Monday 8^th October

Brazilian Soccer Schools

Year 5/6

Session 5

Having reflected upon last weeks session and highlighting factors such as individualism within the group, I have decided to devise a warm up drill that is very co-operative and very much so a group task. The effectiveness of group tasks relate to intergroup dynamics. Alderfer (1983) suggests that three dynamic affecting this are cognition, leadership and behavior. I provide leadership but I must gain the behavior and cognition form the players; two areas I feel are important to work on and get right. Cognition is a very broad term and important in skill acquisition, it denotes both conscious and unconscious thought processes (Nutten et al 1981). Prior to the warm up I decided to indicate to the whole group that I will not succumb to individualism amongst the group; it can be defined, as stated by Moberg and Piedmont (2003), as any behavior which deviates away from social norms, however in contrast Gannon (2001) states individualism as an extent to which a person will take without considering or being influenced by group norms. This gives two lights to individualism, the first suggests that the individuals are purposely disruptive because they do not want to cooperate and the second suggests they are individuals as they are not influenced by group behavior. Individualists find it hard to perform group tasks, therefore we do not want this to happen within our collective (Earley 1993). I feel it is essential for young players to socialize as a team rather than becoming individualist and as a coach I am dedicated to do so with each and every one of the players in my group, this coincides with Sabock’s (1973) research into qualities of a coach. The warm up I have devised involves several cones surrounding a central cone; each player has a cone of their own and begins on the cone until my instruction. The players will perform a variety of dynamic movements and stretches during the warm up, as they continue to move around the drill in the same manner. Little and Williams (2006) found that static stretching does not appear detrimental to high speed performance, however dynamic stretching was found to be the most effective for soccer players as preparation. The direction in which the players will move around the circle is as follows in the diagram below.

The players really enjoyed this active warm up and I feel that it allows the players to concentrate on the task without the need for disruptive conversations amongst themselves. Active warm ups are also more beneficial in helping to improve muscular power (Racinais, Blonc, Hue 2005). I found this warm up allowed me to give the players clear instruction and communicate with each other to perform the task well. “Teams that are characterise with high levels of communication also have high levels of performance effectiveness.” (Hardy, Burke and Crace 2005). I had each player shouting “in” when they were moving in towards the middle and “out” when they were moving to the outside. They really enjoyed the vocal aspect of this and it helped them to focus on the task in a co-operative manner; as intended.

I began the core work statically with each player posted on their cone. I wanted to do this at the beginning of the core work to gain the intensity from the players that I wished. In this format it allowed me to gain a visual on each player and monitor their work rates. If I felt a player was dropping to a comfortable intensity then I just called their name to get an increase. Many studies show that young athletes participate for many reason’s, skill development and fun are just two of them (Frederick, Ryan 1993). Taking note of this it seems obvious that these are two areas I must cover in my sessions to keep players motivated. Vallerand (1983) stated that by providing positive verbal feedback, players gain a higher sense of competence and also intrinsic motivation; this is another way I feel I can increase motivation and that leads to work rate. According to Fitts and Posner (1967) the acquisition of psychomotor skills occurs in 3 stages, cognitive, associative and autonomous; if we can get players to work at a harder rate than maybe they can cope with then eventually they will adapt to this intensity and become more proficient from it.; I feel the more you practice or increase work rate then more likely it will become that the players will progress through the stages of learning. However there are many theories on skill one of which proposed by Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) they suggest that we go through five developmental stages instead of 3. Which ever theory is correct we do not know, but what we can begin to understand as coaches that there is a definite progression. I feel in order to gain the best from my players I need to use all the information on skill acquisition I can as it is all relevant; by doing this we are able understand how skill can be acquired and develop drills that coincide with research.

Today’s main session objective was to begin combating the individualism that has protruded in previous sessions, and in terms of this I feel the session went well. I created drills that required the players to work as a team in order for the drills to work effectively. I feel by continuing to devise drills like this it helps to actively promote team work and unity. Carron et al (2002) established a link between task cohesiveness and team success; they found that the more cohesive a group then the more likely they will be to succeed.

