Question

Motor development:

You have volunteered to coach your nephew's soccer team for the summer. Two of the skills that you would like to work on with your team this season are penalty kicks and dribbling the ball down the field. How might you organize work-rest periods during practice for each of these skills? How might you include an amount of task variability appropriate to each skill? Are there any characteristics of your players that you would need to take into consideration when organizing practice? Why?

Answer 1

To develop an expertise, it is essential to practice, but it in turn requires an expert coaching regime to set a protocol for correct way and tenure of practicing, especially in case of physical activity.

In the given scenario, the coaching expertise is required in the aspect of:

Aim and objectives:

• Football training and coaching.
• Skill development for dribbling and penalty kicks, (running with the ball and keeping in possession).

Planning protocol considerations:

• Age group of the players in the team.
• Number of players or team size.
• Specific age and gender.
• Facility and equipment.
• Health and safety.
• Consent form in term of medical information.
• Venue and support staffs.
• Duration of each practice session
• Aim and objectives of the session.
• Environmental considerations.

Practice and rest period designing: Periodization.

• Requires development of a framework and planning with systemic variation., to prevent injury or fatigue or any other mal-adaptations and alternating the training load.
• Training may be designed as: for 6 to 30 weeks schedule of training, 2-6 weeks of macro cycle and 1 week of micro cycle alternatively.
• According to progression and evaluation programs, variation of quantity of activities, intensity and quality of exercises performed and the frequency of sessions in a period.
• The initial phase or preseason practice should include acclimatization processes: recommended duration of 2 weeks. This is to reduce exertional heat stroke (EHS) conditions.

Specific session for the given aim:

1. Warm up session:

• Duration- 15 -20 minutes.
• Designing session with fun activities- running and retrieving the ball within a designated area.
• Recommended training duration is: 1 per day and 4 days per week.

2. Technical activity 1:

• Duration 20 minutes:
• Designing practice termed as “traffic light”.
• The players need to dribble the ball in a designated area
• Include three color signals:

a. Red cone- Player should stop their foot on the ball.

b. Yellow cone: Player should turn or change direction with the ball.

c. Green cone- Players should increase their speed of dribbling or running.

3. Technical activity 2:

• Duration 20 minutes.
• Team divided: In team of 10 players, 7 keeps the ball possession, 3 players, play to defend or intercept.

4. Warm down session:

• Duration 5 -10 minutes.
• Includes, slow jogging around the practice area.
• Stretching exercises like hamstring and quadriceps stretches.

Evaluation, Characterization and variations:

In football coaching session, the important phases of motor skill learning are:

• Cognitive phase.
• Associative phase.
• Autonomous phase.

Progression may be analyzed by:

• Observation of the individual or team as

a. command, b. practice style, c. self-check, d. reciprocal check, e. guided discovery.

• Review based on positive feed back and analysis through observation of dribbling, running skill, possession of ball.

Practice variability and organization:

• Practice variability: Learning skills in variable ways or context.
• Practice specificity:Sensory or motor specificty, contect specificity, cognitive processing specificity.

Contextual interference: drills and testing situations.