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Does it make you feel like weeping when faced on a Sunday morning with 12 players, four on the way and three soft rugby balls in your net?
Here are some short steps, not massive changes, to improve your youth coaching this week.
Children have a huge capacity to learn. They soak up enormous amounts of information, assimilate it and then promptly forget it next week.
Exasperating as it may seem, the learning capacity does not automatically lead to an ability to carry out what you coach week in, week out. So focus yourself on achieving small changes in their skills, building up over a number of weeks. They are not being reminded every day, but once a week.
In a practice situation this might mean a core area is revisited every week, with reiteration on the elements that improve the execution of the skill.
For instance if you are working on rucking, then, the key elements might be introduced in week one, then practised in some form every session for the next month. The whole improvement should be observed in a month's time.
So don't "do rucking" one week and then come back to it in a month's time, hoping that the skill will be adequately replicated.
Society quickly blames modern technology for the reduced concentration span of the young of today. Whether this is correct, it is always going to be true that most young minds lose interest very quickly whatever the message.
So, spend less time talking because after sentence five, you have probably lost quite a lot of the audience. The ratio of doing to talking should be in the region of 5:1. So when you are going to stop to say something, say it, repeat it and move on.
Ignore the desire to take the practice beyond the official finish time, even if you need to cover more material. Think of yourself as much as your charges – you may not possess some of their boundless energy, but remember that many will be wilting at the end of a practice.
Ninety minutes is more than enough time to achieve all you need for that session. Short and sweet is better – leave them wanting more.
The other upside of finishing on time is the controlling the "taxi" service. Shorter practices will encourage a prompt arrival, as well as a clear pick up time.
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