Alderfer,C. P (1983). An Intergroup Perspective on Group Dynamics. Yale Univ New Haven Ct School of Organization And Management. [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 15:10hrs]

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA135582

Carron, A.V, Bray, S.R, Eys, M.A (2002). Team Cohesion and Team Success in Sport. Journal of Sports Sciences, Volume 20, Issue 2, pages 119 – 126. [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 15:55hrs] http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713776579~db=all

Dreyfus, S.E, Dreyfus, H.L (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. California Univ Berkeley Operations Research Center. [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 15:25hrs]

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA084551

Earley, P.C (1993). East Meets West Meets Mideast: Further Explorations of Collectivistic and Individualistic Work Groups. The Academy of Management Journal, Vol. 36, No. 2, (pp. 319-348) [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 16:05hrs]

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-4273(199304)36%3A2%3C319%3AEMWMMF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-N

Fitts, P.M, Posner, M.I (1967). Human Performance. Brooks/Cole

Frederick, C.M, Ryan, R,M (1993). Differences in Motivation for Sport and Exercise and Their Relations with Participation and Mental Health. Journal of Sport Behavior, Vol. 16 [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 16:40hrs] http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5002195225

Gannon, M.J (2001) Working Across Cultures: Applications and Exercise. Sage

Hardy, Burke and Crace (2005) cited in: Murphy, S.M (2005). The Sport Psych Handbook. Human Kinetics

Little, T, Williams, A.G (2006). Effects of differential stretching protocols during warm-ups on high speed motor capacities in professional soccer players. Journal of strength and conditioning research, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 203-7 [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 15:35hrs]

http://e-space.openrepository.com/e-space/handle/2173/3519

Moberg, D.O, Piedmont, R.L (2001). Research in the Social Scientific Study of Religion. BRILL

Nuttin, J, Ydewalle, G, Lens, W, Atkinson, J.W (1981). Cognition in Human Motivation and Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates

Racinais, S, Blonc, S, Hue, O (2005). Effects of Active Warm-up and Diurnal Increase in Temperature on Muscular Power. Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. 37(12):2134-2139 [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 15:15hrs]

http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/re/msse/abstract.00005768-200512000-00018.htm;jsessionid=H35dylLXTScd9H2V1qnrhL25sHhV7TGSGMhLGQf6B53JJg7CjJr5!901085598!181195628!8091!-1

Sabock, R.J (1973) The Coach. Saunders

Vallerand, R.J (1983). The Effect of Differential Amounts of Positive Verbal Feedback on the Intrinsic Motivation of Male Hockey Players. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, Vol 5, Iss. 1 [online] [Accessed 30^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs] https://www.humankinetics.com/JSEP/viewarticle.cfm?aid=8171

Monday 1st October

Brazilian Soccer Schools

Year 5/ Year 6

Session 4

In this weeks session there were two factors I really wanted to focus on, mainly the paired work but also the juggling work. We are progressing at a good rate with our juggling, however the players can still work hard at home and spend around an hour a day practising. Murphy (1995) refers to the coach as being “responsible for developing players’ sport specific skills”; and also states that a coach must sufficiently motive their players, it requires a maximal effort in order gain the most from training. If we get this work rate from our players I feel we will eventually be able to receive the ball from any angle, at any height and with any part of the foot and bring it under control. When performing the juggling task I ensured that the player had their knees slightly bent and on there toes in order to receive the ball with each touch under control (Davids 2002). The way we coach at BSS is very skill based, therefore as a coach I try my best to understand how skill is acquired in young people. After reading research by Sun et al (2001) I found that adopting a bottom-up approach toward skill work with younger children is best as there sessions generally involve a low skill level to begin with which involves more procedural knowledge. There are however more traditional views of skill acquisition suggesting that there are three stages of learning. This was suggested by Fitts (1964) when he defined the three stages as the cognitive, the associative and the autonomous. Cognitive being the novice through to the autonomous being the expert. I want to create a learning environment within our sessions that stimulates players to progress through the stages of learning by utilising our core drills and drill progressions. An autonomous performer performs skills with little or no conscious thought or attention (Fitts and Posner 1967). I want my players to reach this level of skilfulness, however not every person will reach this level of performance. But as a coach, I can only help direct my players, a lot comes down to the players themselves and I feel a little is down to genetics, such as speed or height, but I feel players that work hard on developing skill can do so. I feel we can achieve this if I can help to instil a strong locus of causality within the players in my group. By doing this they will become intrinsically motivated to work hard at our drills away from our sessions (Deci, Ryan 1985). McClelland (1951) proposed that “there are at least two kinds of achievement motivation, one which appears to be orientated around avoiding failure and the other around the more positive goal of attaining success” (p.206) I want to steer my players towards the direction of attaining success rather than avoiding failure. If we have this strive for success amongst our group it can only stimulate players.

