For the Teachers and Coaches – Deceptive Exercise

Developing, Maintaining or Returning to fitness is a lifetime challenge and there is no easy path or quick fix. There are of course a million different theories, approaches and opinions when it comes to sustaining an overall level of ‘good’ condition.

What we want to talk about today is ‘Deceptive Exercise’. These are the sports and activities that when done in a certain way might trick you into thinking your making a heavy contribution to your fitness but actually are not. Here are just three of them (hopefully it doesn’t shock you too much).

Depending upon the shots in a rally, you may not do a sustained amount of running in doubles. Of course it’s great fun to play though 🙂

* Tennis – So often it is played as doubles which means there is limited movement / running and therefore minimal opportunity to accelerated one’s heart rate. In addition, rallies are often short so break time exceeds playing time.

Why Not Try – Playing more singles and if you are an intermediate player get your hands on some ‘low compression’ tennis balls. These softer balls move slower through the air, bounce at a lower height and help drastically increase rally time (therefore reducing ball pick up and break time).

* Surfing – The image of surfing is of a healthy lifestyle, tanned bodies, broad shoulders and flat stomachs. However, the only real part of surfing that is giving a beginner or intermediate surfer a proper workout is the paddling. So if you are walking through the water, paddling for 20 metres and then sitting on your board for a further 15 minutes waiting for a wave, it might feel great but it’s doing wonders for your blood pressure not your heart rate (and therefore fitness).

Why Not Try – On flat days go for a paddle from one end of the beach to another. If you are a competent enough surfer, ride the waves you catch as far in as possible to actually lengthen the paddle back out beyond the breakers. Implement some sprint paddling to get the heart rate up at least 5 times during a session perhaps.

* Touch Footy – When I play touch footy I feel that I get anything from a killer workout to light run depending on any number of factors. These may include: Number of substitutes in your team (more or less break time), quality of opposition and where you spend most time on the field (standing out on the wing or running ’round like a maniac in the thick of the action).

Do you just stand on the wing?

Why Not Try – To be realistic about how much you got out of your game. If you had no subs, a tough opposition and spent most of the time scrambling up the middle, then go enjoy your post match beverage. However, if you had 5 subs, your team had the ball the entire game and you stayed on the wing waiting to unleash your Campo-esque ‘goose-step’, then in recognition that it wasn’t the world’s greatest workout, perhaps run a few slow laps of the park at the end of the game to top up your exercise for the evening.

We could of course go on…However, the bottom line is that so often in sport and exercise you can often make the activity as hard or as easy as you like, and easily convince yourself it was a huge workout. Be realistic over the break and don’t just assume that because you played a game it equalled a great session of exercise. Be a bit more sensitive to the differences between a tough game and an easy game, compensate accordingly with less or more exercise and you should start to see personal fitness results improve or if not at least be maintained over the silly season 🙂

Today will be our last blog for 2011. From all of us at Teachers In Sport we would like to wish you the best for the upcoming school holiday period and of course Christmas. It has been a pleasure bringing you our weekly blog and hearing your comments.

We look forward to introducing you to many a fantastic TPL course in 2012 to help you improve your PE Teaching and Sports Coaching.

Merry Christmas,

Teachers In Sport

No Net Newcombeball – A Great Game to Reinforce Control!

Recently we talked about timing before power. As a progression onwards from that discussion we bring you a game that rewards control rather than power.

Derived from a Badminton modification (“Speed-minton”) we once saw, ‘No Net Newcombe-ball’ is a game that can be set up really quickly, modified to suit different standards and replicated to ensure that lots of ‘small sided’ games can be played at one time.

1) Use your own judgement to do the following:

• Form teams of 1 to 4 players.
• Mark a square out for each team with cones 1 to 5 metres in diametre.
• Space the square 1 to 10 metres apart.
• ‘How many, how big and how far’ the above is lets you control the difficulty of each game very easily.

2) Students now use Newcombe-ball rules (Volleyball with catching allowed) to play.

3) If ball is dropped, point is lost.

4) If ball lands outside the square without it being touched, point is lost.

5) First to ‘x’ wins.

