First Timing, then Power

Have a look at anyone who is good at what they do in a sporting sense. The first thing that certainly comes to my mind is how effortless they look whilst generating, seemingly disproportionately large amounts of power. This ‘effortless power’ can be observed when an expert performs some of the following skills:

• A goalkeeper kicking the ball off the grass 50+ metres.
• A tennis player serving.
• A golfer hitting an iron (these days I feel that they look like they’re smashing the ball when they hit a wood or driver).
• A cricketer hitting a cover drive.

When these tasks are performed (and dozens of other skills), the relationship between power and timing is a very different one compared to your average junior player’s approach (especially boys!).

High on the priority list of your average junior players is to swing as hard and fast as is possible with little regard for the quality of contact. What must be understood is that genuine power cannot be achieved without great timing being in place first.

Try this tennis analogy as a means of explaining the importance of timing.

If you strike the ball in the imaginary 10 cm diameter circle in the slightly upper middle section of the strings you will achieve  power that I would rate a 9/10. However, if you hit the strings outside of the ‘sweet spot’ that rating plummets to 2-4/10 depending on how far off the sweet spot you make contact.

In addition, control is exponentially lost for every centimeter off the sweet spot that you make contact. Bad timing is therefore a two edged sword.

With these ‘power ratings’ in mind, here’s the question to ask your students: ‘Are you better off swinging fast and getting a 2-4/10 power score or swinging at a slow to moderate pace and get a 9/10 power score with the added bonus of control thrown in?’ Hopefully their response indicates an understanding of the topic.

To compensate for poor timing, most people swing faster. What they should be doing is slowing their swing down and trying to achieve regular, very good timing. The easy way to gauge this is when the task is performed and the ball feels as if it has barely hit the bat, racquet, foot etc.

When consistent, good timing is being achieved at a slow pace, it is then that a moderate amount of power can be added. If this causes timing to break down again then ratchet down the power.

First Timing, then Power!! – Teach to your kids (good luck with the teenage boys or adult males new to the sport!), practice the same approach with your own sport, marvel at the improvement. Best of luck!

What’s good for them is good for you…

‘Do what we say and not what we do’ – a common theme preached by teachers. How about we DO it as well (or at least part of it).

Are you interested in getting a little fitter, stronger, more flexible or agile?

A great warmup, strength, balance or stretching activity at the start of a PE lesson will not only help get your class in better shape, but can also assist YOU in developing the great habit of doing a little more exercise.

Try ‘SBF” for a good warmup – Strength, Balance and Flexibility. Keep it reasonably short (under 10 minutes) and keep it regular so you and the kids form habits and see progress.

There’s a million combinations you can use (if you’re stuck for ideas, let us know and we’ll give you a hand). Here’s one to start:

Flexibility: ‘One in, one out stretch’

1. Whilst sitting down, bend one leg (e.g. left leg) in towards your groin and stretch the other out away from the body.
2. Attempt to touch your toes with your right hand (or just point your fingers towards your toes).
3. Hold for 7-10 seconds.
4. Swap legs.
5. Remember, stretches shouldn’t hurt. Slight discomfort is the worst it should feel and make sure you don’t bounce.

Strengthening: ‘Boat’

1. Lie on your back.
2. Bend the left knee and put the left foot flat on the ground.
3. Whilst holding it straight, lift the right leg approximately 30cms off the ground.
4. Using the stomach (not the neck), lift your torso up and point at the lifted foot.
5. Hold for 5 seconds or a couple of natural breaths.
6. Swap feet.
7. If manageable, have both feet up and both arms pointing.
8. Feel the burn.

Balance: ‘Tightrope’

1. Find a line or imagine one on the ground and put one foot in front and one behind, both pointing in the same direction.
2. Put your hands together and extend them in front of the body parallel to the ground.
3. Leaning forward, attempt to lift the back foot off the ground and hold a balance.
4. If this is too hard, try to lift the back heel off the ground leaving just the back toe as a balance point.
5. Progression: Try to create a ‘T’ shape with hands out in front, the leg on the ground and back leg extending out behind you parallel to the ground.
6. Hold for x seconds and swap feet.

Kids love seeing you doing the drills, getting in there and showing that you’re not there just to give them orders. So as well as motivation for the students, a little routine a few times a week and you’ll be seeing improvement in your fitness as well.

