75: Grow Coach Newsletter
Football Coaches: Develop your Coaching Craft.
Welcome from JustCoachMD. We are happy to have you on board and look forward to providing you with helpful content.
Here is What to Expect:
Coaching Craft: Strategies to Improve the Player's Learning Environment.
Full 60-Minute Practice: Finding the spare player.
If the challenge is too low, there’s no learning. If it’s too high, there’s no learning. But just right, and we hit the challenge point. — Professor Nicola Hodges
Stretch without Stress: Finding the Sweet Spot of Skill Development
In the rush of training plans, match prep, and performance pressure, it’s easy to forget what coaching is about: helping people learn.
The science of learning — how players process, store, and apply knowledge — gives us powerful tools to design environments where that learning can truly take hold. Whether you’re coaching beginners or elite performers, understanding how players learn is as important as what we teach.
This article explores 5 foundational ideas from sports psychology and coaching science that can elevate your practice:
Rosenshine’s Principles help us deliver more effective, structured coaching moments.
The Challenge Point Framework illustrates how to strike a balance between comfort and chaos.
Cognitive Load Theory helps us avoid overwhelming players so that learning sticks.
Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU) ensures learning happens through the game, not just around it.
Constraint-based coaching helps players learn by interacting with their environments.
By integrating these ideas into our coaching, we can move from simply organising sessions to crafting environments where players think more, adapt faster, and fall in love with learning.
🌱Rosenshine’s Principles (Instructional Effectiveness)
Rosenshine identified 10 research-backed principles that support effective teaching. These emphasise structure, repetition, and feedback to embed learning in long-term memory.
Core Principles:
Daily review: Begin sessions with a brief recap of key concepts or skills to reinforce long-term learning and sharpen recall.
Present new material in small steps: Break down new techniques or tactics into manageable parts to avoid overload and ensure understanding.
Ask a large number of questions: Use frequent, targeted questioning to check comprehension, promote thinking, and keep players cognitively engaged.
Provide models: Demonstrate or show examples of what success looks like so players have a clear mental picture of the desired outcome.
Guide student practice: Actively support players through early practice with prompts, cues, and feedback before expecting them to work independently.
Check for understanding: Continuously assess if players are grasping the concepts, not just through performance, but through their explanations and decisions.
Obtain a high success rate: Aim for players to experience success around 80% of the time to build confidence while still stretching their abilities.
Provide scaffolds: Offer temporary supports (e.g., constraints, cues, progressions) that are gradually removed as players gain skill and confidence.
Require independent practice: Design activities where players apply learning under realistic conditions without constant guidance.
Engage in regular review: Revisit and reinforce key skills and ideas over time to deepen understanding and aid retention.
Coaching Application:
Daily Review: Begin sessions with “What did we learn last time?” to reinforce prior knowledge.
Small Steps: Teach one attacking pattern at a time before adding complexity.
Scaffolding: Use walk-throughs or shadow play before full-speed execution.
Modelling: Show what success looks like—demonstrate correct technique or use video of pro players.
Environmental Benefit: Players feel supported, progress gradually, and develop confidence as understanding builds layer by layer.
The sweet spot of learning is where the task is just beyond the player’s current ability — not too easy, not too hard. — Dr. Mark Williams
🏆 Challenge Point Framework
Learning occurs when a task is neither too easy (no growth) nor too hard (too frustrating). The optimal “challenge point” depends on the learner’s skill and the complexity of the task.
Coaching Application:
Modify Pressure: Reduce space or increase defenders as players improve.
Task Progressions: Use 1v1 → 2v2 → 3v3 → full team to gradually increase difficulty.
Skill-Adjusted Practice: Stronger players get more complex tasks; others get more repetitions or reduced pressure.
Example: A young winger struggles in 1v1s. Start with a 1v1 with delayed pressure or a fixed defender to build confidence, then progress.
Environmental Benefit: Players feel stretched but not overwhelmed, which enhances motivation and sustained engagement.