Yet again, this game can be used across a multitude of sports and the fact that no net is required drastically reduces set-up time. Here’s a few sports NNN can be modified for:

• Volleyball
• Tennis (Either to teach control whilst Volleying or if for a rally, make the rule that players can’t step outside the square.
• Rugby (any type including Touch).
• AFL (Handpasses or Kicks).
• Netball (Passes of all kinds).
• Soccer (Increase the distance in-between squares to up the difficulty).
• Cricket or any throw and catch based game or skill.

There are no doubt others – free your teaching mind and get creative. Let us know how you go!

Enjoy!

Smartphones, Tablets and PE (Part 1) – Data Collection

PE is a mobile subject. So do mobile devices a welcome addition to the PE environment? Or are they just another gimmick?

Clipboards, reams of paper and their subsequent organisation / filing are the bane of many PE Teacher’s existence (certainly mine anyway). My most recent PE teaching assignment involved 29 classes a week. The teacher I was relieving for 6 weeks asked that I record all kids running times over 100m, in preparation for the Athletics carnival.

My first reaction was to grab the clipboard and request a roll printout for every class. I then paused and wondered how an iDevice, that constantly promises to make life easier (and to be fair, often delivers), could be utilised in this setting.

Using the free Evernote application (a list maker and keeper) and a stopwatch (an actual one not the iDevice version) I proceeded to record names and times of all kids running in a format that could easily be stored, edited, sorted (after pasting into Excel) and emailed. Here’s what ‘2A’s times looked like:

Not only was this a compact, flexible and editable way of recording times as a one off, it also meant no paper (and no need for transfer from paper to computer). Furthermore, it was a record that could be easily organised by name in order to compare results from week to week, term to term or year to year and therefore a clearer give a view of achievement or progress being made.

It got me thinking about the inclusion of these tools in a variety of PE lessons. Kids love quantitative measurement, so how about applying it to other parts of your lessons?

Make lists for:

1. (the dreaded) Beep Test
2. Soccer juggles
3. Baskets shot in a minute
4. ‘Self Rallies’ (Tennis)
5. Skipping skills
6. Any skill that can be repeated and counted that you can think of.

Record them, sort them, print them out and create an ongoing ‘ladder’ that kids can try and better their position on. See how it goes and let us know what you think!!!

A Golden Rule to Remember – No ‘Put Downs’

I have to attribute the content and inspiration of this blog to a wonderful lady I worked for in London back in 2003/4. Her name is Dr Shirley Kavanagh and she runs a company called FACE (Feeling, Achieving, Caring, Encouraging). When I was part of the company, it was known as PEAT (The Prevention of Exclusions Activities Team). Here’s their website for more information http://faceyouth.co.uk/

There are so many ‘golden rules’ of teaching that I learnt in my time with PEAT and today I wanted to divulge the best of the lot. ‘No Put Downs’. In all my teaching, but especially in the oft over competitive PE environment, it has formed the backbone to my disciplinary approach.

After Mondays tanty against Sam Stosur one wonders whether Serena was ever guided in the art of 'No Put Downs'

‘No Put Downs‘ is exactly as it sounds. No one in any class I teach is to be heard putting another student / player down at any time. Here are some of the supporting reasons I give when I am explaining why the ‘No Put Downs’ rule must be adhered to.

1. Chances are you are not the best in the world, nor are you the worst at the game you are playing.
2. How would it make you feel, if when you dropped the ball a teammate was yelling at you that ‘you were hopeless!’?
3. Would you be more likely to catch the next ball if you were worried about your teammate having a go at you again?
4. If you dropped the ball and your teammate instead said ‘bad luck mate’ or the like and gave a pat on the back, would that bolster your confidence to do better next time?

I sit this rule at the top of the tree and I encourage kids to tell me if they have been put down or if others have. Especially with the primary kids, you will see the rule begin to manage itself as kids don’t want to be put down so they wont put down others. This makes for a much nicer environment to teach and play in.

How you punish children who break this rule is up to and what type of teacher personality you have. After a clear explanation I don’t think that warnings are required. Sitting kids off for a few minutes in light of breaking the rule followed by asking them if they know why they’re sitting down works for me. That’s just my take…

Have a great day!

