Coaching habits, with Ray Power

Ray Power (: 00:00

How can I make it fit in? And I don't mean forcing it in, but how do I stack it up with something I already do?

You have to do that. the reflection or the planning, all of this has got to suit you. Otherwise, you're not going to feel like you're ever doing it right.

Mark Carroll (: 00:15

Hi everyone, welcome to this episode of Labours of Sports Coaching. In today's episode I spoke to Ray Piller. Ray is the technical director of a national academy, the biggest in the national academy in South Asia. And we spoke about habits, coaching habits. It was a really great practical conversation that's building upon really extensive experience on Ray's part. And we kind of...

throw together some different tips that we've both built along the way. But Rays really does go into some really great insights and give some fair assessments about how coaches can do habits that are both to satisfy the requirements for the players and their athletes, but also actually help us be fair to ourselves as coaches. And I think any one of the habits that you're going to learn about in this episode is about making your job easier.

Okay, not always in so far as removing the hard work that's required to get better as a coach and to perform well in the role, but to find efficiencies and you'll hear Ray speak a little bit about efficiencies and you'll also hear Ray speak a little bit about net outcomes. Across the larger piece, what's the overall outcome that you're achieving? If it's good, not so good, that sort of thing. So I honestly love the conversation. I hope that you find it useful.

To just get back in touch with the practical knowledge that we need to keep in mind as coaches and to kind of understand that and this is a big part of this podcast. This podcast isn't about purely academic, sometimes can lean towards quite abstract theory. It's not even with our best intentions where that occurs. That's testament to why we need conversations like today, like the one that I have here with Ray. We need to remember professional knowledge.

and the stuff that you may not find in a textbook, but that you can really benefit and should go out there and try and learn. So please pay attention to some of the stuff we say. It's a conversation that could have went on for hours, because how many habits are out there that me and Ray would be limited naturally to talking about. If you have some habits when you're listening to this conversation that you want to tell me more about, tell Ray more about, please leave a comment or...

on social media, if you're connecting with myself or Ray, then drop a comment in there, get in touch with us, that'd be amazing to hear and we can just share further habits with each other. Just a quick update on some wider activity. We're now approaching March and the next issue of the Labours of Sports Coaching, the Self-Determined Coach newsletter will drop. In the show notes, you can find the link to subscribe to that newsletter.

Again, it's a bit of a whistle-stop tour on what that entails. It's looking more at the motivational science of coaching from my sort of area of experience and knowledge there. And I talk a little bit on this issue around some research that's recently been published, some updates, some own activities, a researcher in this space, and some learning that has been gleamed from prior episodes on Labours of Sports Coaching because, of course, there is more to coaching.

than just motivation alone, like there's more to coaching than any one siloed issue alone. So please check it out, it's completely free, sign up your email, just pop it in and it will arrive in your inbox next month and all other issues from there on in. And again, be sure as well to check out my website to find out a little bit more about some of the consultancies, the work that I do and how we might work together as well. So yeah, appreciate all the support that we have on the show. Remember to also click subscribe.

Again, all the unusual algorithm rubbish, why that is the case, but it is really helpful to the podcast's reachability, its visibility to other people to ultimately make the production better for you over time. So keeping all that in mind, I'll shut up now and we'll get into the episode. Enjoy this conversation with myself and Ray Power.

Mark Carroll (: 04:25

So, really, it's good to have you, I value you.

Ray Power (: 04:28

Yeah, all good. All good. Thanks for having me on. It's a nice change of step on the usual, well, it's Friday here in Bangladesh. it's good to fill the day with stuff like this.

Mark Carroll (: 04:38

Yeah, and with the air fan behind you, I already know that the weather's probably a lot better. So I'll try not to talk on that too much. So yeah, I'm looking forward to today, actually, because we're going to have bit of more practical conversation around coaching habits. So for those that are listening, then, Ray, I this is one of the things you proposed in our initial talk. So what was the reason for suggesting habits? Why should we care about habits? And then we'll get into maybe exchanging a few of our own and see where we get to.

Ray Power (: 05:07

Yeah.

Well, to be honest, the, when, when we spoke and, and if I remember rightly, we spoke that we would do something and then we were going to figure out what exactly it is we were going to do. and it was actually, when I proposed talking about habits, it was a response to some stuff that was going on here. So you talk about practical stuff. It was real life. cause part of my role here, so I'm working in Bangladesh.

