Coach Education Presentations

If you enjoy my content and want to express gratitude, I would be so happy if you made a contribution towards my Argentina trip in the summer of 2021. The plan is to go there for four weeks and look at everything football, development, coaching, and culture. Any amount helps. I won't be upset if you ignore this message, as I produce this content purely for the enjoyment of it. Here is the link: http://fnd.us/c1en5f?ref=sh_98yL48


Howdy folks.

Here's some Dropbox links to download some coach education presentations I did at my previous club.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jhkl100x5nie5hr/Coach%20Ed%202017%20September%2024.pptx?dl=0

September 17th 2017. Talk about the basics of session design, a brief bit on how to look at video games for inspiration on how to layer progressions, examples from the practice continuum of constant - variable - random. After this, I took the coaches through some of the exercises and drills, to give them an understanding of the level of engagement. They did not enjoy the passing line game. Enjoyment isn't the only factor, as we can teach passing in far more realistic and beneficial ways. Manipulate the constraints to increase the chances of your desired outcomes from happening, and don't remove the thought, skill, move etc. from the context of the game in which it is used.

Sometimes the presentations download with the videos. This one also has audio, as I took the hours required to narrate the whole thing for the coaches who missed the session.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/c18zwzkax7iicnm/Coach%20Ed%202017%20October%2029.pptx?dl=0

October 29th 2017. This next piece elaborates more on September, going into the theory and how to utilise teaching games for understanding for football. Narrated again for coaches who missed it. My graphics also got better. It then finishes with the Student's Prayer:

'Don't impose on me what you know,
I want to explore the unknown
And be the source of my own discoveries.
Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery.
The world of your truth can be my limitation;
Your wisdom my negation.
Don't instruct me; let's walk together.
Let my richness begin where yours ends.
Show me so that I can stand
On your shoulders.
Reveal yourself so that I can be
Something different.
You believe that every human being
Can love and create.
I understand, then, your fear
When I asked you to live according to your wisdom.
You will not know who I am
By listening to yourself.
Don't instruct me; let me be
Your failure is that I be identical to you.

The point of this being that the majority of people I was working with were joystick coaches. There's room for implicit and explicit instructions, as well as all other methods of coaching delivery. The problem I had with them was that they only barked orders, and the orders were nonsense like "hustle" and "get there." Most of the kids I saw at the club didn't love football. They enjoyed it to different degrees, but there wasn't that burning desire to be a footballer. I believed much of that was down to the coaches and the environment that was at the club. To be fair, it's like that at most clubs I observed. The child's experience should be the primary factor that drives all else we do.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mtrk7o87uqt1o93/Coach%20Ed%202018%20November%20Futsal.pptx?dl=0

Initially shared in November 2017. This version was revamped for our new breakaway club that we formed the following year. It comes without narration, but a lot of GIFS, videos, and animations. It shows how we want to play futsal at our club, and is aimed at those with very little knowledge or experience of the sport

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9uy6551eqfp2qkt/Coach%20Ed%202018%20March%2025%20Managing%20Parents.pptx?dl=0

This was from March 25th 2018. It was only a short one, aimed at managing parents. A few helpful slides and videos. Some teams at our club were fine, others were a bunch of hooligans. It was a struggle to get everyone on the same page, mainly because many couldn't see the problem with their parents acting the way they were.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/t3ci636jsnuckfx/Coach%20Ed%202018%20February%20Leadership.pptx?dl=0

Dished out in February 2018. I also used part of this with some of my players and parents to establish a culture of leadership and accountability within the teams. This presentation focuses on leadership, and how we help our players to develop those skills. It's a heavy one, with lots of videos. Leadership isn't always the loudest player barking orders, so I look into ways that everyone can contribute and be a leader. As someone who is socially awkward and reserved, I may not fit the description one has of a leader, but I am. And just so you know, on the slide that talks about ability = potential - interference, those coloured dots represent interference. I have to state this, because this presentation comes with no narration.

7v7
9v9
11v11

The above links were in regards to our playing style. In there, I show the topics, the methodology, the formation, and for good measure, examples from top European clubs. It all fell on deaf ears. "But those teams can play that way because they have good players" was their response. I don't know how to help you. And it was evident after the first couple presentations that I couldn't help them.

Hope that these may be of some use to you. Sometimes the whole presentation loads, sometimes only part of it (meaning without the videos or narrations). I suggest you don't view or preview on Dropbox, but instead download the thing fully to a laptop that uses PowerPoint. If you are struggling to get some of the videos or audio to work, message me directly, and I will see if I can help out another way.

Truly mind blowing to me how much this was ignored. Only a couple took the red pill. It still shocks me the amount of self-proclaimed coaches there were that supposedly taught kids how to do things, who themselves were resistant to learning. After saying no laps, I swear we'd see more laps, like they were offended we told them to be better. No lines, and again, two kids would play while fourteen waited. Why was it not getting through to them? But judging by the numbers we had at these meetings, so few cared. I made all this available online on a messageboard for us. As the admin, I saw how few views our resources were getting. Even the booklet I made and passed round to each coach to make their lives easier was ignored.

And it's not like they had an alternative. These coaches didn't have their own coherent playing style they prefered to ours. They weren't using a tried and tested curriculum they used previously that they believed in. None of that. They were simply making it up on the spot, and shouting a load of nonsense at the kids. Our kids deserve better, especially if we are making them show up three times a week, and guilt tripping their parents into spending thousands of dollars on their child's "development."

As you can tell, I'm not bitter about it. Just like with my recent piece on the curriculum booklet, and my other piece on the frequently used exercises, I expect the content of this article to benefit hundreds more strangers on the internet that I will never meet, than people within my own club that they paid (or didn't, in the end, which is a big part of why we left) a lot of money to our organisation for us to implement this stuff.

Keep hustlin'.