Hi everyone, this is Dave Wright and welcome to the Play Development Project Podcast. Hopefully all of you are safe and well during the current COVID-19 pandemic. It's been a truly strange and challenging time as football and all of sport navigates the challenges of lockdowns of varying degrees around the world combined with the inability to get out on the grass and support players. Despite this, it's exciting to be bringing you another top Q&A discussion today via the podcast.
But before we get into that conversation, a quick recap of what we've been working on lately at PDP. So over the last few weeks, we've hosted a number of live webinar events for coaches in order to quickly pivot, putting some content production on hold in order to directly engage with our community. Now, if you haven't joined one of our live events yet, don't worry. We have six webinars from the last month or so now edited and available on the PDP website, under the Masterclass discussion section, many of which are also featured on the homepage.
Thanks again to our amazing guests from the World of Coach Development Academy football in other areas. And if you're interested in joining us on a webinar, look out for more live events coming very soon. We have also released some new content recently alongside these webinars and most recently that was a blog, which features a chapter from Gold Dust, how to become a more effective coach quickly by David and Keith Mayer. Now, I highly recommend reading this one and checking out the book and look out for a masterclass discussion with these guys soon.
We've also got some more live sessions in the mix, which are being edited for release in May. So watch the space as the first session from the series will be online this week for PDP members. Huge thanks to Rick Markey Oli at Brunswick City Soccer Club in Melbourne for allowing us access to the first team to film some sessions. Now today's podcast is a Q&A discussion alongside PDP technical advisor, Dan Wright.
Dan and I chat about some common mistakes coaches can make as they develop. We share some of our own mistakes and key lessons learned, and we'll end up being a pretty thorough and honest conversation, so we hope you enjoy it. Finally, a reminder that you can sign up as a PDP member at playdevelopmentproject.com. And remember, you can access a free trial to the platform when you join us.
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And I hope you enjoy today's discussion. Hi, everyone. My name's Dave Wright, and welcome to another Play Development Project Q&A. As per usual, I'm delighted to be joined by PDP technical advisor and academy coach Dan Wright.
Dan, how are you this week? I'm good. Thank you. How are things for you?
Good, good. Keep them busy and looking forward to a really interesting conversation here. Now we've had a question come in, and it's coming from John via Facebook around what are some of the common mistakes when you start out in coaching? Now we had a look at this.
We've done some prep, Dan, credit to you. You've done a little bit of work here. And we've had a conversation. So what we think, we've come up with a list of 10 of the most common mistakes you can make when you start your coaching journey.
So Dan, what are your initial thoughts? And do you want to kick us off with number one? Yeah, I suppose it's worth clarifying that this isn't an extensive list. It's because it could be another 10.
But these are kind of 10 things that we thought are quite common or some things that we've been guilty of. So it's not pointing the thing. I think we can show some vulnerability and say, these are things that we've done wrong as well. So the first one I put on the list was kind of transplanting approaches and cultures.
And I suppose there's a driver at first to go and find out what the pro clubs are doing or what Barcelona are doing or what the all blacks are doing or whatever. And thinking that we can take that culture or that set of values or that approach and stick it in our environment and it will be perfect. And maybe this is, there are people that are better places to speak about this than me. But understanding the culture and the system and why that approach works in that area, maybe geographically or with those athletes or whatever might not be the best approach for your kids.
So one of the kind of really easy way to explain this was the all blacks talking about sweeping the sheds. And then you've got every youth team talking about how important it is to sweep the sheds, even teams travelling with brooms because that will make them a better team. And the kind of missed the point of what that's about, if you have to put the broom in the kids hands, then you've missed the point of why the all blacks think it's important. So that's the quite simple way of explaining.
But yeah, kind of completely transplanting an approach, a culture, whatever, sticking in our environment and expecting it to kind of fly. You want to add that one? Yeah, I think it's square peaks around holes, isn't it? You do have to take context into account.
