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Hi everyone, welcome to another PDP monthly wrap. Really pleased to be joined once again by PDP technical advisor Dan Rite. Dan, how are you mate? I'm very well, thank you mate.
I just think it's worth pointing out if you are listening on podcasts that Dave is supporting fantastic in the session today. Oh my God. So watch the video, you can see it's full glory but if you're unfortunate and you're listening it's very very 1980s, you should get online level up. Mate, thank you for that.
I'm just trying to mix it up. Keep the wife on her toes and keep things interesting so that's all good. It's certainly doing that. I'm in trouble, put it that way.
Look, a great to be back for another wrap and a lot of fantastic content came out in March from a range of contributors. So we're going to sort of go through and review that, revisit some of the clips as well. And obviously the purpose of that is just to show some of the members content for those who haven't joined up to the website yet and recap what we've been delivering. So last month we published a Masterclass discussion with Matt DeBlidge who's a former Southampton Academy Sports Science expert who's now British tennis.
We also published a couple of blogs, a research review, had a fantastic session planned from you and we're going to review some of that. So we'll start with the Masterclass and I know you know Matt DeBlidge very well. He's a leading sports scientist, formerly worked for Saints and has now been British tennis. So let's check out a clip from Matt discussing bio-bending.
This sort of segues nicely into the next question around bio-bending and this is a pretty hot topic and I guess a relatively new approach in terms of how we can deal with that relative age effect and those very very kind of growth stages. I mean, what are the benefits, what are some of the risks and how do we implement this as opposed to just lining kids up on a physical level? I mean, there's a lot to consider here. So what advice would you have around this sort of approach of clubs and coaches?
Sure, there is, it's kind of a hot topic at the minute and a lot on social media you see, it's kind of a marmacked thing, so it's a level of hate between people. But I think it's important to see that bio-bending, it should be seen as one tool of development rather than a new development tool of our young athletes and as you sort of touch upon it really does fit in sort of the fore-corner model that's physical, technical, psychological, you've got to take into account when bio-bending. I guess to put a little bit of the bed to bio-bending itself, it's not about lining the kids up from sort of the shortest and then slitting them, it's not that at all. I believe it or not, I was an early mature, but sort of got around at five for five.
So it's going to be no point in me just playing against small kids because actually me coming up against small kids is what's going to happen throughout my career as such. So bio-bending is easy to look at online and it's done by a method called the Camus Rocha method which is a couple letters online and it basically allows us, if you've got the parental height and the kids' height, to work out their predicted adult height and it's proven to be accurate within a couple of inches. And then from there you can work backwards and say, well, if little Johnny's predicted X amount, I know currently it's currently 85% sure, I just predicted height. You can then group him amongst other children of the same 85% or a couple of percentile bandings and that in effect is already speaking to sort of what bio-bending is.
So you'll still have to all the kids against small kids and vice versa, it's based on where you are in terms of your total height, your growth potential rather than just the smallest. So that's how it's done. I think it's probably viewed as a development tool for all maturity levels. For example, an early mature who dominates through almost false physicality through being an early might really benefit from playing in his bio-bending rather than his age group because he might have to develop the tactical and technical skills because physicality is taking away from him for a period.
So if you're not able to utilize the later mature playing, Dan might suddenly be able to beat a man more often rather than be caught up by the kid that's grown up physically early and can actually start making more in-producting their games. It might not be in the late mature stage development. However, if they're not psychologically robust enough to do the step up or actually don't have the tactical and technical skills that the coach feels would allow them to progress through bio-bending, then it doesn't have to be used. It shouldn't be used.
It really is. One development tool to help us analyze and assess and help children of various stages of maturation progress. I love the fact that you've cited the side corner there and it's such a nice way to tie the physical and side corners as such together. By considering, you know, is a player mature enough mentally to be able to cope with the challenge and sometimes it's a catch that they've been kids in and out for a few weeks and seeing how they can go when they're stretched and perhaps bringing them back into that safer environment with friends and similar age groups.
So really key point for me. I said that. That's some great advice there. So Dan, some really interesting insights there on bio-bending from Matt.
I mean the discussion was a lot longer and it was fantastic interview with Matt. What were some of the key takeaways for you? Yeah, I think Matt's somebody who's an expert in this field and very much interested in growth and maturation. So I think that aligns with a lot of the messages we have here at Play-Dive-A-Project Project.
