v’s Unopposed

5) PHYSICAL LITERACY – ABC’s / Embed or Separate

6) GAME BASED PRACTICES – SSG’s / Whole-Part-Whole / Constraints / Challenges

7) BALL ROLLING TIME – Why / How much (80%?) / How 

8) DECISION MAKING – Problems (not solutions) / Guided Discovery / Trial & Error

9) THE ENVIRONMENT – Culture / Philosophy / Values / Communication / Habits

10) REFLECT & REVIEW – Feedback / WWW / EBI / Repeat?

Here we have just discussed the ingredients, but in future episodes we will look closely at each element and discuss in more detail its importance and how it can form part of a soccer coaching session. If you have any thoughts or feedback on this topic, or if you have any ideas for future topics that you would like us to cover we would love to hear from you, [email protected] or @SoccerCoachCast.  

Thanks for listening!

This episode was brought to you in association with our friends at Soccer Coach Weekly.

Established since 2006, Soccer Coach Weekly is a leading source of inspiration and advice for all grassroots coaches. Join thousands of youth soccer coaches, just like you, saving time and effort in their goal of having the most effective, enjoyable and successful coaching journey for them and their players. – https://www.soccercoachweekly.net/

Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoyed the episode!