Practice-Play-Personalise the 3P's

When looking at what content to deliver in your coaching programme, you can categorise activities into three main areas by using the 3P's model, Practice, Play & Personalise, giving a balance of different activities, for a well rounded footballing education.

The Practice - element maybe looked at as being coach led activities, such as sessions from the Syllabus. These will often be the things we need the players to cover, what do they need right now to reach their potential, at certain stages of their development. For example in my setting we use a Super 7 Skills practice, that our players cover each session, it could also be a FUNdamental movement programme. These are all generic activities the non negotiable's if you like, that we wan't the players to cover.

The Play - element will typically consist of player led activities such as Arrival Activities put on by the players, for the players. This could just be something as simple as a game where the players decided the rules, teams, area size, equipment etc. You'll be amazed at what the players can achieve, when left to solve problems themselves. Players need to have play within their development, to develop their creativity through exploration, Inter leagues/competitions which I wrote about in a previous article, give an opportunity for this to happen. Other activities may include Golden time, where players are given time to work on their individual development plan, on their own, or with others that may have a similar area of development.

The Personalise - element this is where we look to include activities that focus on the individuals (Player is the syllabus). Activities may include Celebration Sessions, where players are put into groups based on their strengths. It could include gifted and talented sessions where players are either split into RAG rated groups on their overall ability, or where the session contains practices that look to extend the gifted and talented players. Bio banding the players, or by grouping player based on birth month, is also an area where we can look to personalise our sessions.

By using this simple 3P's model to categorise the content that we deliver within our programmes, we can deliver a great engaging and challenging programme that meets the needs of our players, to reach their full potential and protect their love of the game.