We post another article to assist our club coaches / players and any other keen Rugby League followers with the aim to continually improve our sport: From RLCM Coachtalk The Coach & Planning Have you ever been mid-season and wondered why everything suddenly seemed to go wrong? Why you were responding to every individual challenge and problem and left with no time to think long term? It is a problem that faces many coaches, and is down to a lack of proper long term planning. Often a coach realises in the middle of a season that he did not have a long term plan to manage the season - this can be damaging to your team, even if your skills training and physical coaching are top notch. Learning to plan and prepare for a season is a crucial skill for a coach to pick up. The pre-season period is where most of your planning will be done, when you will not have the same pressures of an upcoming game every week, and you have time to reflect and consider. A useful way to structure your coaching for the season is around the so-called ‘pyramid of levels, where different skills receive differing priorities, depending on the age group you are dealing with. For example, basic skills of coordination and agility are the most important to teach to very young players. For older teenage players, it is more important to concentrate on core skills for positional play, and more technical skills. Elite players will then concentrate on the highest level of the pyramid, including game sense, decision making and advanced skills. One of the biggest challenge to a coach over a season is the team hitting a ‘plateau, where they start to level off in terms of skills and improvements. Naturally, most players arrive at the start of the season bright eyed and bushy tailed, eager to get a good start to the season. However, a few months in, the repetition and the strain of playing and competing can start to get to the player and their performances may drop off and the teams season stall. This is equivalent to what marathon runners know as ‘hitting the wall, and can be very demoralising, considering that a season of rugby league is like an endurance game in itself. To avoid the worst effects of the plateau, you should allow time for your players to rest and recover. A simple one week gap from training can work wonders for rejuvenating your players. Again, it is crucial that this is planned for before the season starts, to make sure you can fit everything in even with this gap. Have a plan for how training will advance and come together over blocks of a few weeks. It is not enough just to decide week to week what to do in training - this is a recipe for an incoherent plan that will not best serve your players and their bodies. Try and stick to an overall plan - here are three you might like to use: • The Wave This involves gradually building up and bringing down the level of intensity of training, as well as the sheer volume. The gradually varying intensity over the weeks allows you to plan towards big games while not pushing your players too hard other weeks. • The Step Up/ Step Down In this scenario, training is built up in intensity and volume over the weeks, before a sharp, temporary decrease. This allows the time that is so important for your players bodies and minds to recover, as discussed above. • The Skill - Strength method This method splits training sharply in two - concentrating initially on the skill levels of your players and their technical abilities, before adding in the physical and athletic dimensions after. Many coaches find this can suit their players own time schedules and commitments. Above all, you will notice that none of the above coaching plans operate consistently at the same levels of intensity, either high or low. They are designed to vary the approach and the challenge presented to players, both mentally and physically. It is very important to do this with players, in order to stop long term fatigue setting in, while also challenging them with something fresh every week in order to keep them interested. Lastly, of course, it is important to remember why most of your players are in the game - to enjoy themselves and have fun. Remember to try and make the season enjoyable for them, and try and build this into your training and planning for the season. Long term planning can reap enormous rewards from a coaching point of view, and will save you an awful lot of time and stress mid-season, when you can focus on individual performances, without worrying too much about the overall structure for the season.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 22:13:18 +0000
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