Guiding not Telling.

The power of coaching.

We relish in our curriculum the development of all our pupils. Yes this came from an understanding that all children possessed athletic potential and that through a more nuances approach we could help enable agency, develop psychological safety, drive physical competency and through this has Self Determined students. The longitudinal benefits of this are, well adjusted physically competent, excellent problem solvers and most of all love playing!

"there is no division between playing and learning; between the things he or she does ‘just for fun’ and things that are ‘educational.’ The child learns while living and any part of living that is enjoyable is also play."

Penelope Leach

Setting the scene

In this video we see a group of Year 8 and 9 boys in a ruby sessions.

The aim to introduce was to confuse (we say painting pictures) the opposition and use layers.

Simple start.

• The attack get five attacks (we gave them two phases).
• The yellow bib cannot start in the line. That's all. Nothing else.

to part of the session

• Guiding not Telling. Subtlety and patience.

Development of the session.

D get a red bib and if they ‘tackle’ we have an auto win for the D.

This is in itself not for the D, but it GUIDES the attention to keeping and moving the ball away from the red bib.

Attack then start to want to stop this player drifting and then talk how to do this.

Next adding Orange bib is double points out wide. The D now have an auto win but have a threat out wide. Again the attack can exploit.

But using these constraints. Coupled with opportunities for Pauses to problem solve. As well as Rewinds from coaches (and when asked for, players) of appropriate we end up with introducing ’layers’ of attack, complexity, without reducing agency, without us as teachers or coaches being the only knowledge.

We have here, problem solvers, thoughtful and adaptive kids. We have happy and self determined pupils.

An important caveat is by using this approach we layer in so much more than the intended outcomes.

• They need to work together to problem solve.
• They use their pauses to do this especially with a limit on reps.
• They feed information from around the pitch to "win"
• Defence guides attention and by giving specific focuses they don't "game" the session.
• As the coach is tweaking constraints the players are the main drives of the solutions.
• They player attune to the process not solely the outcome.

Guiding. Not Telling.