You do have to take, I guess, age groups environments. And so on, you have to take your entire system into account. Now, within the PDP model, which Jimmy Gorn's been a big influencer in terms of developing and a lot of our external contributors have helped to get involved that shape, which you can see on the website. There's a lot in that in terms of the macro system that brought us for the national culture, how that affects sport, how that affects young people.
And then within that, perhaps, your more micro system, your club, your school, the coaches and adults around the player with the players sitting at the heart of that. I think you've got to consider how that looks where you are. And I think the same thing can be said in terms of transplanting things. When it comes to session design, this is something we've always pushed at PDP is that, yes, we will provide some session plans.
But view those with a lens as to how you can adapt them for the age of your players, the level of your players, and make sure that you're putting a twist on it. And I think one thing is I've evolved as a coach is, any time I watch another coach work, I won't necessarily watch it with a critical lens and a negative sense. I like to look at it at the glass I fall. I really like this.
I really like that. But it would be, how could I put a twist on that? Or what might I change to adapt that from my group? And I think whether it's online or whether it's watching coaches in person, you should always have that open mind to say, whatever's being delivered here isn't just the answer.
It's a way of doing things. And it could be applied in my environment by adjusting X, X, Y, and Z. So I think that's important. It's a great point to start things off.
What for you is number two on the list that we're going to discuss tonight? Yeah, almost a beautiful segue there, right? Point number two is thinking it's all about X as an O's. So what I mean there is a few things.
One is what you've spoken about, maybe seeing a session somewhere and thinking, I can lift that session and it'll be perfect for my under-aid. So watching Simeon is defending and then, yeah, I've got under tends defending, I'll be exactly the same. So that is something I was guilty of, like being this kind of massive search for session plans, the Magbike coach, and I've still got maybe two or three thousand sessions on my drop box that I've collected from other coaches, from watching videos, from different online sources and thinking that there is somewhere secret source that I can download PDF and become the next best coach in the world. And so I've slowly and painfully learned that that isn't the way.
And so that's what I'm talking about with anything that's about X as an O's. And maybe you've kind of articulated it better when you watch someone work, I'm now thinking or watching how to interact with people because we've both been coaching for kind of over 15 years. There aren't that many sessions and you see people do a recession and go, yeah, it's a tweak on something I've seen before. And when I was probably younger, I'd go, I've disappointed.
I've seen that session. I want to see the, where's the secret source? I want to see the secret source. And actually the secret source is probably the interactions with people and the golden nuggets around questioning and letting the questions sit and being uncomfortable with that silence or challenging the individuals or the timing.
How long does he let that competition go on for? And the session is obviously really, really important, but it isn't all about exercise. That's my kind of point. Yeah, I think it's an important caveat to say, look, it's we're not neglecting technical detail here and we're not saying that tech takes aren't part of the game, but I think it's a really good point that there's so much more to it.
I remember my first course at St. George's Park, it would have been the end of 2012. I'd flown up from Australia where I was living at the time. I'd gone into the sort of immersion just after St.
George's had opened and Roy Hodgson happened to be there delivering a session with the walls under 15s, I want to say, from memory. And for me, you know, coming from the outside, I don't know, this was an awesome opportunity to see Roy Hodgson deliver a session, I believe he was in the England role at that time. And the end of the day, the session was really just a face of play with lots of repetition and defending a set way and the structure was very simple using half of a pitch, using 20 players or whatever numbers he had. And I sort of left thinking, man, there's a simplicity in the way he delivered, which perhaps is a less experienced coach at the time.
I'd probably been coaching for about 10 years at that point. It sort of struck me that there wasn't sort of, as you said, a secret sauce or a magic thing that I saw from this world class coach. It was very simple. It was the game.
And I think that's what we've got to say. Once we get a handle on what the game looks like, and yes, there's going to be better coaches out there who perhaps go into more tactical analysis or enjoy that side of the game. Once we get a handle on that, then it becomes about the human activity and the human complexity of sport and coaching and dealing with people and trying to develop people. I think, you know, that's something that's really important.
