Thread by @adamgdavidson

🧵Session design thread:

I spent some time today researching and thinking about how we, as an academy, might step away from session planning paradigms that are underpinned by task decomposition - where coaches decide the theme, break the session up in to fragments [continued]

and decide how long each part will be and their sequential order - towards a more flexible and adaptable approach to planning, that champions task simplification (please see the wonderful work of @ShakeyWaits ). [continued]

It’s easy to understand how decomposition of the overall process might be favourable for novice coaches because it affords control by way of compartmentalising skilled behaviour into categories that can be selected, designed, delivered and ticked off as the [continued]

season progresses. However, we want to encourage our coaches to move away from theme-based sessions towards a more learner-environment centred approach underpinned by principles of play; where the coach is tasked with being more flexible and [continued]

adaptive in the planning and modification of practice. I understand the considerable demand this places upon the coach, especially those who are inexperienced, so I’ve defined some guidelines to facilitate a reconceptualisation of the coaches role as a designer [continued]

/ play-maker, and the radical change this brings to culturally dominant planning paradigms.

Working across a range of age groups presents its own unique set of challenges - particularly when you are trying to create guidelines for young coaches to work from. [continued]

We want to avoid having different session plan structures for each age group / program and instead introduce the concept of dials that can either be tuned up or down depending on the age/capacities of learners. [continued]

My question to other coaches is whether you find these guidelines easy to (a) understand, (b) design sessions around. Special thanks to @JimiVaughan & @markstkhlm who’s pioneering work on player learning in development framework at AIK is a major source of inspiration to me.

For those interested in doing some extra reading on this - footblogball.wordpress.com is great place to start.

Seems like a relevant post to add to this thread and overall discussion. Thanks for sharing @TheS_Resource . It raises some interesting points - “training is to simplify football” “several actions should not be separated”. Looks like a shift away from isolated activities.

https://twitter.com/thes_resource/status/1538094384490635266

There’s been some engagement and +ve discourse around the topics in this thread - not everyone in agreement with the concepts, but counter-arguments always respectfully delivered. Figured it could be something that @SundayShare10 coaches might like to weigh in on #SundayShare