Holidays with the family

As we all take some time away from the pitch I thought I'd share some holiday thoughts about what I'm learning about myself as a coach this holiday season.

Most sports teams take a break from competition over the festive period, to allow everyone that most sacred of gifts. Time with the family. As myself and my cousin both made the decision to stay stateside this year we agreed we'd do some traveling together to make sure we got that family time. As with all things in life I started to see some small lessons that I thought I could apply to my reflective practice as a coach.

We decided to head to New Orleans as complete tourists. Sharing a hotel room for the week we definitely got plenty of this "quality time" that is so important over the holidays. But we are very different people, and this created some moments that really stuck with me. On one of our first days in New Orleans we spent three hours walking around exploring in almost complete silence. Those of you who know me will know that I am usually a very chatty person. I need stimulus, I love to converse and share ideas. Three hours of new experiences with limited interaction. For me this is difficult.

Now don't for a second think I didn't enjoy the trip. We hit most of the great sights, ate at some fantastic restaurants, and I am sure I will look back on this trip fondly.

Interestingly, last night this image appeared on my twitter timeline. Sometimes images really spark and attach themselves to how I'm feeling, this stuck with me. At times there is a need to keep your mouth shut and plough on, but there is also a time to make your opinion heard, that way everyone is dealing with the same information.

Interestingly, while out for drinks, my cousin received a text message from a friend. His friend wrote "My gosh these people just don't shut up!" to which he replied "It's great here, myself and Mark are just on our phones."

Contrast that with how I was feeling at that moment. It was a bleak comparison. My need for stimulus and conversation, contrasted with his love of silence and interaction with his phone. How did we end up on such drastically different ideas of what a good time was?

The answer is simple. We didn't communicate. Now that conversation is not an easy one. But sometimes as coaches we need to be able to have those difficult conversations. And similarly for any players reading we need to be okay with being honest with our coaches. Rather than the colorful language of the image above try this one.

So to all (probably both!) of my readers here is my hope for us all:

- we can clarify what it is that we are setting out to achieve this season
- we all know what that will look like
- we create a safe environment whereby people can come and talk about moments where our expectations don't line up.

That way your trip to New Orleans can be more of the experience you set out for.

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season, and thank you for taking the time to read this!

DJ Danger Mouse and Native American Culture

What is a new idea?

In 2004 DJ Danger Mouse released The Grey Album. In my opinion, one of the greatest rap albums ever released. He took Jay-Z’s Black Album and remixed it with The Beatles White Album. This was the first rap album I ever owned. A bootlegged CD I stumbled over when I was listening to a sibling’s music. Little did I know the ideas that shaped this album would later be an integral part of how I, and you too if you’re honest, coach.

Encore was probably one of my favorite songs on the whole album. Interestingly at one stage Jay – Z says “When I come back like Jordan, wearing the 4-5; It ain’t to play games with you […]” which takes me strangely, and tenuously, to my next point.

Having moved to the United States four years ago to pursue a career in coaching I quickly realized that I was not up to date with American sporting culture. Like every good sports nerd I took to the local book stores and started reading. Biography after biography of different coaches and athletes until I arrived at something special. Eleven Rings – The Soul of Success by Phil Jackson. Phil Jackson is a highly decorated basketball coach who does things a little differently. Over his life he immersed himself in meditation, humanistic psychology and Native American Philosophy.

Phil Jackson and the Michael Jordan led Chicago Bulls used to start every practice, and finish it, with everyone standing in a circle. The circle is a hugely important shape in Native American culture. Shortly after reading Eleven Rings I was at dinner with a friend. They told me a little more about the importance of the circle to Native American culture. This is a lesson that I will remember forever. In Native American culture, it is assumed that all things are circles, and every person has a place on the circle. From this place, we are also granted one point of view. We can choose to spend our life in one of two ways, looking at things from our point of view and getting a really deep understanding of this. Or, we can work our way around the circle, experiencing and understanding everyone else’s point of view. Within their culture it is believed that working your way around the circle is the way to fully understand the world.

I pose a question, when DJ Danger Mouse started with Jay-Z’s Black album and added the music from The Beatles, wasn’t he doing just that? Working his way around the circle, trying to understand different viewpoints, or mix different approaches into his music.

Much like the rest of the world I spend far too much time online. Recently I watched a wonderful TED talk, “Creativity is a remix” by Kirby Ferguson. In it he proposes a simple idea, nothing is original. In fact a lot of what I’ve talked about so far is inspired by this Ted Talk! Probably more closely than I set out to achieve. 

In Mick McKinnon's last piece he talks about how we should be trying to find the edge, and about how we all start out as a cover band. I couldn’t agree more with this! But I caution coaches to look far beyond the limits of our sport to become something special. Only by running far away from our initial influences can we truly figure out what works for us. Look at other sports, other cultures, other fields entirely. Read books, watch movies, but take notes. Find the lesson in everything you like or enjoy, and then find a way to relate that back to coaching. The teams I work with know why we watch film on ourselves, not because of anything I’ve told them. Because Rafiki told them.