So when you start out, perhaps you can get hung up on that. So it's a really good point. So that probably takes us to number three because we want to push through these. So what's next on the list?
So number three, again, is kind of a few things smashed into one, presuming that we have all the answers as coaches and that kind of command and control. And we can open people's heads to chuck the answers inside, close their heads, and they'll be better players. I suppose that kind of links into that kind of secret sauce that I talked about, but there's things that I can say and do that will completely change the world for that player in 30 seconds. So I suppose not trying to bypass the learning and the fact that learning is that gluing.
It can be slow and it can be painful and it can be times where it goes really horrible. And I know you've written a lot about that. That kind of dominating voice in the coaches, Gengen and maybe the ego that goes in with that, do you want to speak about that? Yeah, look, I think this all comes down to communication and how you approach, again, people within sport.
So I think it's really important to think here, how do I communicate? And I was here and put my hand up and say, when I started coaching 19 years old, my view was, well, I've got to get here and motivate and inspire the group and be a leader and speak up and give fiery pre-matches or halftime team talks that are really going to add a little bit of vibe. And anything I say is going to motivate the players. And I look back on that now.
And I think maybe in certain contexts through that first two or three years, whether it was a cup semi-final, maybe you've said something or there's been something that's lifted the group, maybe it's had an impact. But overall, I look back and I think that's probably had very little effect. And the players probably zoned out. They thought, here goes David, he's having a little rant about the time.
When's it going to end? And I wish I could speak up. And I think my perception of coaching at that point was that the cup on the coach, I know all and it's important for me to kind of tell the players what to do and help the players. And so it was with good intentions, but it was with an experience.
And I think we have to sit ourselves aside, how he goes aside and go, what's best for the player? And that's made me all these years later be very, very considered with the language you use, be very deliberate with the praise, be very deliberate with the feedback. Be very specific when you're communicating, because I think there's so much to be said for the power of language. And so when we believe that we are the sounds of knowledge, and again, decided on the Masterclass Aaron Danks, he's coached an under 20s World Cup where they won the tournament with England.
He sat there on that call and he said, the more I'm sort of coaching, the longer my career goes, the less I believe I really know. I love that vulnerability and that openness to say, hey, I'm an international coach, but I'm still learning. And I'm still picking people's brains and observing it going into different environments. So it's so important that as coaches we understand that it's not about us.
And we are there to facilitate that. It's my personal view. We're there to facilitate a great environment. And we don't just have the fountain of knowledge to download.
So again, I was going to say point number four, but this one's a good one that we could talk about for a while. Yeah, it's interesting because we kind of formalized 10 points there, but they all kind of bleed in. They do. They do.
Number four, I had not considering individuals in front of you. There's kind links into point one around culture and transplanting sessions, and also number two of X's and O's. I think when I started coaching, I was polite and nice to the kids that I coached. But I didn't think about their backgrounds, their challenges, their strengths, their individual qualities, both as a human and as an athlete.
I just kind of there was a broad brush approach to session designs and kids kind of got the out-of-the-box solution. But probably, like I said, I downloaded somewhere and thought I had this great session and I stuck on a group of players. Whereas if you start to consider the individuals in front of you, I think there's maybe two things to talk about here. There's the individual in terms of the player.
So like, what is he good at? What is his target? What are the things that he wants to get better at? Where are the gaps?
What have we got to help and develop? And then also the human. Like, what are they like under pressure? What are they like?
Are they resilient? Can they deal with adversity? Do they like challenge? How am I going to communicate them?
So kind of two pillars of coaching the person over the athlete and then thinking about what does this player need? What do they want? How do I challenge them? How do I get them enough stretch?
Not too much stretch. None of that stuff kind of popped into my head. When I started coaching, it was just a team approach. And we just do this.
And number nine is do that. I'm going to start that game model approach onto the kids rather than thinking about what is every individual need. And I know we've got tons and tons of detail. And that was worth talking about because I definitely would have done it 10, 15 years ago.
