Wednesday 16 January 2013

Responding to change.

At a training session the other night at the velodrome we were using one of the pace bikes to do 500m sprint efforts. We had a good experienced coach that night , so when the motorbike broke he was prepared to change the course of the session. We were told to put smaller gears on so that we worked harder to keep the same pace and then the session was changed due to the fact that we no longer had the ability to do above max efforts. This reminded me for my own coaching how a good coach needs to be adaptable. Our coach would of course had his own plan for the night , but with the change in circumstances the session needed to be adapted but still needed to meet the target aims. This was a reminder that although it is good to create a session plan you must have more knowledge and ability than this. Anyone can read off a sheet and move through bullet points , but a good coach needs to think on their feet and react to situations quickly , so this was a good reminder to think of back up plans and alternate methods / sessions for the future.
Not preparing is preparing to fail.

Assessment practical

A few weeks ago we ran a session for some of our fellow class mates , the session was in order for us to analyse ourselves on our coaching approach and methods.
Our session was a looking at some of the basic fundamental skills of sport , we used throwing and catching activities without definite guidelines which would allow participants to create their own styles of throwing and catching. Of course the participants we were working with already have the skills , but this session was designed for a younger group who were beginning to learn basic motion skills. Learning skills such as catching are something we take for granted at an older age , but they have been developed through a constant process of learning , using skills such a hand eye co-ordination skills and with some of the games we all so introduced all so developing spacial awareness aspects of peoples game , which again is something that cant really be taught directly but instead is something that when given the opportunity people will begin to develop on their own.
Our session went well , we used eight participants for a twenty minute session , in which we gave them the freedom to express their own passing skills at many opportunities with out giving them a set way in which we expected them to perform. We started with a basic warm up exercise , with them in pairs , using a bit of a directive approach to organizing the participants so that they were attentive and could be informed of the session ahead. We supported the participants during the warm up if they had any problems or questions as well as reminding them to try and vary their passing. Then we progressed on to our activity which was a game situation using numerous types of ball again to encourage variety in the throwing motion. It was a invasion based game where participants had to pass the ball to a partner player within a certain boundary. At many times during the session we stooped the game and did a lot of question and answers as to why the certain things happened during the game , giving advice and suggesting solutions to the players game , before letting them continue with play. Overall the session went well and by giving them a few pointers we could soon see them consciously looking for space and attempting more advanced passes rather than the basic under / over arm. The session was run with older participants but the whole group agreed it would work well with a much younger age group as the progression was down to the participants rather than the coach.