ltacoaching365

When football meets basketball!

One of the pro’s of working at is the chance to watch elite coaches work. .rikki who works for put this session on for his pro athletes during one of his individuals, our conversation was centred around 1v1 excellence & creating/controlling the separation between you & the defender.

The fun part for me was thinking how to manipulate the space to make it more specific for footballers, having the mannequins in place allowed me to place a back 4 roughly with the defender acting as one of the CB’s who have decided to step out.

Let me know any ideas you have about turning basketball drills into football drills.

Also this is a session based purely on 1v1 technique and allows for repetitions of actions.

Exploration/discovery & imagination.
How often when you are training by yourself, do you imagine playing against an opponent. I believe imagination is one of the strongest traits you can use during this current lockdown. If you’re an only child or sole person in your residence it is a good way to begin to work certain technical movements & ball manipulation. This can give you a feel into what it is like when a skill goes well. Whats your thoughts on using imagination during individual training?
Drop a comment below
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This post is for my coaches....
As coaches our job is a vocational one where we are available to our players pretty much 24/7. Our job is to make sure that the players have everything they need to focus on their sport to be the best athlete they can be by improving all areas.

My question to you coaches is, how much time do you spend looking after yourself? Are you practicing what you preach? In my opinion if you can do what you ask then it gives you another thing your players can relate to & it allows you to also gauge how hard a session may be. I leave you with this, coaches how can you use this extra time we currently have to work on yourself?
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Isolated practices, over the Christmas period the women’s game is fortunate enough to have a winter break, this gives you the opportunity to use the time to work on isolated practices & try things you may have not done before. is trying a skill chain combination, this is a way to just freestyle skills and see if you can link them for ball manipulation purposes. I know I preach opposed practices and constraints based learning but I do believe the more time you spend with the ball at your feet the more comfortable you’ll become. If you are a fan of basketball you would’ve seen the recent video of Steph curry sinking 3 pointers for 5 minutes straight no misses! This shows how isolated practices has it place & is needed
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Finishing, under pressure

We talk about players having mental strength & being resilient as a footballer. Depending on the level you are performing at dealing with stress & anxiety may happen at some point in your footballing career.

Mental strength is what can help you to perform at your best possible self. There is a saying I’ve used many times footballers must have the best short term memory, you just have the ability to forget what has happened and focus on the next action.
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Continuous 1v1
Desire to defend, I am a big fan of preaching win your 1v1 duels weather IP or OP. In OP I believe you need a desire to defend, to many people now a days do what I call ‘pretty defending” they’ll make it look good by closing down showing an angle but they will never bite or look to apply pressure. I believe defending is slowly becoming a lost art as people focus on IP. The key factors when defending 1v1 can be broken down into many areas but im going to focus on timing. Timing is how quick so shut them them down, when do you begin to slow down, timing of when to switch hips if needed but most importantly timing of tackle, when do you go to win the ball & effect the player?
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Remaining level headed....
A wise man once said “footballer players must have the greatest short term memory” cc it’s a saying that I love repeating to players. No matter what level you are at it is more than likely you will make a mistake in a game. How you deal with the mistake is what will separate you from others. I am a massive advocate for meditation & visualisation before games, Coach Phil Jackson made the bulls meditate before team training so they could learn how to remain focused and on task during the practice/game.

What are the things you do to help you focus before the game?

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Changing perceptions & creating new norms.
Historically central defenders have always been known to be less technical in terms of footwork & ‘flair’. I believe this generation are changing that as more central defenders are able to express themselves on the ball.
Mr is one of those players. His technically capability couple with his tactical knowledge makes him a CB who can not only break lines with a pass but is also capable of creating overloads in the middle of pitch. Having a CB who is able to break the line through dribbling can allow the team to push another centre mid forward to the forward line a create numerical evenness in the final third, this allows the team to be much more dangerous when playing forward as they have more options.
What’s your thoughts on having technical CB’s & would you be confident enough to allow your CB to take on & beat the opposition ST?
Let me know your thoughts remember defenders are now called First attackers!!
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.am.adewale

3rd man run passing pattern,
These drills are designed to focused on passing technique offering different types of passing over both shorter & medium distances.
Timing is an important part when it comes to making runs or Pass completion, your timing of run is what can allow a player to either draw a defender in or also to break a passing lane.
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