Mark Carroll (: 05:18

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 05:33

in a football and sports academy here in Bangladesh. And I would say the habits that I that I learned in the coaching in a leash or performance or academy of coaching in the UK, for example, was vastly different than the coaching habits that would be here. And that's if we were to really get into it, it would could sound insulting to those here, but it was just different.

So I guess I was kind of trying to figure out a problem that I see in quite well ingrained coaching habits here that I just thought it would form a really good conversation between the two of us and for your listeners.

Mark Carroll (: 06:11

Could

you elaborate on that then? That does sound quite interesting. I often wonder, that a cultural influence or is it just that the goalposts are different? Could sometimes different places expect different things of coaches? what a coach sees as the goal standard could be different or maybe even the way in which they want to achieve outcomes. I think that's just the world's difference.

Ray Power (: 06:34

Yeah, look, there's probably there's probably loads of nuance and loads of different answers you could go to with this with this question. Like I think back to when I started, like my first session when I went into an academy environment. Like it had to be good, like it had to be I had to show and this is maybe the ego part of it in coaching. And I don't think I'll be the only one, but I had to show that I was good enough to be in that.

Mark Carroll (: 06:41

Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 07:03

environment and I had to show the young players that I was working with that I was, you know, enough for them and my colleagues, I had to be able to rub shoulders with qualified colleagues who are experts in A, C and D. So I kind of felt like I had to perform over and above. And I think when

Mark Carroll (: 07:11

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 07:27

when you go into academies now or when you're in within an academy staff, like everyone is keen to show their value and keen to show that they've got, not that it's competitive in nature, I just think it's naturally, you don't want to be left behind in an environment like that. I would suggest that here it's like the kids that we get here, you we're in a country that is, I'm trying to find the exact starting point for this, but

Mark Carroll (: 07:44

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 07:55

We're in country here where sports and football, the landscape is very, different. So there's no youth leagues, there's no academy system in every town, there's no wholesale coach development which kind of keeps people at the sharp edge. for example, the kids, when they come in here in their teens, they don't know any better. They don't know if...

Mark Carroll (: 08:05

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 08:19

necessarily if this is a good coaching session, a bad coaching session, they don't know if the coach should be in the thick of everything or sat down on the side with on the phone. Do you know what I mean? Or having a chat somewhere else. You know, it was they just don't just don't know. So maybe there's a there's a real opportunity here. And you know what, if I'm really honest with you, if you're not careful, you find your habits changing in that you'll go, well,

Mark Carroll (: 08:30

Mm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 08:49

Well, do I prepare something that's exceptional or do I just rock up and, you know, things will look awful?

Mark Carroll (: 08:53

That's what

I guess I was actually the necessity as you were saying that around them going out there and really want to put on an Assession isn't just about it's not just for the players But it's impression management for those around you and to show that you know your stuff like actually think maybe that's the first habit that I think if we're talking about what's Useful across a longer space of time. I think it's a shame in some sense that some coaches start out their careers in that way without hunger and that drive but then

we can very easily fall out of the bad habit of feeling I've already established myself, people already know who I am, so I don't need to put much pressure onto this next session. And I wonder, and just to know what your opinion is here, I would maybe say you should be always coach as if it's your first session, like in the sense of like, you know, you're only as good as your last session maybe, is that a way of keeping ourselves at that higher standard in terms of how we prepare?

Ray Power (: 09:45

Potentially, yeah.

Potentially. What is motivation? Motivation exists because it jumps up and down. And I'm not a psychologist per se, but if we've got a competition next week, I'm more motivated to go in and run that kind of session than if we don't have anything for the next month. That's just natural motivation for people and for coaches necessarily.

So it's there needs to be therefore there needs to be that intrinsic motivation or the and even if it is extrinsic it is well we've got a duty of development to the players to bring the best version of ourselves or should we say the worst version of ourselves is still of a quality that is fit for the environment you are in if you understand where I'm coming from. But I can see in these type of environments I can see why

if you're not self-aware, that it might well take hold. Because like I say, in our environment here, competition is really, really difficult to come by. So if you can imagine, even the top level of the game, like the Bangladesh Premier League, the champions will go into the Asian Champions League. So the top end is of a high level. There's money in the game. There's a small percentage of clubs that will be...

