Changes to training sessions after my FA Coaching course

Regular readers will know that I have recently been on a football coaching course delivered by the Durham FA. I encourage anyone that is interested in football to get along to one of these courses as it gives a great structure to the way you watch and understand football as well as giving you a valuable skill that you can apply.

I have used some of the key points in the course to change the way that I coach my players when it comes around to training sessions on a Wednesday evening. Here are the changes that I have made as part o the learning of my FA Level 1 Coaching course-

Arrival activity
This was  major pain when I started coaching. I was waiting for a all the players to arrive and be ready for training. Some would arrive 15 minutes early while others would be up to 10 minutes late for various reasons. So there could be a 25 minute gap between first to arrive and last to arrive. I used to start the training session on time and then those that were late would just filter in as they arrived. This was disjointed and caused a little chaos. Arrival activities are playing with the ball in games that can be scaled up as more players arrive. Passing with 2 people can become passing with 6; a match with 1 v 1 can quickly upscale to 5 v 5 if needed. These arrival activities means that everyone is involved as soon as they arrive and we don't see the disruption that might happen otherwise.

Progressions
This was a major part of the course and it concerns taking your players along a journey with a particular drill or set of drills to get them better in one or more areas of the game. Take passing, for example, you may have a dill set up to get your players passing. After a few minutes, a few weeks or longer hey become very good at this particular drill. So you need to change it up to make it more difficult for them to achieve success. As this gets more and more difficult and your players get better and better, the progressions that you put in have helped to challenge them and up their skill level. The progression need to be planned out in advance so you can see where you are going with it and how you will give your players the next challenge. This talk of planning leads on to...

Plan, do, review
This is the way that the FA want their coaches to deliver the training they give to their teams. It is part of the England DNA that I have written about before. You are expected to spend as much time planning your training sessions as you do delivering them, and again the same amount of time on reviewing how they went. This means that you are in total control of the way that you want your players to develop and progress. You plan out what each training session looks like and how this fits into the long-term plan for your set of players.