Designing great session plans is a crucial (and rewarding) component of delivering youth sport. As coaches, we need to give young athletes enjoyable sporting experiences, help them develop, and potentially prepare them to perform in competitive settings. And our ability to meet all of these needs within a single session centres upon careful planning and an in-depth knowledge of the individuals we’re working with.
In this article, we discuss a framework for session planning centred upon three key components — Repetition, Realism, and Relevance — and explain how we can use each of the Three Rs to guide us in our session design.
Repetition
In simple terms, Repetition refers to the frequency with which athletes get to repeat certain actions or interactions in our sessions. But, importantly, this does not simply mean repeating the same movement or technique in isolation; instead, we’re considering how many (repeated) opportunities athletes have to solve a specific problem.
This distinction is subtle but crucial. When an athlete merely repeats the technical execution of an ideal model that has been prescribed by their coach — for example, when they are told exactly how to make a pass in netball, or dribble the ball in soccer — they are robbed of the opportunity to make their own decisions and practice solving problems independently. Instead, we must give our athletes reasons to repeatedly practise a particular action or interaction without specifying how they do it; we must give them a reason to pass the ball, or a target beyond which to dribble, and allow them to repeatedly work on these skills within dynamic environments.
This is the essence of ‘Repetition without Repetition’. By manipulating the environments and task constraints within our practices, we can give our athletes multiple opportunities to practise specific skills while they repeatedly attempt to solve problems (and thereby learn to feel comfortable executing those skills in a range of different scenarios). A simple example would be having soccer players attempt to dribble past a defender, rather than simply carrying the ball back and forth between two cones.
It’s worth noting that this approach may appear less effective at first; athletes will often ‘master’ identical, unopposed actions more quickly than actions that take place within more fluid and complex environments. But remember: our aim is to help our athletes learn, not to simply provide the illusion of learning.
Repetition without Repetition helps to prepare them for their sport as it is played — and feeds into the Realism that our sessions must provide if we are to help our athletes develop as completely as possible.
Realism
Realism is the aspect of session design that makes our practices resemble the sport we’re coaching. Essentially, it means making the actions or interactions within our practices comparable to what our athletes will experience when they compete with their peers in games or competitions.
Take the example of an invasion game: during a match, players must process a constant flow of information, encompassing things like the actions of teammates and opponents, ball movement, and even the playing surface; development is the process of learning to recognise and appreciate the information that impacts their ability to complete their task, and then coupling that understanding with specific actions (often those that we have worked on in our training sessions, such as passing, receiving, shooting, or intercepting).
Designing sessions that resemble the game helps athletes to learn in this way, and makes it easier for them to transfer their knowledge from training to competitive environments. (Once again, consider the different learning outcomes you’d expect when practising against an opposing defender instead of being ‘marked’ by a cone.)
Of course, we cannot make every aspect of our practice an exact replica of gameday; our sessions must balance an array of different activities, each with different levels of Realism. When considering the level of Realism in our sessions, it helps to think of a Practice Spectrum ranging from completely isolated activities (for example, shooting free throws using a designated technique) to fully-opposed practices (such as a 15v15 rugby match on a full-size pitch).
Activities at the bottom end of the spectrum provide no interference and require little, or no, decision-making; activities at the top end are as close to the real game as possible. There are merits to both types, though it’s worth noting that, as we increase the Realism in our sessions, we will lose a degree of Repetition — and vice versa.
In any sport, there are a multitude of potential practice activities that sit between these two extremes. Our role is to identify an appropriate blend. This, in turn, will depend upon our coaching environment and, more importantly, the precise wants and requirements of our athletes.
Relevance
Relevance is the component of session design that focuses on the specific needs of our athletes. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to coaching youth sport, and it’s vital that coaches know who is in front of them, and what those individuals want and require from their sporting environments.
Knowing our athletes extends beyond recognising sporting considerations — such as the position they play or their stage of development — to understanding them as people, and accounting for their lives beyond sport. Myriad socio-cultural factors — encompassing everything from their home and school lives, and where they live, to their friendship groups and other hobbies — impact how an individual learns, and what they need from a sporting environment in order to enjoy participating, feel safe, and develop.
Ultimately, coaching is a human activity. To be effective coaches, we must connect with our athletes and understand them. And this understanding, in turn, should underpin the entirety of our session design.
We can connect with our athletes by showing an interest in them — for instance, by asking them questions about themselves that are completely unrelated to our sessions, or even our sport — and building a sense of trust. It takes time, but it will help athletes to feel more comfortable in our coaching settings, while also giving us the information necessary to create the kinds of environments that are right for them.
Factors like athletes’ age, stage, developmental goals, and desired outcomes from participating should also inform our session design. But it’s important to remember that, whatever level we’re coaching at, our priority must always be to give all of our athletes enjoyable and meaningful sporting experiences.
Relevance may be the last of the Three Rs, but it’s arguably the most significant.
In Summary
- Repetition means giving athletes opportunities to learn skills while repeatedly solving problems — not simply instructing them to repeat the same action in isolation.
- By giving athletes ‘Repetition without Repetition’, we can enable them to practise specific actions and interactions while also learning to make decisions.
- Realism is essential to helping athletes learn skills that will benefit them in competitive scenarios and subsequently transfer that learning to gameday.
- We should use activities from across the Practice Spectrum in order to give athletes a variety of learning experiences.
- Relevance refers to the process of knowing our athletes as people, and letting this knowledge of their individual wants and needs inform our session design.
- The Relevance component of session design is integral to taking an athlete-centred approach to delivering youth sport.
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