Mark Carroll (: 10:41

Hmm.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 11:01

affluent, I guess. But what they have here is you have a Premier League because of a lack of stadiums and infrastructure. If you can imagine the Premier League, that starts and finishes, then the Champions League, the championship version of that starts and then the first division and the second division. So it's kind of like they run concurrently. Sorry, it's like they run back to back rather than running concurrently. And then there's a youth tournament and then there's something else. So what

Mark Carroll (: 11:03

Mm.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 11:28

we end up with here is we have a high amount of contact time with the players, but we might only play a handful of games across a period of time, you know, and that changes everyone's kind of, like I say, as soon as competition comes along, come alive. Part of my role, and I won't accept, please understand I'm not saying that you have a right to.

Mark Carroll (: 11:37

Yeah. Yeah.

Ray Power (: 11:51

you know, be sloppy or lazy or unprepared or anything like that. I think the motivation has then got to become about whatever that's usually of development, your ego, your own set of standards, whatever, wherever that comes from, it should be different and will be different for everyone.

Mark Carroll (: 12:04

Hmm.

When you're mentioning, to be fair, when you're mentioning the array around having high contact time with the players, that's probably the flip side to what I'm suggesting because actually I probably would say there's a bit of idealism in the sense of every session's got to be like your first session and every session's got to be tip top. But if we are doing a, if we are doing a, think, rightfully accepted coaches are performers in their own rights, we need to also allow coaches to feel

capable of having an off day at the office or also at least capable of, know, because there's a minute sessions that I come out of and I'm like, oh, absolutely love coaching again. That's just reinvigorated me. What a session. And then there's some sessions that come out where I'm like, no, it wasn't bad, but it just done. It was good enough. And sometimes, you know, that, maybe as the nuance. So I think there's, there's one thing about having positive intentions and having high standards of your intent, but we can easily then fall into the space of sort of perfectionism becoming an issue if we aren't

Ray Power (: 13:04

Yeah,

sure.

Mark Carroll (: 13:05

rational about the fact that there's things outside their control where people, the players in front of us, kids particularly, are very volatile as people were, you know, but sometimes good enough is the best way of approaching to a point of reflection. But yes, that funny balance isn't it? There is attention there.

Ray Power (: 13:21

Yeah, there

is. And I suppose this is where where habits kick in, right? In any part of life. So you will have you can have a set of habits that will produce good outcomes. But on another day, your outcomes might be whatever like that. That's life. That's just the ebb and flow of of of life. And when there's like you say, when there's things out of your control, it can affect what the outcome looks like. So if we're talking about

Mark Carroll (: 13:26

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 13:49

sports coaching, right? It's interesting what you say, you ask coaches and I work a lot with coaches who are academy coaches, they're even grassroots coaches. And you say like, what's the best version of you? Like, what, what do you have to have done to have performed best in your role? And usually, you get a, you get a sort of a less than a handful of the same answers. But if I was to

If I was to pick the number seven, I know what you're going to guess, it will probably be when a coaching session goes really well. And normally when a coaching session has gone really well, it's normally because coaches have prepared well for it. So there's kind of like a sweet spot there that if you prepare well, then you can perform well, even within all those variables.

Mark Carroll (: 14:37

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 14:41

then it's about, well, OK, maybe we have to develop sort of the first practical habit. I don't even know if it's the first one, but sort of like front and center of this habit is, well, how do you how do you prepare your coaching sessions? Now, if you're a part time coach and you, I don't know, you work till five in the evening and you're coaching at seven o'clock and you've got to go home and get dinner and collect the kids and.

Mark Carroll (: 14:51

Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 15:07

whatever, dinner and all that sort of stuff. It becomes a different conversation than, you know, you've got a couple of hours in the office with a staff where you can have a meeting about your planning and you know exactly how many players are going to turn up and you have all that. So therefore your habits will be different. Right. It's as simple as that. So what I, what I task coaches that I work with around this sort of stuff is well, plan effectively for you.

Mark Carroll (: 15:24

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 15:35

So if you are that I don't have much time, I'm working this, I've got all the problems in the world outside of that, I just want to make sure my kids can play football. Well, maybe you are the, right, I finished my tea, I'm at dinner, I've got my pen and paper already near the table. This is where I'll sound a little bit too fanciful, right? But the whole idea of habit stacking from James Clear kind of popularized that idea that.