Enjoy!

Guest Contributor Michelle Libby and an Excellent Basketball Drill

Today we are really excited to have Wethersfield HS (Connecticut, USA) Head Coach and friend of Teachers In Sport, Michelle Libby, sharing with us a drill to use in your basketball training sessions. We thank her for contributing to ‘Notes from the Sportsfield’.

Olympic Shooting

“One of my favorite drills as a player was called ‘Olympic Shooting’.  Coincidently, it is also one of my favorite drills as a head coach.  From a players’ perspective, the aim of the drill is to reach a goal in a certain time frame.  Making drills competitive is important as it helps keep the athletes focused, instead of just ‘going through the motions’.  From a coaches perspective it works on several key fundamental skills, such as passing, cutting, lay-ups, and shooting.  It is a full court drill that also involves an element of fitness training.”

Organisation

• Have players form three lines spread evenly on one baseline.
• Player in the middle line has one basketball.
• Second player in each of the outside lines has a basketball.
• At the opposite end line, two players, each with a basketball, stand just wide of where the lane intersects with the baseline.

Activity

The drill begins with the side that has three lines starting a three-man weave.

Wait a second. What’s a ‘3 Man Weave’ I hear you ask? It’s a good drill in itself – and here’s the explaination.

• Start at one end of the court.
• Set up 3 lines of players, numbered 1-3 from left to right (make sure they’re even) and step on the court.
• The middle person (2) has the ball.
• He/she throws the ball to the player on the right (3).
• After throwing they (2) run behind the player that received the ball (3).
• The person who has the ball (3), throws it to the person on their left (1).
• When they catch it, the person who threw it (3), runs behind that person.
• The person who has the ball, throws it to the person who had the ball first (2), then they go to the goal and make a lay-up, jump shot (or dunk 🙂 )

Or for the visual learners – a video:

Continuing on…

1. Once the weave reaches the opposite three point line, the player with the ball takes it in for a lay-up.
2. The two remaining players each spread towards the sidelines where they receive a pass from the players on the baseline and take a jump shot.
3. The player who took the lay-up rebounds the ball and goes back the other way in a three man weave with the two passers.
4. The players who took the jump shots rebound their basketballs and now become the passers on the baseline.
5. The drill is continuous at this point, with layups counting as 1, jump shots as 2, and three pointers as 3.  It can be timed, with a goal set.  For senior high school level players I set a goal of 100 in five minutes.

Questions? Email info@teachersinsport.com or leave a comment on this blog or our Facebook page here

Get Speedier with these Sprinting Drills

Too often a child’s speed and endurance or potential for it, is written off as being ‘genetic’. While there is some truth to this assumption, it is also rare that a student fronting up for their yearly athletics carnival has explored many (or any) of the ways in which they can defy their bodily composition in order to become a faster runner.

Below you will find a great mix of drills that won’t just quicken your chargers in their 100m dash at the Athletics carnival, but will also assist them in chasing down a loose soccer ball or sprinting down the touch line to score a try! Enjoy!

Drills to improve the running speed of your little (and not so little) athletes:

These sprinting technique drills can be performed in this order or alternatively focus on just 3-4 drills. There is no need to perform multiple sets and repetitions.

Raise Knees: 10 metres – jog – 10 metres – rest
Sprint 10 metres concentrating on raising knees as higher than normal. Jog for 10 metres and then sprint for 10 metres and rest.

Fast Knee Pick Ups: 10 metres – jog – 10 metres – rest
Jogging on the spot raise your knees to waist height while emphasising the arm action. Move forward 10 metres with this action concentrating on the number of ground contacts rather than how fast you cover the distance. Try to get as many ground contacts as possible.

Flicks: 10 metres – jog – 10 metres – rest
While sprinting over 10 metres concentrate on flicking your heels up to touch your bottom.

Leg Speed: 60 metres
This is a normal sprint over 60 metres except all of your focus should be on your legs. Try to gauge your optimum leg speed by taking different stride lengths to see which yields the best results.

Skipping: 40 metres

High Hops: 3 x 40 metres
Bound from one foot to the other. The action is similar to skipping except your are trying to gain as much height as possible and stay in the air for as long as possible on each hop. Remember to allow for a full recovery between attempts.