Absolutely. And I can create at my time in the academy system in the UK for absolutely overhauling my perspective on how important it was as well. I've gone on to write about it and it's something that I've presented I just learned from so many great guys, the Stuart Englishes, the Arthur Brammards, these guys that we've interviewed on a P.D.V. and we've also had various contributors sort of chime.
And for me, this is psychology to decide another PDP contributor, Dan Abrahams. Dan, I saw put a recent post up online talking about how psychology is ever present. It's in everything. So don't think it's just an area.
And for those that want to dive into that, jump on that masterclass discussion, Dan, because obviously you were there, Dan. And it was a great conversation for a lot of two hours. Yeah, I think it was our longest ever masterclass. And for me, this comes down to understanding those individuals across the spectrum as you said, sociocultural factors and all these elements, which influence the player, the person, are so critical.
And when we don't account for those and understand what's going on in those players' lives, then it's very hard to develop. So that's an area that I'm exceptionally passionate about. And it's a great point. So with that said, and an exceptional amount of content on the website, which people can check out by just searching individual or a keyword like that, you'll find out more.
This takes us to point number five. What do you got for us there? Point number five, I've got pigeon-holding players into positions. Again, it could be a whole separate Q&A for another day.
But believing that someone enters your passion to have your system, your club, whatever, approaches you want to take at six and seven. And he's got a left foot. So he's going to be a left back forever. He's a coming goal.
Or he's a number nine, age eight. He's a number nine. So we could speak about really high performance elite players that have played in one position as a youth. And now playing in the Premier League in a different position.
But we could also speak about individuals that you and I have coached. And we could put our hand on our heart and say, I had no idea that we were going to play in that position when they were nine-ten. And they didn't look like, for example, kids that don't look like they want to defend, and didn't show that ugly side and that British all-dog spirit to defend, and are now playing for Premier League clubs as defenders. So it goes to show perhaps you don't know what you're talking about, but also being really patient.
Well, this stuff will emerge. We don't need to be in a rush to stick them in positions. And we've spoken a lot about the benefits of playing in different positions, the technical and technical benefits. We'll also just be impatient, especially through that teenage years.
There's a lot of growth and hormones and maturation and stuff going on. Just being comfortable with going, yeah, it's quite good in this position. But who knows? It might turn into something else.
And that might mean losing games of football. At nine-ten, if you put your best striker in defense, you won't win as many games. And that's all right. That is kind of worth talking about, I think.
Yeah, look, I might give myself a trouble. But one that pops into my mind is the debate around how young goalkeeper specific training should start. Yeah, I know. I know.
You're getting certain kids that maybe they just love being a goal. Brilliant. Be a goalkeeper if that's what you want to do. But I also think, potentially, is it valuable to have kids being specialist goalkeepers from 7-8-9?
I think there's a big question on that when goalkeepers are known to be in late position in general. You know, I think that's a black or white rule, but in general. So if the kid wants to be there, loves that sure, no problem. But I think there's a lot of benefits of integrating keepers and perhaps giving everybody a turning goal and making sure that players are getting their ticket put on with their feet, the moment goalkeeper has to be out of pass.
They're playing out from the back as some coaches want to do. So that's one example. And again, for those goalkeeper coaches who believe in, you know, special coaching in under 7, that's entirely up to you. It's probably not saying I would engage with or advocate for, but I know it happens.
And I think that's something that we've got to be very careful of. But players adapt. And they also benefit from those different experiences. You know, you've made some great points there.
How can you align individual objectives and individual plans with position-specific coaching? You know, this is something that when you want to get outcomes, maybe it's a player that's not passing or receiving so well. I can think of a young player we both were lucky enough to work with who's now playing youth international football, who couldn't really pass and receivable with a lot of confidence at 11 and 12. But had a program in place, had a plan in place where he was playing in certain positions to get those outcomes and subsequently built the toolbox, which has gone into where he is now and still doing very well within the system.
So, you know, it's important that we allow players to experiment to try things to see the game from different perspectives. So it's certainly a very good point. And with that, we'll get over to number six, unless you've got anything else to add in there. There's just tons of those brilliant stories, isn't there?
