Make your sessions superpowered
Superpowers (think missions or challeges) can aid the development of your players. Russell Earnshaw explains how he views superpowers and how he uses them within sessions and with other coaches.
If you think that coaching individuals is important or preparing for the tactical challenges of the game are important, then superpowers (or whatever language works for you) might just help.
In my world, I use superpowers to challenge and support individuals and to create tactical problems that the game will ask the players to solve.
Examples of superpowers
For example, if a player would benefit from having more touches on the ball then we might agree a superpower for that player that if they touch the ball three times it is worth a try to their team. If only that team knows, then we can get some success for that player.
If you want a player to become more focused in defence, then they might have a superpower that if they can get a FIFA tackle it will be a turnover (the "Marlie Packer' superpower).
If you want a player to explore kick to score, any kick assist might triple the score (the 'Holly Aitchison' superpower).
If you want to someone to share the ball more and give more touches to other players, then give them the 'Marcus Smith' superpower where all 5 passes are worth a try and 2 assists are worth a try too.
If we tell the opposition that a player has the 'Jonah Lomu' superpower (Jonah probably scored or created a try every 3 touches!). The team must find ways of preventing an opposition threat from getting too many touches. That is a common tactical problem the game often asks players to solve.
I will always have a few superpowers in my head but would always ask the players first to develop their thinking and steal great ideas! For example, you can ask players:
'Which team-mate would benefit from a Superpower to help them get better?' '
Which opposition players have superpowers, how can we re-create them in our session?'
For me, some of the challenges that come with using superpowers can often be the coaches' perspective of the word itself. To help with this, I will think about what word will resonate with them.
For the senior coaches, superpowers may become ‘roadkill’, ‘game problems’ or 'we play poker not chess'.
I was working with Clark Laidlaw with NZ7's and he eventually told me: 'I understand what you mean by secret missions now'. This was after a few months. This interaction made me more aware of the language I use.
For me, it's about finding language that our players and coaches can see. Superpowers for me might be ‘missions’ for you and ‘roadkill’ for Saracens. See what resonates with YOUR people.
Ways coaches can use superpowers
Imagine a team of 3 coaches. If one coach is running the game, another coach could be in charge of helping individuals move to the next level via superpowers and the other one could be exposing each team to some tactical problems.
For an individual coach, I would recommend signposting the players to go to them if they have an idea of what they want to get better at in the session/any superpower suggestions.
I place a much higher value on interactions that take place from them to me, rather than me to them. This also means that I can steal some cool ideas!
I tend to coach with a whiteboard and encourage players to populate it with challenges for themselves and others. I use this to create some helpful superpowers.
Superpowers are a great way to accelerate coach development as well as player development. I tend to want to gamify stuff too.
For example, in New Zealand we played around with (imaginary) Mount Dollars at Inside Running with Mike Rogers and a coach might gain $5 for every helpful (judged by the player) individual interaction, if that is your superpower.
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