Elbow Drive: 40 metres
Sprint for 40 metres concentrating on driving your elbow in a straight line. Keep your elbows flexed at right angles while keeping your arms relaxed.

Self Correcting Students – Use Errors Wisely

The teams and classes we teach / coach, all have players with differing rates of progression, as well as varying strengths and weaknesses in their game. How do we keep the entire team improving when there is one of you and a whole squad of them? Encourage them to self correct!

The players that improve the fastest are the ones that are made self-aware of their errors and are able to fix common, repetitive flaws in their own technique, while not necessarily being directly supervised.

To encourage this, the coach or teacher needs to instill in the player the ability to recognise when they themselves are making repetitive errors (whether during unsupervised practice or in a match) and how to fix them.

To encourage ‘self correction’ try the following approach:

• Identify the error (eg ball toss too far forward causing the ball to repetitively hit the net).
• Explain to the player the reason for the repeated error (ball toss is thrown too far forward resulting in a serve hitting the net).
• Demonstrate the correction to the error (Hold the ball slightly longer before releasing and curl the fingers slightly more around the ball).
• Check their understanding, observe a couple of attempts, encourage them to use any future errors to help improve themselves and move onto your next willing subject.

Of course it is wrong to assume that the error will be remedied immediately after you provide the solution. However, you can now happily leave your student. They are now armed with the information regarding what they are doing wrong, what happens when the error occurs, how to fix the flaw and what it looks like when it goes right. Self correction in action!!

Multisport Drill – 10 Passes to Score

Too often we move too quickly to the shooting or goal scoring part of practice. We do not give adequate recognition that it takes an awful lot of skill and effort to arrive into a goalscoring position when playing a ‘real’ game.

A significant challenge to the teacher or coach wanting well rounded players, is that ‘scoring’ is all that many juniors want to do and what many youngsters subsequently value success or failure on. The remedy? Drills that go a long way to replicating the ‘buzz’ of the scoring a goal. Not an easy task, but here’s a goody…

10 Passes to Score

1. Form a rectangular field of dimensions approximately 10m x 5m.
2. Make 2 teams per field of 4-6 players (if using more increase the size of your field).
3. Have 1 or 2 less defenders than attackers on the field.
4. The object of the game is to complete 10 passes in order to score a ‘goal’.
5. If the ball is intercepted or knocked to the ground it goes to the opposition team.
6. The ball cannot be returned to the person who passed the ball to them (no ‘1,2s’).

This drill can be easily used for the following sports:

• Netball
• Basketball (players may have to bounce the ball at least 3 times between passes)
• Soccer (when players trap the ball they cannot be dispossessed)
• Hockey (when players trap the ball they cannot be dispossessed)
• Waterpolo
• Touch Football

What do you think? Why not leave a comment regarding this drill or your PE teaching experiences!

Enjoy!

Queuing for Sport

My old man says he ‘never queues for food’. At Mamak, a great Malaysian eatery in Chinatown, he broke that rule the other day. It was worth it. At Teachers In Sport we – “don’t queue for sports”. We also don’t break our own rule.

Queuing for Sport

When I see children in line waiting for a turn in a sports lesson I cringe. Yes, it is an effective controlling mechanism. Yes, you may be the only one who can deliver a bowl, throw, serve or kick in a controlled enough manner to allow your students of sometimes limited ability to return, catch or hit the ball.

Is the control on multiple levels that you are achieving worth the passivity of the students who spend minutes at a time waiting in line?

We therefore bring you ‘Kids and Coaches’.

1)      Relieve yourself of the ‘ball thrower’ duty and become the ‘Head Coach.’

2)      Put the kids in pairs or groups of three.

3)      Appoint one child as ‘coach’

a. Their job is to feed the ball in the way that you instruct (underarm throw to the forehand, a ground kick to the left of their team-mate etc).

b. Have them repeat this task ‘x’ times before they rotate the ‘kid and coach’ role.

4)      While your class is performing the ‘kids and coaches’ style drill you are free to divide your time evenly, help the ‘kids’ with their technique – help the coaches with theirs (feeding a ball appropriately is a very useful skill). You will notice that some kids revel in the role as coach and will begin to perform basic analysis and correction on their ‘students’

5)      The result? Everybody doing something, everybody doing more of the activity in less time and therefore everybody improving faster.

ENJOY!