🔍 Cognitive Load Theory (Mental Bandwidth)
Working memory has limited capacity. Overloading it (with too many instructions or tasks) prevents learning. Managing this load allows for better focus and retention.
Types of Load:
Intrinsic Load: The difficulty of the task itself.
Extraneous Load: How information is presented.
Germane Load: Mental effort that contributes to learning.
Coaching Application:
Reduce Extraneous Load: Use simple, clear cues (“scan, shift, pass”).
Limit Instructions: Avoid giving 5 instructions at once—stick to one or two key points.
Build in Layers: Teach positioning, then add scanning, then add movement.
Environmental Benefit: Less frustration, better clarity, and higher player retention of key ideas.
👨🏫 Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU)
TGfU promotes tactical awareness through modified games that mirror real situations. It shifts focus from isolated skill drills to contextual decision-making.
Key Steps:
Game Form: Start with a simplified game.
Game Appreciation: Help players understand rules and objectives.
Tactical Awareness: Use questioning to bring out decision-making.
Technical Execution: Isolated skill work if needed.
Performance: Return to the game to apply improvements.
Coaching Application:
Example: 3v2 to the goal to teach overload exploitation.
Guided Questions: “Why did you pass there?”, “What was your other option?”
Environment Benefit: Players develop game intelligence, understand context, and stay engaged.
🚧 What is Constraints-Based Coaching?
Constraints-Based Coaching is a framework that helps players learn by interacting with their environment. Rather than telling players what to do, coaches manipulate constraints—conditions that shape behaviour—to guide players toward discovering effective solutions themselves.
It’s based on the idea that movement and decision-making emerge from the interaction of:
Individual constraints (e.g., player’s physical and psychological characteristics),
Task constraints (e.g., rules, goals, equipment), and
Environmental constraints (e.g., space, surface, weather, opponents).
🧠 Why It Works (The Theory Behind It)
CBC is grounded in ecological dynamics:
Perception-action coupling: Players learn to perceive opportunities (affordances) and act on them in context.
Self-organisation: Players naturally find stable and effective movement solutions when placed in realistic, variable environments.
Repetition without repetition: Learning is enhanced by varying the conditions, not repeating the same practice.
We are not here to produce robots — we are here to help players become adaptable decision-makers. — Raymond Verheijen
⚽️ How Coaches Can Use Constraints-Based Coaching
Manipulating Task Constraints
Modify rules: Limit touches, reward certain actions (e.g., extra points for breaking lines).
Change equipment: Use different ball sizes or goals to influence technique.
Shape team structure: Try numerical superiority (e.g., 4v2) or underloads (e.g., 3v4).
Example: To teach switching play, create a rule where a goal only counts if the ball is played through both flanks before scoring.
2. Altering Environmental Constraints
Adjust pitch size and shape: Smaller spaces for tight control; wider areas for expanding play.
Use environmental noise or distraction to simulate match pressure.
Vary surface or weather conditions if appropriate (to build adaptability).
Example: Narrow pitch to teach playing through congested central areas. Wide pitch for exploiting flanks.
3. Considering Individual Constraints
Tailor tasks to age, skill, physical capabilities, or psychological state.
Some players may need more challenge; others more support.
Allow for different ways to solve a problem (avoid “one size fits all” coaching).
🧰 Tools for Implementation
Observation over instruction: Step back and watch what emerges before giving feedback.
Use questioning: Instead of telling, ask “What did you notice when…?” or “How could you create space there?”
Design progressively: Start simple and layer constraints over time.
Encourage exploration: Reinforce creative solutions—even if they fail.
How It Supports a Positive Environment
Autonomy: Players become active problem-solvers, not passive receivers.
Engagement: Tasks are realistic and game-relevant, maintaining motivation.
Creativity & Adaptability: Players learn that there are multiple solutions, building confidence and tactical flexibility.
Implicit learning: Because players discover solutions themselves, learning is often more robust and transferable.
🧩 Final Thoughts
The best coaches don’t just plan practices — they design learning environments.
When we draw from proven psychological principles, we become more than instructors; we become learning designers, mentors, and facilitators of growth.