After performing various juggling combinations, we then moved onto the paired work spending 20 minutes on varied activities. I broke this section down to three sub-sections spending 10 minutes on paired juggling and 10 minutes passing. I stressed to the players that in this section it needs co-operation with one another. Surridge and Murphy (1999) stated that in order to share materials in drills players must be co-operative in order to learn. I have had trouble in the past with players passing the ball either too hard or poorly to one another. Players then argue between each other. I want this to become eradicated so I will continue to do paired work and stress the fact we must be co-operative. In order to achieve goals we must cooperate with one another to further our learning. In order to get the best out of cooperative learning we must overcome individualism (Johnson 1994). Goodger (1986) suggests that sport groups can be weakened by individualism and although our training is very so much individual skill based, at times we are required to work in pairs or small groups to achieve a group goal. Therefore individualism cannot be accepted when we are doing group work. This is an issue within our group as there are certain characters that divert attention away from the group and upon themselves. I need to do my best to work on this and encourage a team based environment. This was particularly present in this week’s session therefore an underlying objective in next weeks session will be to encourage team work and team cohesion.

Bibliography

Davids, K. (2002). Interceptive Actions in Sport: Information and Sport. Routledge

Deci, E.L. Ryan, R.M. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self determination in human behaviour. Taylor and Francis

Fitts (1964) Cited in: Zimmerman, B.J (1997) Phases in Self-Regulation: Shifting from Process Goals to Outcome Goals. Anastasia Kitsantas; Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 89 [online] [Accessed 17th Dec 2007, 20:55] http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst;jsessionid=HnjfbzKh4JHfpkNFpysyVspyhTRQMn8CnyLwvk5D7m0W2dz5Gb71!1145343898?docId=96447858

Fitts, P.M, Posner, M.I (1967). Human Performance. Brooks/Cole Pub.Co

Goodger, J (1986). Ritual Solidarity and Sport. Acta Sociologica, Vol. 29, No. 3, 219-224 [online] [Accessed 16^th Dec 2007, 20:53hrs] http://asj.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/29/3/219

Johnson, D.W (1994). The New Circles of Learning: Cooperation in the Classroom and School. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1250 N. Pitt Street, Alexandria, VA 22314. [online] [Accessed 16^th Dec 2007, 20:15hrs] http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED369146&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=ED369146

McClelland, D.C (1951). Measuring Motivation in Phantasy: The achievement motive. In H Guetzkow (Ed.) Groups, Leadership and men, pp. 191-205. Pittsburgh, PA: Carnegie Press. Cited in: Elliot, A.J, Harackiewicz, J.M (1996). Approach and Avoidance Achievement Goals and Intrinsic Motivation: A Mediational Analysis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 70, No. 3, 461-475 [online] [Accessed 16^th Dec 2007, 20:15hrs] http://www.psych.rochester.edu/research/apav/publications/documents/1996_ElliotHarackiewicz_ApproachandAvoidanceAchievementGoalsandIntrinsicMotivation.pdf

Murphy, S.M. (1995). Sport Psychology Interventions. Human Kinetics

Sun, R, Merrill, E, Peterson, T (2001). From implicit skills to explicit knowledge: a bottom-up model of skill learning. Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 25, No. 2, Pages 203-244 [online] [Accessed 16^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs]

http://www.leaonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15516709cog2502_2

Surridge, G, Murphy, B. (1999). Sport Readiness. Good Year Books

Monday 24^th September

Brazilian Soccer Schools

Year 5/ Year 6

Session 3

I began this week’s session with a longer talk at the start than usual, there were particular little issues that I wanted to control in order to gain a higher intensity form the players. Lippitt (1999) suggests that leadership helps maintain control and focus. I felt it was essential to establish leadership from the start thus the reason for my talk highlighting issues, giving direction and also maintaining attention of the players to emphasise my authority from the beginning. After reading publications by Lyle, I have also predominantly tried to utilise a humanistic style of coaching which is defined by Lyle as

“…. a person centred philosophy or ideology which emphasis the empowerment of the individual towards achieving personal goals within a facilitative interpersonal relationship.” (Lyle, 2002)

Tham, Werner (2005) suggests it is important as an educator to build a rapport with students. I will adopt this ideology and utilise it as a coach and player relationship. I agree building a rapport is important as it allows the coach to speak on a personal level as well as a professional level to the players. A coach-player rapport also helps reduce resistance in terms of behavioural issues (Murphy, Valdez 2005). I will begin to implement these factors prior mentioned into my sessions as the week’s progress and hopefully gain a good response from the players.