So, you know, that non-linear journey and what it looks like at different ages and stages. So, you know, is your best player at 14, 15? The best player or is he just the most physically developed? So stuff around that sort of growth and the maturation and how you kind of group those guys together in terms of bio-bending but also understanding what that player might look like in the future and then just having a bit of patience with them and how you may be a cap for that difference in your sessions.
I think Matt's got probably a really holistic approach to this in terms of it isn't all about now, isn't all about winning, it's about what's that player or the athlete going to look like near the end of their journey or near where it's important I suppose. And also a fresh and that Matt quite often referred to them as children. It wasn't all athlete this and athlete that he talked about, you know, probably the bigger picture of the individual. I think all the tech was being there.
I agree with those. I think the key one for me particularly in the clip was just balancing the physical with the psychological and social. You know, you've got a guy there who's obviously actively involved and very qualified in sports science and sports science can often get a bad reputation if it's, you know, cone-driven or numbers-driven or statistical. So, I think it's important to say, look, there's a lot of good practitioners out there working in good environments who understand that there's a lot more to it than just grouping kids by size as we kind of refer to in the clip and taking into account whether a player is ready to go and play up or needs to play down.
So, just those individual needs were really a highlight for me. So, in terms of the next concept, we're going to go over to the blogs and we had a couple of great blogs, one of which was written by you Dan. And that's what we're going to do is actually show a clip from that blog just to give some context to what it was about. So, this article was a really excellent read.
It was around Steve Kerr and what coaches can learn from him. Thousands of people have read it already. It's gone really well on social media. And would you like to provide a little bit of context on the clip just before we discuss it?
I'll try. Yeah. So, what I tried to do was put two videos into the blog. So, there was examples of Steve working with his players.
So, the first step, the one we're going to listen to is an interaction with Seth Curry. So, it's in a break and he's talking to Curry about probably his performance in the game and some of the outcomes and some of the processes. Excellent. Let's head over to that clip now.
That's what I'm going to show you. That's your shooting totals? That's your plus minus. Alright?
So, it's not always tied together. You're doing great stuff out there. The tempo is so different when you're out there. Everything you generate for is so positive.
It shows up here. It's not always there, but it always shows up here. You're doing great. Carry on, my son.
So, Dan, a really nice clip from Steve Kerr there and obviously somebody you studied at length and put a fantastic article together. What were some of the key points for you from that clip? Yeah, so in this clip, I think we're showing sort of the power of a one-to-one coaching. So, he was talking to Steph Curry, who's probably one of the best players in the NBA, probably the best player on the team, and talking about his impact in the team.
So, maybe he was struggling to sink some of those shots in that moment, but he was saying, you know, your interactions with the players and when you play, all these positive numbers are going up. So, I was really interested in kind of the personalized touch and kind of focusing on the process, which should be a common theme of some of the things we discussed here. So, not all about how many points have you scored, but more like what are you doing to have the team. And then, just as he leaves and just as he's about to sort of re-enter the court, just the coaching from a positive, just focusing on all the good things rather than the bad things.
And then, the blog went on to show an interaction where the coach actually handed over the team talks to the players. So, they had the whiteboard and they were talking about what they were going to do in terms of running their play. So, it was kind of a blog that sort of smashed together two video clips and then talked about how that, you know, what was the sort of logic behind that, maybe something research behind that was happening that the players perform and how the players get better. What would you also take a question this one, mate?
Look, I think it's just the fact that you've got somebody there at the performance end of sport, the highest level, you know, demonstrating empathy, but also taking that individual approach. And I think there were a lot of people when this came out on social media, because I see the clip went fairly viral. A lot of people seem to be shocked who perhaps weren't in tune with the coaching scene or what's going on in youth development. Obviously, you and I know many of the coaches out there know who are working in the industry.
We know that there's a lot of people going out with this kind of approach about, you know, trying to help the individual or taking a pathetic approach to their players. So, it's really nice to see someone at the top end of the game, you know, delivering this kind of approach and I guess putting it out there. Yeah, and interesting that you had to almost explain it to the media that it wasn't disrespectful, that it wasn't, you know, like him sitting back with the hands off approach. It was all sort of pre-planned and real and the players were used to doing it and training.
It wasn't something just chucked together. So, moving on to the next blog, the next blog is by Mark Upton. Do you want to summarize this one? Yeah, Mark's obviously one of our sort of longer serving contributors, arguably one of the best protonical around performance narratives.