Like, is in the UK Bay District School Football? And Wayne Rooney broke the record for Liverpool schools or Liverpool districts or whatever, the trucker's trucker's. But the record holder before Wayne Rooney first, most schools in district football was Jamie Carriker. Because in youth football, he was a striker.
And he didn't do too badly, did he? Won some champions, did he? So it goes to show, like, even at that, this was quite late in his year, that 14, 15, he stood a striker and ended up playing, you know, at the highest level, or the biggest European game, is that the sense of, or even a right-back, I think he played in the Champions League by the same time. Anyway, I'll stay on track.
Number six was selecting players for now. So I think if you work in that youth space, especially in, kind of, 12 to 16, you need to get an understanding of growth and maturation. And we've got massive class conversations with Matt to Pudge. But even going away and reading some of the research from kind of shortcomings and people that are experts in this area, big growth and maturation and players being bigger and stronger earlier than other ones.
And it is quite easy if you work in that space. The pick players are huge and massive and more powerful and can run and will win games at football right now. But actually, if you fast forward, they'd be players that when they get to 17, 18, 19, it will be better complete athletes. So that's an interesting place to explore and go through, because the ones that are the best players now might have a high training age.
They might be physically more developed. They might have had more exposure to the 11 game. They might have older brothers as low as they start to consider. And actually, the best players are the ones that might make it or be better at a certain age, depending on what you sit on that performance of participation model.
It might be the ones that are just middle of the group, or might be the ones that are late maturing, technically really nice, but physically can't get around the pitch or get smashed in tackles because they're not the same size. Actually, fast forward and those might be the ones that play. So there's loads of examples about this, like Kevin DeBroyne are not being an early maturer and struggling to compete and what now one of the best players in the world. So yeah, that is a space that you need to explore.
Yeah, selecting players to win a game at 11, 12, 13, 14, rather than thinking about where we're preparing for future and making sure that individually can and it's getting a stretch that he needs. Yeah, really interesting. You started the work of Sean Cumming. I've actually been reading some of his research and listened to an interview around some of the work that New Zealand Cricket's doing down here in New Zealand around bio-banding with some of their youth teams and their sort of 11 to 13, 14 age group.
And some of the outcomes when they're bringing players together and actually bringing them together and putting them in bio-banding sort of tournament. And some of the outcomes from some of those smaller players in a game like Cricket where strength can allow you to bowl faster or hit the ball harder. Obviously, smaller players can be very intimidating. And I can put the hand up and say it's a cricketer.
I was pretty intimidated at 0. At 0.11 to 0.13, you learn to play against the half ball and maybe some six-foot-dad running into the bowl. But you think now that they're considering this as a part, again, they're not saying do away with age groups, but they're saying it's part of the diet. Let's put them in these tournaments to give the small players a chance to get confidence and play shots in front of the wicket.
So again, whatever sport it is, there's an application from the standing that maturation is a huge factor. And again, we've started the work of Steve Lawrence and Molten Times and these Q&As. There's content on the site around relative age effect as well because that is part of it. So again, something else to consider that if you started out coaching and maybe you're a little, you know, just wondering some of the things that you could sort of engage with as a mistake, you know, that this is something to consider.
So, can we number seven, do we take this through that one then? Point number seven I've put is not reflecting or not learning, so as a coach, so going back to some of the area of points about having a session plan, having this, you know, you've been on the course, you've got the session plan, you know it's going to work, you've got this great session, you've seen it work, and then it doesn't work and it begins well. And it's never the coaches fault-ending. The kids work very good or they don't understand.
They're not very bright, the game intelligence is quite low. And not reflecting and not learning, what am I not doing right? Where's it going wrong? And it should always be shining a light on the coach first.
It should always be pointing at yourself. What did I not go right in terms of constraints, in terms of session design, space, intervention strategies, competition, physical load? One of the things that we didn't do that made the session not go well. And you've probably been encouraged on a course to do that formally, to reflect and to keep diaries and to, you know, we had a reflective diary on the A-Lisons, where you reflected on the day, you reflected 10 days later, and then you reflected whatever month afterwards, and kind of being more concise with your thoughts.
