Xavier Roy

Session planning in sports: moving away from tradition?

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It is quite common that former players, once their playing career is over, transition to a coaching position to give back to the sport. For many of them, they might coach a youth team sport in a recreational setting where kids are there to have fun and play the game.

However, the structure of the session planned by the coach can be far away from what the kids expected. The session might start with a few laps around the pitch before focusing on sport-specific skills in isolation from what is happening in a game. Furthermore, these kids may spend more time waiting in line than practicing the skills that should enhance their game. Finally, towards the end of the session, the kids play a game with the hope that what was practiced earlier under the coach’s supervision can transfer to game performance. Is there not a better way to structure a training session so kids can find it interesting and exciting for them to want to work hard and get better at sport?

Traditional vs. contemporary coaching

The example above illustrates the disconnect that might exist between the ‘traditional’ way of coaching and a more recent, ‘contemporary’ view of what sport coaching can be.

The ‘traditional’ way of coaching tends to be centered around the coach as the in-control expert who does the thinking and the telling, makes all decisions and issues instructions while players are passive recipients, memorizing and following the coach’s instructions. Personally, coming from an American football background, I can recall that this was the way I was coached some 15-20 years ago,

When it comes to skill learning, coaches using this ‘traditional’ approach would break down a sport-specific skill into its component parts and use isolated drills in the hope that when putting the pieces back together, performance of the said skill will improve. For this transfer to happen, athletes will perform repetitions after repetitions until they achieve technical proficiency. This approach, based in part on a cognitivist worldview of motor learning, seems to leave little room for the development of adaptive, emotionally engaged, and motivated youth athletes that can respond adequately to the complexity and chaos of sport.1

On the other hand, the ‘contemporary’ approach to sport coaching, which aligns with an ecological worldview to motor learning, suggests that movements and behaviors emerge from a self-organizing relationship between the learner (i.e. athlete), the task at hand and the environment in which this occurs.2 In this case, the coach is seen as a co-designer of the learning environment where he/she works with the learners to guide them along a path of active self-discovery. For this journey to be meaningful, the coach should design or create as many situations as possible where players are attentive and responsive to key information that can be present during the game.

Knowing the key differences between these two approaches now lead us to ask the question: how can I better structure my training sessions to facilitate player engagement and learning?

Training form vs playing form: why you need both

Instead of viewing the two approaches as opposites, it may be better to see them as complementary and situated within the contexts of the coaches. For example, youth athletes with limited experience in a sport will be more dependent on the coach to teach the skills, safety & security, procedures & routines necessary during their initiation to a sport. On the other hand, professional athletes would be more empowered in many aspects of their preparation.

When it comes to session planning, many activities such as fitness, technical and skills work fall under the category of ‘training form’ (e.g., learning to dribble unopposed around cones in soccer or conditioning at the end of a session) while ‘playing form’ activities relate to small-sided games, conditioned games, and phases of play (e.g., reducing playing area or the number of players involved or adding variations to rules of the game).3 Often, coaches will spend too much time in ‘training form’ activities at the detriment of ‘playing form’ activities, where the real learning and fun happen!

A framework for planning

To achieve a better balance between ‘training form’ and ‘playing form’, coaches can use and adapt the RAMPAGE coaching session framework.4 Quite simply, most ‘training form’ activities can be done in the warm-up (RAMP) under supervision and guidance of the coach.

Once the warm-up is completed, the first Activity would be focusing on a fundamental technical or tactical skill that may have been identified as lacking or in need of improvement by the coach after reviewing film from the previous game for example. This ‘Activity’ would aim to re-enact isolated simulated game incidents with or without focus on particular technical skills.5Ford, P. R., Yates, I., & Williams, A. M. (2010). An analysis of practice activities and instructional behaviours used by youth soccer coaches during practice: Exploring the link between science and application. Journal of Sports Sciences, 28(5), 483–495.[/efn_note

At this point, the coach can outline his/her analysis of the situation and suggest a solution to the problem that will then be put to the test under different scenarios (Games). Here, the coach can manipulate rules and other parameters (work:rest ratios, space, # of players, etc.) to achieve a specific objective (most likely tactical) while also addressing physical and technical secondary objectives. During the game, athletes should be able to play, pause and modify the game to fit what they typically perceive during games. Towards the end of the session, the coach and athletes can debrief and Evaluate together if they were able to achieve the dual development of the technical performance and perceptual-cognitive skills needed for their sport.

Obviously, this framework can be manipulated several ways to fit the context of coaches. As suggested previously, coaches working with youth athlete may dedicate more practice time to activities that fall under the ‘training form’ category but should strive to find opportunities to include more ‘playing form’ activities, even early during a training session. For coaches working with more experienced athletes, it is recommended that most of training sessions should be made of ‘playing form’ activities with a passive or active opposition, limited time to perform a skill, reduced playing space and increasing cognitive effort.

In the end, coaches must be cognizant of the fact that for many kids participating in sport, they may very much not be there to do drills or to do speed work. Same for professional athletes or adults playing in rec leagues. Many if not most of them are there to have fun and play the game and if you don’t give them that, eventually it’ll add up and they may very well stop coming. Thus, blending the ‘traditional way’ with the ‘contemporary’ way of coaching can very well accomplish what you want to do as a coach and why athletes show up in the first place!

  1. Rudd, J. R., Woods, C., Correia, V., Seifert, L., & Davids, K. (2021). An ecological dynamics conceptualisation of physical ‘education’: Where we have been and where we could go next. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 26(3), 293–306.
  2. Rudd, J. R., Woods, C., Correia, V., Seifert, L., & Davids, K. (2021). An ecological dynamics conceptualisation of physical ‘education’: Where we have been and where we could go next. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy, 26(3), 293–306.
  3. Ford, P. R., Yates, I., & Williams, A. M. (2010). An analysis of practice activities and instructional behaviours used by youth soccer coaches during practice: Exploring the link between science and application. Journal of Sports Sciences, 28(5), 483–495.
  4. Till, K., Eisenmann, J., Emmonds, S., Jones, B., Mitchell, T., Cowburn, I., … Lloyd, R. S. (2020). RAMPAGE: A Coaching Session Framework to Facilitate Long-Term Athletic Development. Strength & Conditioning Journal, 1–13.