All coaches no matter what level they’re currently at will experience changes to their sessions at the last minute. Some of these changes may be player numbers, field space or even poor weather conditions.
A handful of other challenges coaches may face are a lack of player motivation, or a very common one being your well training activities not going to plan.
In today’s article I want to share with you three top-tips that can help you to deal with the unexpected scenarios which may occur at your next training session.
1) ALWAYS use arrival activities when players arrive at your session.
At the Coaches Training Room I like to teach coaches to start each session with a juggling/kick up challenge as their players start arriving.
When you use arrival activities at the start of each session it will allow you a chance to observe and assess how your players are doing and what mood they are in before the session begins.
If your players are of an older age then you can teach them to organize the activity themselves – this can work well as it gives players a little bit of responsibility. An idea for an arrival activity could be small sided games as your players start arriving to your session.
When you have an arrival activity in place this will help you get an idea of your player numbers, the attitude of the group on the day, the equipment you will need for the session and the space you have available. It’s important that you make any changes to your session before your players come into you and before you start the actual session.
2) Don’t focus too much on having a balanced or even numbered amount of players.
After working with many coaches over the past few years one thing many of them focus too much on is having even numbers at their sessions. I’ve worked with some coaches who have even canceled training sessions when they don’t have equal numbers of players to play 5v5, 6v6 or 8v8 (which sounds ridiculous but it does happen).
I want you not to worry too much about not having even numbers for your training session. If you’ve planned your session for 5v5, instead I want you to try 5v4 and explain to your players situations in games where you may be outnumbered in defense.