Whether it’s using Rosenshine’s structured prompts to reinforce ideas or applying the Challenge Point Framework to adjust difficulty, every decision we make shapes how players experience the game.
It’s not about one perfect method — it’s about being intentional, responsive, and reflective. Teaching Games for Understanding might work one day, while guided discovery from the coaching spectrum suits another.
What matters most is that we stay grounded in the science of how learning works — and stay connected to the players in front of us.
Great environments don’t happen by accident. They’re designed with care, clarity, and curiosity. So as you plan your next session, ask not just what you’re coaching, but how you’re helping your players make sense of the game — and love every moment of that journey.
If training doesn’t look like the game, don’t expect game-like learning. — Dr. Stephen Harvey
The Practices: Finding the Spare Players
4v4 +2 | Transitional Possession Practice
⚽️ Created On: @SSPlanner
Aim:
Keep possession by finding your spare players
Set-Up:
Pitch size: 30 by 20 pitch space chunked into quarters
👕Teams: 🔴’s vs ⚫️’s plus supporting players 🟡s.
How to Play:
Both teams (🔴’s & ⚫️’s) have a half. They try to keep the ball in that half as long as possible. Teams can only score when the ball is in their half.
To score a point, they must work the ball from 🟡 to 🟡. Another way to lock in a goal is a regain and transfer into your half.
When a team is IN possession, they must occupy a quarter within each half of the pitch. The 🟡’s on the sides of the practice to support play.
The OUT of possession team can only send three players over to win back the ball. They leave one player behind as a target.
When the OUT of possession team win back the ball, they must transfer it to their waiting player directly or via the 🟡s.
When this occurs, all players from the OUT of possession team, except one, transition into the other half. The new IN possession team are now trying to score.
🚧 Constraints:
🏆Reward: One player from IN possession team is free to roam anywhere in their half.
👨🏫 Review: Quality of the passing, the timing of movements to show for the ball.
🚫 Restriction: Ball must be received in 3 out of 4 quarters before finding a target.
Small Sided Game | Finding the Spare Player
⚽️ Created On: @SSPlanner
Aim:
Playing through the thirds of the pitch with your spare players.
Set-Up:
On a 30 by 20 pitch, split the field into thirds. Offset the goals at each end, no players are allowed to cross the end lines to block the goals.
👕Teams: 🔴’s vs ⚫️’s
How to Play:
The game has the following condition. When a team is OUT of possession, they are only allowed to press with x2 players in the first two-thirds. In their defensive third, they can have three players.
The IN possession team can attack with as many players as they wish.
Dribble or pass the ball in from the sides of the pitch.
If a team gets a corner, they retain possession from their goal.
🚧 Constraints:
🏆Reward: If a team can score within 5 passes, it’s worth double goals.
👨🏫 Review: Player decision making to stay on the ball or release it.
🚫 Restriction: Players can only pass backwards off one touch.
Play Out vs Press | Finding the Spare Player
⚽️ Created On: @SSPlanner
Aim:
Finding the spare players during the high press.
Set-Up:
On half a pitch, funnel the lines as shown and place a dashed mid-point line.
👕Teams: ⚫️’s and 🟢 (GK) are attacking the mini goal vs 🔴’s attacking the single larger goal.
How to Play:
🟢 starts the practice by playing out to the ⚫️’s. The aim for the ⚫️’s is to score in the mini goals once the ball is beyond the dashed line that runs through the centre of the pitch.
🔴’s regain the ball and score in the larger goal.
Initially, the 🔴’s can only press with three players in each zone of the pitch.
🚧 Constraints:
🏆Reward: ⚫️’s can achieve double goals if they score within 5 passes and they are beyond the dashed midline.
👨🏫 Review: Quality, accuracy and weight of the pass, timing of movements to support the ball.
🚫 Restriction: 🔴’s can only press with 3 players in a zone of the pitch, which can be increased to 4.
The game is the teacher. Our job is to make the game accessible and rich enough for players to learn from it. — Pep Guardiola
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