I was pleased with the overall work ethic with players this week, specifically in the core work and the juggling. These are two areas that we must continue to progress with in order to improve our individual skills. VanLehn (1996) suggests that the initial stages of skill acquisition involve collecting and interacting pieces of knowledge, whilst the final stages with practise help increase speed and accuracy. In addition to this Wade (1997) states that skill involves judgement, and as a coach we must help players to make the correct selection from a number of action options. Therefore I must implement drills that will help bring the correct decision from inside of the players. I feel we are making great progress with our juggling however if players work harder at home we will be able to improve beyond limits. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) portray five stages of development in acquiring skill novice, competence, proficiency, expertise and mastery in order to progress through these stages Capana et al (2005) suggest that practising a skill over and over will allow the intensity of the skill to be increased as the duration of the skill being performed will become shorter, allowing players to repeat more moves in a shorter amount of time. In BSS we stress to our players that repetition is the key to becoming more skilful. We have a player in our soccer schools that is a testament to this methodology, he recently achieved 4785 juggles with the ball taking him over an hour to complete, being only 9 I think this is incredible.

After my 1 v 1 drill going wrong last week, I decided to make it as simple and basic as possible in order to reach the coaching objectives I intended to. I had two players, a defender and an attacker, the defender players the ball into the attacker and then close’s the attacker down. The attacker bursts into the ball with speed and takes the ball on the move and then it becomes a 1 v 1 situation. By setting this drill up it removed the need for me to coach the pass. Bonaccarso (2001) suggests 1 v 1’s are a “real game” situation as you often come up against a man that you may have to beat or defend against; Vickers (2007) studied perception, cognition and decision training and suggested that 1 v 1 situations in soccer are important especially in set pieces, this is a key area for us to work on. I feel the players are moving in the right direction in this area and I feel it will help our players to flourish with their individual skills and use them under pressure. When we become proficient in 1 v 1 then we can move onto 2 v 2, 3 v 3 and so on.

Bonaccarso, S. (2001) Coaching Soccer 10 to 15 Year Olds: Planning Technical and Tactical Training. Reedswain Inc

Capanna, R, Oneto, M, Ferrera, G. (2004). Total Soccer Coaching: Combining Physical, Technical and Tactical Training. Reedswain Inc

Dreyfus, S.E, Dreyfus, H.L (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. No Obvious Publisher [online] [Accessed 12^th Dec 2007, 19:15hrs]

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA084551

Lippitt, M. (1999). Lessons in leadership. Training & Development, 53 (3),18-42

Lyle, J (2002). Sports Coaching Concepts: A Framework for Coaches' Behaviour. UK: Routledge.

Murphy, M, Valdez C (2005). Ravaging Resistance: A Model for Building Rapport in a Collaborative Learning Classroom. Radical Pedegogy [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs]

http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue7_1/murphy-valdez.html

Tham, C.M, Werner, J.M (2005). Designing and Evaluating E-Learning in Higher Education: A Review and Recommendations. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies; vol. 11: pp. 15 - 25. [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs]

http://jlo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/2/15

VanLehn, K (1996). Cognitive Skill Acquisition. Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 47: 513-539 [online] [Accessed 13^th Dec 2007, 14:15hrs]

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.47.1.513

Vickers, J.N (2007). Perception, Cognition and Decision Training: The Quiet Eye Action. Human Kinetics.