If you want to develop a habit, then you connect it to a habit you've already got. So I'm going to come home from work. I'm going to have my dinner. And what I'm going to do as soon as I've, I don't know, put the dishes in the sink or whatever, is I'm going to spend the time I have, which could only be five or 10 minutes, right? In some people's world, but I'm going to use those five, five or 10 minutes, pen and paper. I'll scribble down. I'll put my warm up, my game, all that sort of stuff. And then

Mark Carroll (: 16:06

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 16:28

That's the best version of what I could come up with. And maybe then on the drive to the training ground, that will kind of morph itself into something a little bit more substantive. But you've got a chance now. Rather than saying to that coach, well, actually, you should plan. read somewhere someone said you should plan for equal or longer than you should deliver. Right.

Mark Carroll (: 16:43

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 16:53

So basically what they're saying is if you're coaching for an hour, you're coaching for an hour and a half that you should plan for an hour or an hour and a half, which is like lovely in a book or that's lovely on another podcast, but in real life for many coaches, that's just like set you up to fail straight away.

Mark Carroll (: 16:53

Hmm.

Hmm.

Yeah, I completely

agree. Even the point you mentioned there around plan as much as you can in the time that you've got. mean, it's there for you, you're accommodating your own personal life. I mean, I've done this myself, if I've got, and I don't think this is promoting any sort of laziness as such, but like if you know that you have an hour and you know what, sometimes for some sessions, if you're working on different themes, like we all have certain themes, for example, like of sessions that were better catered towards, that we're able to kind of very quickly dish out.

But there's other things, or maybe just because of the context of the period that you're in, or the context of the players. If you need to get three quarters of the way there and then get in the car and figure out the rest on the way to training, you're not a bad coach for doing that. Or at least, mean, what I've done in the past where maybe it's the coaching points that I'll reflect on in the drive there, but I've got the stationary exercises that are actually there to do it. I think in the flip side as well, isn't it? You're also trying to...

As part of doing that, if that helps you manage yourself emotionally or these sorts of things before you go in and that puts you in the best place to show the best face to the players, then that, if anything, is even doubly important because sometimes we get too bored down-ray, I think, in natural content and we forget that we need to have a planning process that allows us to show up best interpersonally. So, and I always think that, you know, coaches that are really busy or coaches that are

overly flustered, we try to get everything correct, they actually because of the pressure and if they've got a habit of getting upset at that rut, the pressure leads itself to really short, of not meaning to be unwelcoming, but you know we forget the relational aspect of working with small kids or the relational aspect of just being there and being friendly, isn't that? I think we can forget what's more important in that respect, isn't it?

Ray Power (: 19:00

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, look, I work with a lot of in the process of mentoring coaches, I work with a lot of other coaches and people who are expert in their fields. And I would say that from, I don't know, working with 100 of these kind of guest experts, probably the word relationship comes up more than anything else. And like,

Even if you talk to people in the pro game these days, you know, you say, right, if you could watch your one thing, you know, Thomas Frank, think, has done a lot of media lately about relationships and whether that's with the young kids that that will need you to tie their shoelaces, literally, or whether it's the parents that facilitate all that happening or whether it's in the pro game where whatever you need to leave someone out of the team. So you

Mark Carroll (: 19:47

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 19:58

have to deliver bad news, but it's better to deliver bad news on the basis of a good relationship than not. So I think there's the parts of coaching. We know that coaching is multifaceted. And, you know, in terms of the habit part of it and being prepared, I think if you're prepared, there's less noise. You know, there's less mental noise with yourself to detract from some of the other stuff that's important as well.

Mark Carroll (: 20:04

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, plus there is definitely a point there as well around coaching is as complicated as you make it. Now for some coaches, maybe they've been coaching a while, they should actually consider the complexities of coaching. But if you're that coach who's just started, or that coach who's trying to manage a lot of other things, there is a benefit to simplifying the process for yourself. And we're talking about relationships. And I had a previous conversation with Colin Cronenray who works at...

