Coaching Matters: Around the Web September 2014

Posted on by Simon Nainby

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After a hiatus Coaching Matters is back for the September edition.

A very busy off and pre-season (including the small matter of getting married!) has cut dramatically into the reading and writing time I have had so some posts below will date back to May.

My comment this month regards the ever increasing use of creative language in sport. Or in plain English…..”Bullshit”.

From “False 9’s” and “the corridor of uncertainty” in football through “Short Arm Penalties” and “Jacklers” in rugby to imports from the business world such as “leveraging best practice” and “analytics” these words and phrases are not only meaningless but cause considerable confusion. Last weekend I asked 5 different people what a “Bodyguard” is in rugby and got 5 different answers.

With more and more sport coverage on TV there is more time for pundits to fill and they invariably use flowery language to camouflage their lack of actual insight while coaches and players wish to seem more intelligent than they really are.

I distinctly remember a new player at a club I coached at a few years ago struggling in defence for over a month. When one of the other players recognised he was targeting the wrong player at every ruck we finally discovered he had no idea what was meant by a certain “trigger call” being used and had totally the wrong idea about which player was referred to as a “Post” and was too embarrassed to clarify!

So the next time you are tempted to refer to a rugby ball as “the pill”, a free kick as a “short arm penalty”, “KPI’s”, “kinetic flow” or “non negotiables” ask the person next to you to give you a High Five. In the face. With a chair………..

The whole point of this blog is sharing and interaction so if you have written or know of similar content that would be good for future posts then please let me know via simon@undergroundathletics.co.uk or on Twitter @SiNainby.

As usual I have linked to all the articles, videos & media below that I have found of interest in the past month separated in to headings of Top 10, General Coaching, Skill Acquisition, Physical Preparation & Sport Science.

Top 10

General Coaching

Skill Acquisition

Physical Preparation

Load Management Strategies

Darren Burgess – Load Management Strategies – Click to enlarge

Sport Science

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