Wade, A. (1997). Principles of Effective Coaching. Reedswain Inc

Monday 10^th September

Brazilian Soccer Schools

Year 5/ Year 6

Session 2

The object of this session was to concentrate on another “move to beat players” move using core moves to build up to the full move. I planned this move to be enjoyable to learn as research from Bengoechea et al (2004) found that the acquisition of skill is made easier for young people when they find it fun and enjoyable to learn. The move was the “roll over Emerson chop” a move that Christiano Ronaldo uses very frequently. The ball is rolled across the front of the body using the sole of the weak foot and then chopped across the body behind the standing leg with the inside of the stronger foot. The “Emerson chop” is used frequently in our sessions and the majority of players can perform it. However the combination I want them to work towards is slightly more complex but much more effective in beating your man.

I began the session with an introduction talking to the players about how I felt the previous session went and areas a feel we could improve upon from the last session. Reflection on prior coaching sessions at the beginning of a session is essential in order to progress. It allows the coach to highlight issues they were happy and also unhappy with, plus gain a good level of communication from the start (Hargreaves 1990). I felt the best way I can do this is through adopting a humanistic style of coaching throughout my sessions (Lyle 2002), Hemery (1988) also suggests this person centered method of coaching is a good way of building coach-athlete relationships. I also gave the players an insight to areas we would be covering and used the game play, which is generally their favourite, as a reward for hard work. The harder they work the longer they receive in game play. I feel by using this method during the session I can gain a slight increase in intensity just by saying “I feel we can work harder here, remember the harder we work the more time we get in game play.” Stratton (2004) states that by having an incentive to work hard it increases work rate and maintains good behaviour. In addition to this Mageau and Vallerand (2003) suggest that a coach’s behaviour can nurture athletes and develop players both intrinsic motivation and self determined extrinsic motivation. An aim of mine coaching this group is to develop intrinsic motivation amongst the players as it is an important mental factor in working hard away from our sessions which is fundamental to our work at BSS.

I wanted to create a 1 v 1 drill that focussed on the run of the forward player in which they would ark their run; Bloomfield et al (2007) observed that strikers endure a lot of swerving runs throughout a match which supports Komelink’s (2000) findings. He stated that it is the best practice for a forward player to arch his run when closing down defenders; I designed a drill that I felt was adequate, however when it came down to organising and performing the drill it became difficult. I think I under estimated the difficulty of the drill and instead of coaching the run of the forward I ended up coaching the pass at each section of the drill. This drill was enjoyed by the players however I didn’t reach the objectives I wanted to through it. I feel by doing some similar passing drills we will be able to re-visit the 1v1 drill and gain great benefits from it. I wanted to create a situation that allowed us to pass the ball to a new player each time and move out of space into a new space, as Daniel (2004) stated this is the most effective way of penetration of a defence; in addition to this Holt et al (2006) found that tactical development was directly transferred from small sided drills into full game play, this being another reason for the 1v1 drills.

Bibliography

Bengoechea, E.G, Strean, W.B, Williams, D.J (2004). Understanding and promoting fun in youth sport: coaches' perspectives. Physical Education & Sport Pedagogy, Volume 9, Issue 2, pages 197 – 214 [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 16:50hrs] http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713997385?words=part%7cwhole%7cskill&hash=1176422433

Bloomfield, J, Polman, R, O’Donoghue, P (2007). Physical demands of different positions in FA Premier League soccer. Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, 6, 63 - 70 [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 15:45hrs]

http://jssm.org/vol6/n1/8/v6n1-8pdf.pdf

Daniel, J (2004). The complete Guide to Coaching Soccer Systems and Tactics, Reedswain Inc

Hargreaves, A (1990). Skills and Strategies for Coaching Soccer. Human Kinetics

Hemery, D (1988) The Pursuit of Sporting Excellence: A Study of Sport's Highest Achievers. Human Kinetics

Holt, J, Ward, P, Wallhead, T (2006). The transfer of learning from play practices to game play in young adult soccer players. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, Volume 11, Number 2, pp. 101-118(18) [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/cpes/2006/00000011/00000002/art00001

Kormelink H (2000). Dutch Soccer Drills: 180 Practice Drills for Developing Creative, Attacking Soccer. Reedswain Inc

Lyle, J (2002). Sports Coaching Concepts: A Framework Coaches’ Behaviour. Routledge

Mageau, G, Vallerand, R (2003). The coach-athlete relationship: a motivational model. Journal of Sports Sciences, Volume 21, Number 11, pp. 883-904(22) [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 18:25hrs] http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tandf/rjsp/2003/00000021/00000011/art00002

Stratton, G (2004). Youth Soccer: From Science to Performance. Routledge