And I guess the key theme here in short is that at the top end of sport, someone's talking to me with God and say, why doesn't he care? There's this dominant narrative of performance and winning and almost the same kind of line gets towed out whether it's in press conferences or what we need to do or interviews and so on. And Mark just sort of put a really nice summary to get about how there are alternatives. So, I would recommend that anybody listening or watching does go and check that one out.
A really nice piece of work from Mark there. Next but on the list is the research review from Professor William Harper. Obviously, PDP professor over there in the States put together a really nice review on how family financial investment impacts youth sport. So, Dan, did you have any thoughts on this one before I sort of give him on?
Yeah, I think the takeaways from me were how when parents are financially invested, I think all parents are emotionally invested, but when they become financially invested, perhaps feeling that they've got an opinion and they've got a right to be involved in the process. So, I think that's something that all coaches feel whether you work grassroots and the parents are definitely involved or whether you work in a more elite environment and the parents will maybe continually drive them to training or continue supporting them by new boots or whatever. I think then the skill of the coaches is how do you include those parents but also keep a consistent message. What about for you, mate?
Yeah, look, I think this is a real, it's just an eye opener and again, you know, whatever level you're working at, you're going to go through this and I think being in the academy game you've always got that anxiety or pressure around players being released and obviously at grassroots level where there's a pay-to-play model, particularly in places like the US where the study was done, or even in Australia where fees for young players to play football can be exorbitantly high. It's important to understand that that's going to come with pressure and parents feeling like they've got a right to coach or say or be in charge can be a result of that investment. So, it's something that I think as coaches we need to be aware of, but of course, this is just part of managing or understanding the complexity of the environments we work in and really less than dealing with people. So, highly recommend that the listeners and viewers go over and check that review out from Bill once again excellent work from him.
And the last bit of content we're going to review is our session plan from last month. Now, this was a 2v2 practice which I know you've used a lot and really enjoyed. Do you want to take us through a couple of key points from the session? Yeah, I think the session sort of came about because I was trying to find a realistic way of improving finishing.
So, finishing practice tends to be unopposed, tends to involve, you know, sort of mannequins or five feeds and you get five goes and left foot and right foot. And sometimes I think they lack a bit of realism or the speed is not sort of going to transfer to the game. So, I was trying to find a simple way to correct 2v1s or 2v2 situations in around the box. So, players had to make those really quick decisions of whether to assist or score.
And then I was kind of looking to get that repetition without repetition. So, there was loads of finishes, there was loads of assists, but they all looked really different. So, basically, his players were working in pairs attacking two defenders, sort of in that central strip, sort of with the box. And then when you went that competition element, it just shot up like the kids didn't really want to defend.
So, they were defending so well that they wanted to have a gut finishing and that just drove up, I suppose, sort of the returns. And then you could dial up the realism of adding off sides or, you know, adding constraints around certain zones and whether the players were locked in. So, something I've done with the group of players I worked with and the best of them really visited a couple of times. So, that, you know, it's obviously quite engaging, but yeah, quite fun and quite realistic.
Did you have a look at that one? I did, and again, I'd recommend people go and check it out. It's a really adaptable session. It's good.
Like most of our sessions in the library there, they are adaptable and it's important that whilst we'll give you a framework, you go and apply it to your environment. So, again, great work from you, mate. And I highly recommend that the listeners get onto the site and check out the session playing library in particular, that 2v2 practice. And finally, before we conclude the PDP monthly wrap, I just want to announce some very exciting new changes, which my brother Adam's been working really hard on behind the scenes to the website.
And this is to make the members user experience even better. So, those changes are now live. And when you sign in to the members dashboard, you can customize your own feed similarly to things like Netflix, where you may be able to choose your own content, and you will start seeing more and more of the content of the categories that you would like to see. Now, the website's got over 500 pieces of content in the form of videos, Q&As, masterclass discussions, and, of course, magazines and research reviews.
So, loads of content there. Jump on, log on to the dashboard, set up your categories, and you can adapt to and adjust those at any time if you want to change them. So, if you're not a member, head over to PlayDevo.com and join now. That pretty much concludes things, Dan.
Thanks again for your time. No worries, Matt. See you soon. Excellent.
Having you on board, and we will look forward to the next PDP monthly wrap very soon. Thanks for joining us on the PlayDevo Project podcast. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram, at PlayDevo.com, or find us on Facebook. Don't forget to head over to PlayDevo.com, where you can sign up for our progress approach community and gain access to our wide variety of resources to help your your coaching.