That was quite an interesting strategy. But probably the best reflecting or the best opportunity I had to reflect was when I had to drive kind of an hour to work. And I'll be sitting in the car thinking like, my prime was this, and I wanted to try and get this for that willingness. And I didn't, like, it didn't happen.
And why didn't it happen? So if you're not kind of doing that, you're probably missing part of that learning cycle. So you're planning and you're doing and then you're not reviewing. So then you just plan and do it, plan and do it, and plan and do it.
And even if you're smashing it and it's going really well, you're probably missing stuff, whether it's around like an intervention strategy or session design or hitting all the individuals that you plan to hit, you're probably missing stuff if you're not reflecting formally or informally on your kind of approach. Some fantastic points around that, Dan, it's absolutely critical we reflect as coaches. And I think we've all been there, where you play the blame game and you sort of, you know, be on the sideline and it's a little bit spicy and you're a little bit hot here. And you think, you know, furious, maybe the players weren't working hard enough or you're perceiving things, but do you sit back and reflect on the environment you've created?
Do you sit back and think about the way you communicate it? So again, to cite some PDP content, there's a great article on self-reflection and some other content from, if you're a national coach, education manager, Sean Douglas on the website, which is worth a read. That takes us towards point eight, a very challenging one. What's that one?
So point eight, I put as parents, and I put it with an explanation mark as well as as it's parents. It's very important. I think my kind of journey was initially through kind of PE and grassroots sport, which is very important because they feel like it's up at the end of the day and they might pay some of the facility or some of the service. So you need to communicate with the parents from a safety point of view and you also need to communicate with the parents in terms of business, but if you need those parents understand what you're doing and why you're doing it.
And then when you step into kind of high performance environments, sometimes when some environments become less important, because maybe the power or the control is switched now, maybe the kids are now lucky to be in our environment, and we don't need the parents because the kids are fortunate to be here. And we both kind of experienced some of that and tasted some of that. And parents can get confused or disinterested or unsure of the approach or how their son's been treated. And there can be a gap between kind of the coaching or the club's approach and how the parent is communicating with the individual.
And then as a coach, we can get caught in between where we're like, we're player-centred and we're looking at the individual, but the challenge or the stress or whatever we're playing for the players and maybe making better, the player that the parent is not seeing the full support, so they're seeing all the challenge with a not-single support. Well, they don't understand why we do a certain approach with team selection or games or whatever it is you're doing. And they're in the dark. Whenever people are in the dark, they feel uncomfortable and they feel like there's a lack of trust and transparency.
And I probably can't full circle with it now. We're like, if you believe in what you're doing and how you're doing it, there are no secrets and we can talk to parents about this is our approach and this is what we believe to be true. And this is how we're going to challenge the support of your son. And that might mean like this, occasionally might be upset, occasionally might find it hard, but it also means on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, whatever.
We're going to support him and we're going to help him. It'll be a nice challenge support and sometimes it'll be really easy and sometimes it'll be really hard, and you help us with that. And that kind of triangle of coach, player, parent is really important. And I think if you dismantle or take away one side of that triangle, you're never going to get it.
I can't think of a player that I've helped either as a human or as an athlete where the parent wasn't involved, where we didn't talk to the parent about what we're doing and how we're going to do it. And on that card journey home, can you help us with this? Or Dave's always late? Or Dave isn't always concentrating with it.
Can you help us watch strategies? And maybe goes back to kind of understanding those individuals in front of you. Something that I've started doing now at the beginning of every season is having to sit down with the parents without the player and say, let's talk to you about your son. And we've talked about something you and they've talked about, but talk about what do they like to do with their free time?
What do they like in school? Is their bedroom tidy or messy? What brothers and sisters? All that kind of stuff.
