This basic idea comes even before my 3 coaching principles that I have wrote about in previous posts. I would say that the 3 principles help me in finding out the answer to the question: "how can I create good learning situations"?
I know that the sentence "The job of the youth coach is to create learning situations" seems so obvious that you might say that it doesn't deserve special attention, but I disagree.
All coaches have a number of drills and games that they like to use. Of course it is important to have a good collection of drills, but in today's world, with so much access to information, most coaches have good drills. Does this mean that all coaches are good? No.
Besides having good drills one must know what feedback to give, when to give it and how. This is a big factor that makes the difference between coaches. But besides this, I believe that many of them are not good enough because they do not give enough attention to creating the right learning situation.
There are two ways in which a coach can go wrong just by not placing enough emphasis on this basic concept of creating the learning situation: first by not choosing the right drills for his players and, second, by not adjusting the drills for his players level (distances, density of players, difficulty of tasks, etc).
There is no recipe in developing a player. There are guidelines, but no recipe. Each person is different, each player has different qualities, each group of players has a different dynamic.
A youth coach can have knowledge and can have a good collection of drills and games in his book, but it is not enough. He might also have a well defined model of player development in his mind, which might be a very good model or a 'not so good' model. He might be very good at giving feedback. But he can still fail if he doesn't give enough attention to this one concept: "the learning situation".
We should ask ourselves: "am I creating enough learning situations for my players?"
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