Written by Dr. Josh Holt UEFA ‘A’ Licence coach
How good are your players? How much better are they this week than last week? How good do you want them to be by the end of the season? How good could they become?
The accurate assessment of performance, learning and potential are at the heart of effective coaching. Yet answers to these critical questions are often left to opinion, subjective assessment or are not even considered. Skills tests and match analysis procedures are the two established strategies for a more objective assessment of performance1. An alternative to these ‘one-off’ assessments that is available to every coach and player involves the repeated measurement of essential skills during practice2.
Read on and then see an example of a practice record sheet at the end of the article ***NOTE ST – add link to download sheet ****
Action plan for developing and measuring mastery
1. Be clear what your players must be able to do and when they can do it
Too often coaches and players don’t identify exactly what it is they are practicing to improve. Specify skills precisely to be able to track progress towards mastering them. Start by focusing on improving technique from individual practice such as ball manipulation or soccer ‘juggling’ tasks. Define the skill or challenge to be practiced and the criteria for successful performance so all players know how to perform and count it correctly. For example, very young or beginner players learning to juggle a soccer ball might start by dropping the ball from their hands, kicking it before or after a bounce and catching it. Every ball caught is a successful performance and thirty consecutive catches using both feet alternately is the mastery criterion. This is the level of performance that indicates when the skill has been learned sufficiently so that it can be performed correctly sometime later and in other situations3. Competent players can be involved in designing their own challenges and setting mastery criteria.
2. Develop and measure accuracy and then fluency of performance
While players are learning to acquire a skill, the aim of practice should be to develop accuracy so it can be performed consistently. Accuracy of a skill can be measured by a simple count, or the number of successful occurrences, as with the previous example. Once the skill is acquired and can be performed correctly and consistently, building fluency should be the aim of practice. Fluency is the combination of accuracy plus speed that characterises expertise or mastery. It can be measured by the frequency of successful occurrences in a specified time, such as 30-sec or 1-min trials and is a more meaningful measure of learning. Highly fluent performance was demonstrated by fourteen year-old players at one English academy, who consistently scored over 150 alternate foot juggles in 1-min trials, or 2.5 contacts per second while being distracted by the coach! When it is not possible or desirable to measure frequencies directly, fluency can be built into specific task requirements.
3. Provide sufficient practice opportunity and record or chart progress
A common failure of my coaching is not giving players sufficient time to practice a skill until it is mastered. Defining essential skills and repeatedly measuring them during practice provides players and coaches with up to date, objective feedback on their progress. Reliable data indicate which players have mastered skills and can support decisions regarding the potential of younger, smaller players who suffer relative age effects in physically competitive situations. It is important to record scores to compare performances towards personal goals and to demonstrate the need for further practice. A recent study has demonstrated the use of coach and peer-assessment during a group technical practice to give all players immediate, objective feedback on first touch and passing quality2. Charting scores after each practice enhanced technical learning and visually displayed rates of progress towards self-set goals.
4. Motivate players to practice deliberately more often more of the time
Recording and charting performance scores and setting goals are useful coaching and assessment strategies, but research has shown they are not sufficient to motivate sustained practice4,5. Proactively encourage focused practice such as carefully considering task difficulty and progression. Improving physical fitness requires working in the ideal training zone. Likewise, keep players in their optimal ‘learning-zone’; practicing skills and challenges that are ‘just out of their reach’ so they always want another practice attempt6. Set deadlines or a specified number of practices to achieve personal goals and when appropriate, hold players accountable for performance gains with regular assessments particularly for any self-practice assignments. Rewarding goal attainment with easily managed bonuses such as extra game time in practice or a starting position in the next match are other effective motivators7.
Assessing performance is a critical coaching requirement. Specify essential skills and success criteria precisely and provide sufficient practice opportunity. Proactively encourage focused practice to develop accuracy and then fluency of performance. Finally, teach players to measure mastery and chart their progress towards realising their potential.
Look At best football bet predictions
Download the recording sheet: Measuring Mastery recording sheet (247)
Sources and further reading:
1Carling, C., Reilly, T., & Williams, A.M. (2009). Performance assessment for field sports. London: Routledge.
2Holt, J.E, Kinchin, G., & Clarke, G. (2011). Effects of peer-assessed feedback, goal setting and a group contingency on performance and learning by 10-12 year old academy soccer players. Paper presented at the International Association for Physical Education in Higher Education (AIESEP), International Conference, Limerick, Ireland, 25 June 2011.
3Martin, G.L. (2003). Sport psychology: Practical guidelines from behavior analysis (2nd ed.). Winnipeg, Manitoba: Sport Science Press.
4 Holt, J. E. (2009). The application of behaviour analysis to the coaching of academy football players: Towards a technology of elite player development. Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Southampton, U.K.
5Holt, J. E., Kinchin, G., & Clarke, G. (in press). Effects of goal setting, individual and group contingencies on learning and effort by talented youth soccer players. European Journal of Behaviour Analysis.
6Rosenshine, B., & Stevens, R. (1986). Teaching functions. In M. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of research on teaching (3rd ed., pp. 376-391). New York: Macmillan.
7Siedentop, D. (1980). Management of practice behaviour. In W. F. Straub (Ed.), Sport psychology: An analysis of athlete behaviour (pp. 42-48). Ithaca, NY: Mouvement Publications.