And the parents know their kids better than anybody. Even if we think as coaches coach their like they before, I know what he's going to do. You have to get under the skin of that situation and the parents are best supposed to do that. So don't neglect them and try to keep them as informed as possible.
Absolutely. I mean, like it or not, they've got a vested interest in their children's wellbeing and their sporting experience. And I think we had a top-nast class with Gordon McClellan from Working Experience with Sport on this. We've had content from Reet and John O'Sullivan around the song website as well.
It's so critical that as coaches, we try and negate that anxiety, isn't it? That can be such a factor on the sideline. And I think transparency is key. I think there's always a reluctance from us as coaches to bring parents out, get them involved, even get them on the pitch and say, look, this is what we're working on tonight.
Go on and stand back and watch. And afterwards, you can come and join the debrief. I love that kind of idea because the inclusive nature is going to hopefully negate some of that anxiety to say. So, parents are so critical.
They're such a massive influence. And I think we should go back to that kind of traditional pop culture, including everyone. I think at times, within programs at any level, they can feel isolated. I think it's up to us as, I guess, the responsible adults in sport with the qualifications and experience, which you said, hey, how do we include these guys, get involved, bring them up to speed and help educate them.
It's a key component. So, Dan, we've got a couple more points to get through. Point number nine. What is the big one here for you?
So, number nine, I put as being in a rush. So, I think this is from a coach education point of view or from, you know, as a coach, being that guy that wants to collect all the badges and maybe not leaving space to consolidate your learning. So, there's examples of people that go from kind of no youth coaching to every badge under the sun, win two or three years. And I think you've got to have some space to let that breathe and you've got to have some space to go and try in your environment and fail and get it wrong before you move on to the next one.
And the logic is like the more coaching badges you have, the better coach you are. Like, you know, when you go to the scouts and you get a badge for a start, a fire and build an attempt, the more of those I've got, the better I'm going to be. So, the reality is that you might not need any of the badges to be a coach, and that, like, is quite a controversial thing to say. But I think that former coach education probably only makes kind of 10 to 20% of your learning.
There's so much other stuff, which is kind of how the PDP evolved, I guess, that is so much to consider in terms of the culture, the interactions, the human stuff, the system stuff, you know, how do we design a club, do we need to quickly, all that kind of stuff? You need to kind of go and taste and experience before you can build an opinion on it. And if you rattle through coach education courses, your opinion might not be your own, your opinion might be the governing bodies, or the tutors, or whatever kind of influence you on that journey. And those inferences are good, it's not to slate those inferences.
But if you don't have time to go and taste other things, then you don't know what you don't know. So, not to be in a rush to collect those badges, or to jump on the next course and jump on the next course. And maybe, you know, you can be in control of your own learning. And say, the next six months, I'm going to get better at designing 1v1s.
And that's going to look like this. And then at the end, you might have a little project where you go, I'm good at these things, and I need to go away and continue to learn those things. And you might not get that, you could consistently rattle through to get the next one next one next one. I think with the accessibility of film, in terms of being able to get yourself on camera with an iPad, an iPhone, anything like that, then you can sort of have that opportunity for self-reflection more than perhaps you could have 15-20 years ago when you'd have to go on horse to get feedback from a tutor.
Now, look, I reflect on my own formal coach education, I had a wonderful experience at all levels. I enjoyed it. I was managed to always take to a course. But it's interesting you say that because I remember arriving with the A-license with yourself, and we got there, and you sort of nervous and anticipation to be awarded.
You're excited about it. It's not under-minded because something that I'm exceptionally proud to have achieved. But one thing I walked away from was feeling more confident in myself and what I believed after going through the process. It wasn't like you walked away with some revolutionary information that wasn't there.
It was in case of, well, I've been in the room with 30 odd other top coaches. I've had conversations with people for a year over various periods of contact about the game, about how I coach. I've been assessed by really well-regarded coach-educated coach developers. I've been in classrooms with top-top people.