The Littlies Love ‘Cone Flip’

Here’s a great game to get things started or finished in your lesson. It engages the kid’s bodies and brains as they try to devise a way to win. Like so many of these activities, there’s probably a million names. We call it ‘Cone Flip’.

In the absence of any relevant photo we thought we'd throw in a cheesy cartoon of some happy kids. Hoping yours are as smiley as this lot after a couple of games of Cone Flip 🙂

1. Acquire a set of cones or markers in two different colours.
2. Form two teams (one for each colour).
3. Spread cones out evenly (one for each player) across an area of your choice – The wider they are apart, the more active the kids will need to be.
4. On your command, the kids begin trying to flip the opposition’s cones from their upright position.
5. At the same time they have to return any of their flipped cones to their standing position.
6. The winner can be ascertained either when one team has flipped all the opposition’s cones or upon you saying so, stopping the game and counting which team has the most upright cones. They are then declared the winner.

As much as this game is great for the little ones we should revise that and say that it is great for anyone FROM a very young age. The older kids love it as well. It combines strategy and exercise very nicely.

Enjoy!!

Volleyball’s Too Hard – Newcombe Ball’s Too Easy: So Let’s Get Creative!

Volleyball and Newcombe Ball are both great sports, with the latter being an excellent modification that has proven very popular at school level.

We contest though that for many players (in our opinion, approximately 8 to 14 year olds), Newcombe Ball tends to be a little too easy and too bland. Whilst Volleyball, (even for inexperienced or lower ability adults), is often a game of on-going one shot rallies. Not much fun when you have 6 (or sometimes more) players per side waiting for a hit or their serve.

So let’s mix the two games up and see if we can’t custom make a hybrid version that will keep the kids engaged and improving at a more rapid rate. Shall we call it ‘Vewcombe-ball’ or ‘Newlley-ball’?? Maybe not…

Remember the following is not set in stone. You should modify your games in any way that results in more touches on the ball per player, an appropriate degree of difficulty for your players and finally, a platform for their improvement in the sport.

1. The serve must be hit (typically underarm).
2. If trying to encourage or teach overarm serves, how about a serve that can be hit overarm to a teammate who can then either dig it, catch and throw it, or just help it over the net anyway they can??
3. Modify the number of service faults allowed.
4. If 2 serves are missed allow the player to come half way up the court to throw / hit the final attempt.
5. Whenever the ball first crosses the net, it can be caught.
6. The catcher must pass the ball to a teammate (up to x passes must be made before returning it over the net).
7. The ball must go back over the net with a hit. To do this, a player tosses the ball up for the teammate to dig, set or spike it (more for advanced) back over the net. Alternatively the player intending to get the ball over the net can hit it out of their own hand.

In conclusion, all we encourage as general rule is: If the game is not keeping the kids busy and engaged then change the rules! Don’t be worried about how it may affect them in formal competition. As long as the fundamental skills that they are being asked to perform are correct (throwing, hitting and catching) then they will adapt when the rules become more formal.

Good luck!

A Quick Game for All Ages – Ball On Racquet Tag

Most schools seem to have some tennis racquets (even if they are old, beaten up relics) floating around the PE store-room. Here’s a great excuse to dust them off and get them in the kids hands.

Ball On Racquet Tag

1. Mark out a space approximately the size of half a tennis court.
2. Give out 1 racquet per child, or one racquet to be shared amongst up to 4 players.
3. Each player (or team) needs a ball.
4. Players must stand inside the marked area with the ball on the racquet (if the kids are older then they should balance the ball on the strings. The younger folk can place the ball in the ‘V’ on the racquet that exists between the head and the racquet handle.
5. When you say so the kids begin to walk around the marked area and while keeping the ball balanced on their racquet try to knock the ball of other people’s racquets.
6. a) The last person with a ball on their racquet wins or b) If playing in teams when player one has the ball knocked off they are replaced by player 2 (a tag team event). The last team with a player still in wins.

NB: Players are not to use their hands or their body to hold the ball on the strings.

Variations

 As you know by now, we love games that can be used for multiple sports. Try the same basic ‘Ball on Racquet Tag’ principle for the following sports.