When doing a little research for this piece I stumbled across this article. and in it is a simple quote that I think we should all remember "What you know, you do not own. And what you do not own, you must share."

So think about it, what are you doing to make your way around the circle. Whose ideas are you changing, and remixing to make your won? If you're struggling who do you call on? I spend as much time as I can talking to coaches from other sports, hoping to steal something I can use with my team. I'd encourage you to do the same.

Pokemon, Harry Potter and other 90s fads

If you're like me you grew up with Pokemon, but have you ever wondered what lessons it may have taught you as a coach?

In 1996 Nintendo released Pokemon Red and Blue for the Gameboy Color. This sparked a worldwide phenomenon that still goes until this day. In the game you travel from gym to gym training your own small team of creatures in your search to become the best Pokemon trainer in the land. As you and your team grow your Pokemon evolve and become more powerful, and the challenges that you face become more and more difficult.

If that process doesn't sound in the slightest bit similar to most people's journeys as a coach then I am definitely in need of the upcoming holiday period! If you listen to the theme song of the cartoon show it becomes even more apparent that we could learn something here.

As a coach I got into the game at the ground floor. My athletes were young, and often training sessions were really a disguised way to provide a babysitting service. My job at that time was to start to foster a love of the game, and to teach some of the basic skills. The kids I coached were more concerned with having fun than winning games, and that's ok! I was 15, and the u12s called me "Harry Potter" because I had glasses. We were all just starting out, and we were growing together.

When I got to be a little bit older, I started to help out with our local High Performance development pathway. I will remember forever the look on some of the girls faces as they realized that "Harry Potter" was back and would be helping to coach them. Some of these girls continued through the pipeline and are now playing First XI hockey. As a player they've gone through an evolution process. Their training environment has had to match that, as has their coaches style.

This leads me, in a roundabout way, back to the video game. Stick with me in this phase, I promise there's a point! Within the game your Pokemon evolve when they reach a certain level. This manifests itself with huge physical changes and ability developments. To get this upgrade in level your Pokemon has to gain experience from a battle with another Pokemon. Every Pokemon is different and has their own abilities. Similarly they evolve at different levels. As such you have to figure out a way to win, while still giving these young pokemon an opportunity to gain the experience needed to evolve. Does that sound familiar?

There were however a few issues with this process. Sometimes your Pokemon would lose their fight and "faint" (No-one died, this is a kids game remember). With that they lost their opportunity for experience. So the win was crucial as a step towards the evolution. There was one way around this though. As with every video game there were shortcuts. In Pokemon there was a "Rare Candy" you could give them to help them grow a level quickly. This "Rare Candy" approach was a bit of a quick fix as you weren't going to end up with as strong of a pokemon at the end of it.

So if to train them is our cause but we wanna be the very best how do we balance this? In Pokemon I used to do this by putting out a weak Pokemon at the start of a battle, allowing them to get the Exp and then switched them for a stronger Pokemon to make sure we got the win. Just recently I read a very interesting article on Sergi Samper a younger player at FC Barcelona who is touted as one of the next big prospects to emerge from La Masia, their youth development center. In the article Alex Jonson points out that when a soccer player is young they regularly get put on as a forward for a brief period near the end to get a feel for the speed of the game. These periods get a little longer game to game as they gain experience. But for Samper, and other young midfielders, this process doesn't work quite as well. They need time to be an important part of how the team operates. So how do we as coaches allow them to become a Gyarados without the fear of our little Magikarp just splashing aimlessly out there?

That is in itself the big challenge as we strive to become the very best. But don't forget "To train them is our cause". By doing that, we can be sure that the wins will come, and we'll have a lot less fainting to contend with.

We’ve played our game, how did we do?

Key Performance Indicators and principle based evaluation

Last Summer I met my nephew for the first time. He’s two and lives in Australia. Over a short period of time we got to hang out a little and play some fun games. One of the memories that will stick with me is playing with a tube of bubbles with him and my cousin’s daughter. We started by just me blowing the bubbles and them trying to pop them. But my ever so capable relations decided that they should be the ones blowing the bubbles. What followed was some of the cutest pursing of lips and least effective bubble blowing I have ever seen. Now, when I look back on that day and try to tie it ever so carefully into the point of this blog post I got drawn to a simple idea. The intended lesson, or the win for me, was that they would each successfully blow bubbles. This failed. But they did work on another important lesson. How to take turns. In this regard the game was a success.