So you get all these experiences and I would strongly encourage people to go down that pathway. I guess as you said, PDP is all about informal learning, learning on demand, learning as you go, and accounting for those things. So don't be in a rush because, again, I think that ties back to ego, which we talked about at the start. It's great to say, yeah, I've got my UA for big license at 24 years old, but if you've been on the grass three years, then maybe you don't have the experience to be ready now to go to your A-license or another five.
I look at some of the guys with interview with the McBeals and the Christian speakers. They're grafting football for 20 years, plus to get themselves in positions they are either at first-team level or running academy, or as examples. So I think taking that time, understanding yourself, that self-awareness piece for me is critical in leadership, let alone coaching. I think it's really good advice, and I think it's coaches, we can all be very excited to get on those courses and get them into going.
So it's a great point. And with that, it takes us to our last one, the tenth point on our very long list, and I know we spoke about doing this for a bit shorter. It's so many good points to discuss here, but Dan, what is the last one to wrap this one up? So the last one we put is kind of task design.
So I think we're probably here talking around session designing and maybe linking a little bit to our point to around X and O's and the secret sauce and finding the plan, and also the individual stuff as well, I guess. How do you marry all of that stuff to design a proper session for your group? So we're fortunate maybe through the PDP to talk to a lot of coaches, through the SAC group, through the mental calls, and I still get kind of people saying to me, have you got a session for this? And once you get to build a report with someone, I'm like, I have, but so have you, if you design a session for your kids, we better than the session that I designed for your kids.
As long as you consider all of these things that you perhaps need to consider, what are the individuals? What is their level of training? How many years have they been doing this? What is their level of skill?
What is their experience of the format of the game they're going to play? What area size do you have? How long have you got? How often do you see these kids?
And this list today, if you go on forever and ever and ever. And you need to consider all of that complexity when you design that session. And going back to kind of how I talked to individuals, I don't think I did consider all of those things when I was designing a tasker and probably I've got slightly more skill than I did. I don't think you have any leg but I'm slightly more skilled than I was maybe 15 years ago.
You got anything you want to add on that kind of last point? Yeah, look, I think you're going to have good sessions and bad sessions, and I think there's a tendency I felt when I was a younger coach and I started out to over complicate things. I remember doing a session when I first arrived in London within the academy and I had a couple of top coaches and Stuart and Gabrielle Flores, again both are contributed on the website watching me. They sort of said to me, well, we like what the idea is but could you have done it this way?
And did you need to do that? And it was about simplifying it, stripping it back. And again, two coaches I've looked at as mentors and my coaching over the years. And guys, I like to keep in touch with them because I respect them and their views.
And I think there is that tendency to take a session and say, I'm going to put a really weird twist on it to make it something that doesn't need to be. And again, it goes back to, it doesn't look like the game is a representative at the moment and is it beneficial for the individuals involved and decide another masterclass discussion. The one we did with Ben Bartlett, who was at the FA at the time, is now here to coach your Fulham, a fantastic conversation on understanding task design, decision design, things you need to consider. So somebody worth a follow on social media and also actually great content on the PDP site.
So Dan, it's a comprehensive list. I think any number of those team, we probably could have done a whole Q&A on but it's a great question that's come in there from John and I think we've hopefully added some value for those coaches who are starting out and are looking to refine things because we'll both sit here and put our hands up and say, long the journey we've made plenty mistakes and of course going forward we'll make plenty more, but it's about getting better with every year that goes by. Dan, any sort of final thoughts just to summarize here for you? Yeah, I think the only thing I would ask, if people are listening to this or watching a video, whether there's one that we've missed or one where they need more support with, I think the idea of this community through the Slack group and through the conversations that we're having with people is do people need to have one of these points and how can we have, or have we completely miss one, and people are really struggling with this one thing and how we can support them better.
So we've kind of shown some vulnerability, I think all of these 10 things I've done poorly and maybe got better at. So is there an 11th one or is there one that people need to have because it could be good to hear that. Absolutely, we're always happy to answer community questions from PDP listeners and members of course. So thank you Dan, once again for your time it's been a fantastic conversation.
Have a good chat David, join it.