1. Basketball – Players dribble a ball and must attempt to knock another players ball out of a medium sized marked area (players are not allowed to stop dribbling).
2. Soccer – Players dribble a ball but try to kick opposition balls out of a marked square (no stopping on holding the ball under the foot is allowed).
3. If you don’t have enough or any racquets, they can balance the ball on the back of their hand (not easy – for littlies, use a beanbag).

This is one of those goodies to get everyone started or to finish with as a reward. Add your own twist and enjoy!!

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!

Bench Ball – Anyone got a better name?

Some of these games really need a makeover when it comes to their names. After reading this, let us know your suggestions for a better, more engaging name for this great twist on netball.

Popular in PE Classes throughout the UK, Bench Ball is essentially netball with a more achievable goal scoring element. It harks back to our ‘Meet Your Targets’ blog that you can read here: https://teachersinsport.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/meet-your-targets/

It discusses the idea that for the sake of their own self esteem and continued improvement, children should be set targets that can be achieved approximately every 1 in 6 attempts. With a 10 foot goal, netball does not allow for this ratio to be achieved in the average PE class right up to around the age of 14 (that’s an educated guess).

As we’ve also said before netball is a great game and so with that in mind we bring you Bench Ball.

Not quite…

• The main difference is that instead of a goal you have 2,3 or 4 ‘goalkeepers’ that stand behind the baseline. True to the name of the game this is usually whilst perched on a ‘bench’ (balance beam).

NB: Keep in mind that this could be a bit of an OH&S nightmare. Why not replace the idea of a bench with a hoop that the goalkeeper must remain inside? Much safer!

• Inside the court the game is played just as netball is – No contact, No stepping, No throwing the ball more than a third of the court.
• Unlike ‘Netball’ there is no great need for positions (although you can use them as in the image below).
• The object of the game is to get the ball to one of the goalkeepers who are waiting behind the line (on the bench or in their hoop).
• When a goal is scored, play returns to the middle and the team that was just scored against gets the ball.

This is more like it…

Typically, in a 15 minute game you should see scores upwards of 5 regardless of ability level. When youngens play netball with a 10 foot hoop, one would be lucky to witness 1 or 2 nil.

Enjoy, share with your teaching colleagues and as ever, if you have any questions or comments, please get in touch!

Meet Your Targets

Have you ever played Darts? It’s pretty hard to hit that stupid bulls-eye. In the most common of darts games where you count down from 500 you have to hit a triple (the thin little rectangle which forms the inner circle of the board) to close out the game. Trust me, it can take a while and tests even a decent player’s patience. To be honest it’s so difficult to finish a game I don’t like it that much.

Imagine then you are a child learning a new sport and you have been presented with the equivalent of hitting a ‘triple’ as a measure of how well you’re progressing. It’s more common in sports lessons than you may think. These difficult to achieve and developmentally counterproductive targets might take the shape of:

• Fielding practice using a single (or even 3) cricket stumps with the thrower being asked to stand too far way when lining up the target.
• Shooting soccer goals from too far away, with over-sized soccer balls or with a goal keeper that stops too many shots.
• Using adult sized netball / basketball hoops during children’s practice.
• The use of the tennis ball pyramid (4 balls stacked up) placed in the service box.

 

 

Targets are great but a balance must be achieved to keep the student engaged and motivated. The magic ratio (according to Sports Psychologists) sits at about 1 target achieved for every 6 targets attempted. Hardly a likely outcome when you can barely see the 4 stacked balls from the other end of the tennis court. So try some of these:

• Make the goals bigger (big squares of carpet instead of small stacks of tennis balls for example)
• Remove the impediments in front of goal (goal keeper / goal defender)
• Get your hands on modified equipment (adjustable height goals)

Most importantly, constantly review the difficulty of the targets that you have set for the students you’re teaching. Too easy/ Too hard? Modify and improve to keep the kids seeing their own improvement and subsequently coming back for more sport!

(This image of the kids performing a great example of a target drill comes from old friends and the ultra professional operators at Max Tennis. They run the best junior tennis lessons you are likely to find at centres in Belrose, Kenthurst, Breakfast Point and Moore Park. Check them out here at www.maxtennis.com.au)