Similarly, when we play games or compete with our teams we have to find the truth of what happens. We will enter the game with an intended outcome – usually to win. But if we determine success purely by wins and losses, it’s likely that we’ll be unsuccessful a lot. So when we reflect on these games we need to refer back to what our principles are. These principles are what is supposed to determine whether or not we’re playing the game the right way or not. The more often we do things right, the more often we should win.

The frequency with which we “do things right” is referred to in the world of sporting analysis as Key Performance Indicators. These will be very different from one team to another. Last season Leicester City were champions of the English Premier League. At a time when the world is going mad about the importance of possession in football they achieved this feat while ranking 18^th/20 in terms of possession and having the lowest pass success rate. So clearly, their KPI’s are quite different to that of a team that prides itself on possession.

One of my favorite books, Switch: How to change things when change is hard, talks about a concept I love. Bright spot coaching. In the book they talk about a man who is sent to India to try to help solve the problem of malnutrition. Rather than launch studies to find the cause of the malnutrition (evaluating why we’re losing) he finds some well-fed kids, meets their parents and finds out what they’re doing right. He invites other children’s parents along and they adopt the habits. Suddenly more and more kids are getting fed better, and in these small communities the problem of malnutrition decreases. This is the approach to coaching that I strive towards. One where we find what we’re doing well, and aim to make these moments bigger and longer.

So, you’ve just played a game, or competed in a meet, or participated in your sport. Now you have to look back on the event. Look back in the right way. Look for what’s really happening, and whether or not it’s what you set out to have happen. Are you finding the player in front of the goal with a dry pass?

I know what I want, how do I make that happen??

Planning with your principles in mind. Games, games, games.

A few years ago I sat down with a Women's Tennis coach. Without a doubt one of the kindest people I've met through sport. Now my experiences with tennis are limited to running around after the little ball whilst getting beaten by an array of family members during our summers in West Cork. The only way I've seen Tennis coached is badly. We got to talking about how they train, and what that looks like. In my innocence I asked if they played a game I've seen kids play at summer camps. Where you have to run around the net, and try to return the ball. It's a knock out game, one for kids. I think it may actually be for ping pong. Needless to say Coach Wharton was not impressed. He looked at me with a kindly smile and said "We only do things in training, that we would do in a game."

Similarly, I've talked to a number of coaches who have described the practice planning meetings going as follows:


"Any ideas of things you want to work on at practice today?"


"Let's have a look at the drill book, and see which ones we haven't done lately."


Essentially, in my opinion, they're taking a paint by numbers approach to coaching. They're assuming that by covering the same curriculum every year they are delivering what their athletes need. Now, if these "drills" are carefully designed to teach this coaching staff's principles of play then maybe this approach might work. But I think we both know that this probably is not the case.

Instead I'd like to propose another method. Now, as with everything I will write here, this is not a revolutionary new approach that I have personally arrived upon. Sadly this is more my way of trying to share the lessons I've learned along my path in the hopes that they may help you.


Start with the end in mind.


Have a clear idea of what it is you want your athletes to understand.




Design a game that will allow them to experience this.




Allow them to fail at this. Over and over and over again.



Make it fun


Sounds like a lofty goal right? Well let's embark on this journey together, and see what we can come up with. Let's try this with a sport I have very little idea about, and see if we can come up with something. Let's look at water polo. My experience of water polo is limited to one night of struggling to keep my head above the water in my local swimming pool when I was about 16. The game went on around me, and I have to admit, I hated it.

I've read a little of the rules of water polo on their wikipedia page. According to wikipedia "The key to the offense is to accurately pass (or "set") the ball into the center forward or hole set, positioned directly in front of the goal ("the hole")." So as we prepare our session, our aim will be to create this using what's known as a "dry pass" (thanks wikipedia). This is a pass where we play the ball to a teammate in the air without the ball touching the water.

So in principle we're going to be similar to Ireland's world cup team in the golden age of Jack Charlton. We're going to play direct. 

The principles we'll be focusing on are our goal attack and defense. Especially in relation to the Dry Pass.

The technique we're going to develop: How to play dry passes.

Water polo is played with 7 players on a team. 1 goalkeeper and 6 field players.

For this game let's play with these numbers. 

Regular rules, and one stipulation.

Stipulation:

There will be a specific sized zone in front of each goal that can only be occupied by the goalkeeper and one attacker.

This stipulation allows this player the opportunity to receive these "dry balls' at first. Forcing our team to work on creating these chances, while also creating offensive 1v1s. These are always fun.

After a while we can change the stipulation to allow for a defender to join the attacker in this zone.

So let's review and see how we did:

Have a clear idea of what it is you want your athletes to understand.


Design a game that will allow them to experience this.


Allow them to fail at this. Over and over and over again.


Make it fun.


I think this game allows for all of this to happen. While staying true to Coach Wharton's message "We only do things in training, that we would do in a game."


I'm off to see what other sports I can try and come up with some games for. Why not give this approach a go in your own coaching.