11/09/2026
TRAINING ACTIVITY DESIGN SEQUENCE
Training activity design still has major room for improvement at local level as there's still a lot of cone-to-cone kicking going on with zero opposition or time constraints.
Game-based activities are making their way in but without constraints then you'll just see the behaviour you see on game day that you're actually trying to get away from and change and thus the same mistakes pop up in games week after week.
Have no doubt, this is a coaching problem so here's a training activity design sequence to improve that side of your delivery during training.
Firstly, you must have an intention before anything else and let's say in this instance it to work on offensive ball movement with a specific focus on improving time in possession.
Your first thought is to use a possession game so go into that and see what presents itself, observing closely to the limiting factors affecting your intention (offensive ball mments - time in possession).
When looking for any performance limiters, you need to look at both ball carrier and the off the ball players which may take 2 coaches to do so.
For the ball carrier you're looking at things like where/how long they search the environment for open players, how much patience they have with the ball in hand and their technique of the specific kick they need to use to solve the problem.
For the off the ball players you're looking at things like how do they manipulate space to become open options that the ball carrier can find, the timing of creating and filling space to again become a viable passing option and how teammates do this in accordance with other teammates (team coordination) + the opposition (creating outnumber advantages).
Once you determine the main cause/s of ball movement disruption then you need to scale back and design a small slice of the game and recreate a similar situation with far less complexity.
A lot of teams till go with even team numbers using as many players as they have available so everyone is involved but this won't simplify the scenario enough and the same errors will occur as a result.
You might have to scale back to something as small as a 3v1 or 2 initially to initiate the correct behaviours you're after and then build on that - don't be so impatient as a coach that you have to keep scaling back from starting too far in front.
Building up quickly is better than progressing backwards slowly.
To improving searching of the environment, use a +2 on offense so that there will always be free players to use but you still need to search for them, progressing to a +1. Constraining the defense (number of them, where they start/how they can move) can also be used here.
For impatience with the ball, allow the ball carrier to take as long as they want to once they've taken a mark, and then start putting time constraints on that (8secs, 7secs, 6secs etc).
Technical deficiencies like kick type/trajectory, footwork or ball drop issues go into the craft basket but even then you still need to use constraints to maintain game representation so it can transfer back to training possession games and weekend games more importantly.
For space manipulation you need to play with the area you are training in and the number of players you have in that area starting with small and big areas and low numbers so that there is lots of space to manipulate to small and big areas with more players so that there is less space to manipulate.
If success rate isn't at 75 - 80% then the space is too small and/or there are too many players 9in whatever space you are using.
For team coordination this is where you might need to take the alternate route of a theory session or 3 as it will cover all 3 lines of your team (backs, mids, forwards) that shows players how they all should move together (666-Connection, Inner-Outer Layer etc) and also cover any specific positional roles (extra at the contest, specific hit up lead options etc). Once players have some knowledge on this then you can add whatever is relevant from your theory into the possession game.
Timing is probably the last part that comes and is essentially the coordination component put into practice so if we use that hit up lead player for example, they now know their specific role, and go to work on best displaying it in the relevant training activities and coaches can observe their space manipulation/timing (forward craft/leading patterns) and the cycle starts again.
This just 1 example simplified which is already pretty detailed which shows you need complete clarity on what you need/want to improve on and then go to work on nailing that 1000% rather than simply touching on 25 things and improving on none of them.
Any questions/discussion on this, I'm happy to discuss.
