Well, how exactly does your sports coach plan his coaching session?
No matter which sport you play, there are certain basic building blocks for a coaching session that your coach is following. Let us see how they do it.
Warm ups: Warming the body and getting the player ready for the activity is key to avoid injuries and to get better performance in that activity. Typical general warmups include head to toe rotations to prep the various muscle groups, pumping up the heart beat in anticipation of the intensity that is going to follow, stretching the muscle groups where there is going to be push and pull involved, etc..
Fitness: Generally it is common practice to include some elements of physical fitness into your training and just before the coach plans to inculcate technical skills. This is generally the practice in grass root level and amateur level sport. Whereas in elite level coaching sessions, there tend to be different coaches focussing on the physical fitness and the technical skills elements. The coach may choose to focus on various aspects of fitness such as endurance, flexibility, agility, as per the coaching plan that she has prior prepared.
Technical drills: The actual skills required in the particular sport are practiced in a controlled setting as envisaged by the coach. The drills required to develop the skill is pre planned by the coach and the drills progress in increasing level of difficulty as the player is picking up the skill. Examples of controlling the setting could for example in the case of tennis is as follows. For kids beginning with tennis, the coach might prefer to use a ball with less pressure to help gain control of the shot and to reduce the ball bounce so that the kid can reach easier. Similarly the court size could be made smaller so that the child has less ground to cover. Examples of increasing level of difficulty in drills could be for example, in the case of football be as follows. The trainee might first be just expected to carry the ball through some minimal obstacles and then progress to a zig zag pattern with more obstacles initially. And then later introduce one opponent defender and perhaps even two opponent defenders trying to snatch the ball away, as the player gains confidence. The coach shall plan different skills required and their progression drills as per his coaching plans.
Game play: The coach would give some time to practice the drills in an actual game setting. This mostly will not be a full match but rather controlled with limited time, space, number of players, complexity etc.. The focus here is to ensure that the players are using the right techniques that they have just learnt. The coach occasionally might also decide to give a full match day practice as the need arises, especially when the team is preparing for a tournament etc..
Cool down: It is important to bring the coaching session to an end with a proper cool down which includes stretching the various muscle groups to avoid buildup of lactic acid causing stiffness. Also it is an opportunity to let the heart rate and blood pressure slowly return to normal rate instead of a sudden stoppage.
Review or recap: The coach might choose to do a performance review of the player where she discusses what aspects the player is doing good versus where there is room for improvement. It is also a chance to talk about the other crucial elements for overall performance such as nutrition, sleep and mental strength of the athlete.
At CoachDirect, we follow structured coaching plans including the above basic building blocks to ensure our sessions are covering all important aspects and aid the players in improving their overall performance.
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