THE IMPORTANCE OF TEAM LEADERS GIVING CONFIDENCE TO THE TEAM
The success of team leaders has a lot to do with their ability to inspire and empower the team.
20 March, 2020
THE INFLUENCE OF COACHES ON PLAYERS’ LEARNING. HOW TO GIVE FEEDBACK DURING A TRAINING SESSION
Sports Performance
SIGN UP FOR THE CERTIFICATE IN PSYCHOLOGY FOR SPORTS COACHES IN HIGH PERFORMANCE
join nowThe profession of a coach is not easy at all. Besides an outstanding knowledge of the gameplay, it is necessary to fully master pedagogical skills to help players learn better and faster. A good coach not only delivers technical instructions, but they must also know how to provide learning for the people they work with. The information that does not reach players adequately is useless information.
We know there are 5 different teaching methods a coach can use in his or her intervention1: giving feedback (providing extra information to the player during and after the task), showing (making a demonstration of how an exercise is to be done), stepping back and reflecting (helping players to find out by themselves the action alternatives and to foresee their possible consequences), giving guidelines (pointing out to the athlete on how to perform a movement or action to be successful), and knowing how to design tasks for the players to work them out (adjusting space, time, number of players, the rules…). Not all of them are equally useful, it depends on the characteristics of the players you train.
A feedback can congratulate the athlete, inform them about what they are and are not doing correctly, pointing them out the achieved distance, time, speed, the percentage of times they achieve it, etc. What the coach wants is that the player associates the proposed behaviour to its consequence. It is about reinforcing the action chosen by a player to solve the situation in which they have been successful. If the coach has told me what I have done is right because I have achieved what he wanted, I will repeat it, the athlete seems to think. When highlighting how well they have done it, we help the athlete understand what they must do in the match. We are helping them to find out the solution.
A recent research2 has analysed how the players retain the feedback provided by the coaches. The study followed the behaviour of 12 coaches (8 men and 4 women, all of them with more than 5 years of experience) and 342 players (246 men and 96 women) aged between 10 and 18 during 18 training sessions. The footballers were classified into 4 groups considering the category in which they competed: local, regional, national, or international level. In total, 1728 feedbacks issued by the coaches during the training sessions were analysed. The results demonstrate several aspects of great practical relevance:
- In 65.5% of the feedbacks, the players had difficulties to reproduce completely the coaches’ instructions. That is to say, only 34.5% of the feedbacks were completely retained;
- The more the coach provided different instructions, the lower the feedback retention. The average of instructions provided by the coaches was 3.96, with a total of 28.91 words.
- The higher the level of the players, the higher the feedback retention.
The practical applications of this work indicate that coaches should very much take into account some aspects at the time of providing information to the players:
1. It is very dangerous to provide too many messages (feedbacks) to the athletes during the tasks. Attention is limited and providing much information usually produces that a good part of the instructions received is forgotten.
2. The design of the sessions should include a few objectives to reach. The lower the age or level of the athletes, it is recommendable to include only 1 or 2 objectives in each session; when the level is higher, some more can be added.
3. Coaches should have previously prepared the feedbacks they are going to provide to reinforce the achievement of the objectives planned in the session.
4. Short, concise messages with an understandable language usually reach players more effectively.
5. It is recommendable to use an image or an example to reinforce what the coach wants to obtain in the execution.
Carlos Lago Peñas
[1] Riera, J. (2005). Skills in sports. Barcelona: INDE.
2 Januário, N., Rosado, A., Mesquita, I., Gallego, J. y Aguilar-Parra, J.M. (2016). Determinants of feedback retention in soccer players. Journal of Human Kinetics,51: 235-241.
RELATED NOTES
DO FOOTBALL PLAYER’S MENTAL ABILITIES INFLUENCE THE RISK OF INJURY?
Mental abilities, although not yet fully appreciated, are already considered a relevant part of performance. But their importance could go beyond that: Do they also influence the injury risk, including recurrence, once the player returns to play?
INJURY TYPE IN HANDBALL MAY VARY BY POSITION, CATEGORY AND MATURATION OF PLAYERS
Although several studies have tried to evaluate the characteristics of the risk of injury in handball players, they have been unable to reach sufficiently reliable conclusions. A new study of all the FC Barcelona handball categories has attempted to shed more light on the subject.
HOW PHYSICAL DEMANDS ON FOOTBALL PLAYERS VARY BY THEIR POSITION
Although there are several studies on this topic, many of them have analyzed these demands by looking at just a few variables or using very broad timeframes. A new study completed by physical trainers from F.C. Barcelona has analyzed several of these details more closely.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CONNECTIVE TISSUE IN MUSCLE INJURIES
An article published in The Orthopaedic Journal of Sports Medicine —in which members of the club’s medical services participated— now suggests to consider the detailed structure of the area affected, and treating the extracellular matrix as an essential player in the prognosis of the injury.
WHAT IS LOAD MANAGEMENT REALLY ABOUT?
In this article, Tim Gabbett and his team provide a user-friendly guide for practitioners when describing the general purpose of load management to coaches.
TWO WEEKS ARE ENOUGH TO INCREASE MUSCLE VOLUME AND STRENGTH
For the first time, it has been demonstrated that it does not take months of training to significantly improve both muscle volume and strength; instead, two weeks of an appropriate exercise are enough.
ECCENTRIC EXERCISES: STUDYING “VACCINES” FOR MUSCLES
Training using eccentric exercises is important to prevent possible damage. However, intensive training can also cause muscle damage, so it is critical to be vigilant in order to keep injury risk to an absolute minimum.
THE LEVEL OF RESISTANCE AS A MODERATOR OF THE TRAINING LOAD
Cardiovascular endurance manifests as a moderator of the load result to which the athlete is exposed.
Are the players well positioned in relation to the ball?
Through the use of computer vision we can identify some shortcomings in the body orientation of players in different game situations.
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW MORE?
- SUBSCRIBE
- CONTACT
- APPLY
KEEP UP TO DATE WITH OUR NEWS
Do you have any questions about Barça Universitas?
- Startup
- Research Center
- Corporate