What happens after you hear that? the group go through the motions of a few unrelated drills, drills that some of those present have done or seen elsewhere. There is no thought given to how the drill relates to real game play situations...and then in the second part of the session, there'll probably be a practice match but it would be more of a pick-up game instead of a match that practices whatever skills the drills that were just done might have tried to work on.
It can be easy for teams to fall into this sort of practice session. It's hard work to be adequately prepared beforehand to avoid it.
I think a good practice session focuses on just one or two things. These things being individual or team skills. Hopefully, whoever is in charge knows beforehand which individual or team skills they want the team to work on, and they've given some thought to the in-game situations where the skills are important. Then they can decide what drills to use and be able to explain how the drill relates to a game. Finally, if there is a game at the end of the session, the focus should still be on the same thing. It should not be just a pick-up game, but rather an opportunity to put into practice the skills that have been the focus of the training session. Using some modified rules could help to accomplish that.
As for deciding which skills to focus on. Well, obviously, it depends on the team. For a beginner team, you'd start with the basic skills (individual skills like catching, and basic throwing - backhands and forehands, and team skills like dumps, forces and stacks perhaps), and hopefully progress over a season to more advanced team and individual skills.
If you try listing out every possible skill that you could have as the focus of a practice session, there are a whole lot! It would be really difficult to cover everything well. so for a more advanced team I'd say you really want a good idea of what you game plan is, and what skills you need to implement it well. Then you can focus on those skills.
The key to focussed practice sessions, is in writing things down. What you've already done and what skills you plan on covering for the rest of the season. Of course if a tournament highlights a big weakness, change the plan to work on that next.
I had once been of the opinion that after the most basic individual and team skills are covered, thereafter it would make sense to focus on the more advanced individual skills next, leaving the more advanced team skills until later in the season, closer to whatever tournament is the important one. I'm not so sure about that now.
But anyway, even if your plan covers the various skills in a illogical order, the team would still be better off than they would have been had they had no plan. Just don't come down to training every week and say "What will we do today? Anyone know any drills?"
I had once been of the opinion that after the most basic individual and team skills are covered, thereafter it would make sense to focus on the more advanced individual skills next, leaving the more advanced team skills until later in the season, closer to whatever tournament is the important one. I'm not so sure about that now.
But anyway, even if your plan covers the various skills in a illogical order, the team would still be better off than they would have been had they had no plan. Just don't come down to training every week and say "What will we do today? Anyone know any drills?"
Hard to disagree with most of this. But as you've said - it's hard work. Not every team has a coach. In fact some teams don't even have a clear captain/organisational structure (Binge? being one, but also other teams I've played with). Or the organiser on the team does't really have enough experience or vision of the team and of the game to carry out this role. What to do then?
ReplyDeleteBut yeah, it drives me mad when the game has nothing to do with the drills. Although most of the time not enough to volunteer to plan the next session!
when you mention Binge there, I got to thinking about some of the training sessions we've had. Some sessions that I've found really productive.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's strange because like you said, it's not even defined who's in charge; definitely no session plan prepared beforehand. I think the approach is what makes it productive - the quote you'd hear at the start of the binge session is "anyone got a particular skill they want to work on". Rather than "anyone know any drills". The second of those quotes implies a certain doing it for the sake of it mindset, rather than the drills being a means to a specific end.
As regards what to do when the organisational structure of a team isn't conductive to having productive sessions, I'd say step one involves a meeting of those interested in the teams gameplan. At the end of meetings there's generally a 'what happens next' part...so there should be a plan comes out of that!
Such a meeting could be framed as a post tournament review meeting: looking at the team's recent performance at a particular tournament, reviewing what was learned and what needs to be practiced before the next tournament. Might seem more normal than suggesting a gameplan meeting!