Session design with Lou Meadows
Lou Meadows is the Red Roses Attack Coach. I recently spoke to her in the latest Challenging the Game podcast episode. Lou and I discuss session design and how to use drills we see online.
When you're planning your session, even if it’s a micro skills session, session design is everything.
Start from thinking about what the outcome is: what is the one thing I want to achieve in the session?
Ideally, it should be no more than three outcomes, one is great. After deciding an outcome, you need to then hold yourself accountable as to how you’re going to achieve that outcome.
For example: imagine I want to work on releasing the space on the edge. There are multiple ways to do that.
You could start with a drill that you’ve seen online. It could be a passing drill. You need to put that into a context of what edge would look like on a pitch.
You can isolate it so they get their execution and the skill level to what you need, but then you start challenging it.
Build context around it so that the players can explore exactly what it would look like in a game.
Build their confidence for the skill that’s going to be required for them in that space, then challenge that skill and how they apply it in different contexts. You can gradually build up difficulty.
Let’s say the players were intially passing against cylinders, mannequins or something similar initially. You can then go back to the skill again but add in a defensive movement forward.
Then you can go back into a context, which might be 3 v 2 on the edge. Start ot use your coaching language around squaring up to release the edge. Players have the skill and need to work on applying it in a context.
Everything you do needs to mean something to the players. They have to understand why they’re doing it, where it applies and how important it is to them and their execution.
If you do that, then players will own it. They will give you everything they’ve got in that space. They’ll go all in for a drill. They’ll want to test and challenge it. I also offer it up to the group sometimes: “how would you tweak it, based on the experiences you’ve had?”
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