John Moores University in Cologne does a lot of work around like caring and coaching. And I think one of the things that we landed on was there's more to coaching than being caring. But if you're a caring coach, you're doing most of the work. And you think about it for a coach, maybe like you're listening to this, that is stressed out, does often feel inadequate. If they just focused on, you

Being a caring person, that takes pressure off of them and allows them to probably double down on stuff they already have experience in, whether it be from being a parent, from being a friend, from being a good person, then they can actually be really good at something and they can focus on it it leads to better, easier preparation, easier delivery, at least in how they think about things, probably more positive than their reflection and that just comes from the habit of what do I care more about?

Ray Power (: 21:36

Yeah, totally.

like coaches come to me stressed quite a lot more than you believe. I think because of it's the same thing that people talk about, like Instagram, influences and stuff like that. Like we look at other people and we compare ourselves to them. So that coach who's putting their fully animated session on Twitter or X or whatever, and they're putting, you know, I did this and that.

maybe I do it myself, right? Because you put your best face forward on platforms like that. Coaches come to me and they go, I don't know where people get the time to do their animated session and their PDFs and all that sort of stuff. Back of a fact pack is kind of preparation sort of stuff. I think my point for those coaches is please be who you are and work. So if you've got...

a highly stressful life, or you're working a lot, whatever your situation is, positively or negatively, how do you work the best version of you into your coaching? if that's so someone turns around and says, when I get home from work and have my dinner and all that, I still don't have the time to take up a session or I need more than that five minutes. Well, then find that 20 minutes you need.

I don't know, the night before, or find a way to stick that habit in there somewhere where it's not completely disruptive to what you normally do. So I think it was in James Clear in his Atomic Habits, he spoke about, like, if you want to learn to play the guitar, they don't have the guitar in the case in the closet upstairs where you've got to, you know, turn off the TV, go upstairs, get it down, all that sort of stuff.

Mark Carroll (: 22:58

Hmm.

Mmm. Mmm.

Ray Power (: 23:18

Like you have it out, you have it there waving. Put the remote control in the fridge for whatever so that you, it's a hassle to get the TV on, but your guitar is there. So you're more likely to pick it up and just start strumming. So if we apply that to session planning, like it might well be, I'll give you an example. One of my habits when I'm writing, and I'm in the process of finishing a book at the moment, when I'm writing, I always,

Mark Carroll (: 23:26

Mmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 23:46

the 30 minutes before I go to bed, I don't know if this is necessarily a good habit, lifestyle-wise, but it works for me, was that I will do one last job. So it's normally a read-through then. So I will always spread it out. So no matter where my day takes me and it's busy here, or I just really get into a TV show or I'm just too tired, I know that that last 30 minutes or whatever it might be, that's kind of a habit.

Mark Carroll (: 23:58

Hmm.

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 24:15

and we can do that. So for coaches.

Mark Carroll (: 24:17

And

is it easier for you probably because you've done it for so long, it just becomes second nature to do it, isn't it? habits, hard, this part's getting into it.

Ray Power (: 24:24

Exactly, exactly. And like we throw the word habit around, but what is it other than like a repetition of stuff that you've done over a long period of time? And what it gives you, gives you an accomplishment, I find, and this is just me personally, I find that that gives me, it's kind of a get out of jail if I don't get what I needed to get done that day, I kind of have that, well that half an hour is there. But it gives me the fulfillment you get that you've

done something significant, know, I'll work to deadlines and all that sort of stuff with, with, with the coach of the under 11 team, you might say, do you know what I'm like the stress of planning in the car on the way there. What does that lead to? If we're honest, that leads to you probably delivering the same session or the same bunch of sessions over and over again, because you just fall down to your, I call it your back pocket session, right? Where you just.

the thing you're familiar with, the thing you do, the thing the players already know, and you kind of, like it gets you through it.

Mark Carroll (: 25:27

What

is your opinion there then actually, Breaker? I was curious, I trying to ask that question on your view on coaches repeating sessions. Because I wonder if that goes hand in hand sometimes with a habit of planning your session, because sometimes you can plan your session and log it in a way that you have a bit of a database. Now, I've heard different things from different people. I've got my own opinion on this, but I want to know what your opinion is. Do we...

Can we fall back on old sessions? Does every session need to be entirely new? Because I wonder again how we can make it easier for ourselves so that we can at very least have better bandwidth to focus on all the other things. Or should we, does it depend on the coach, the stage they're at, the group they're with, the context they're in, maybe certain sessions do need to more bespoke every time. What's your view on that?

Ray Power (: 26:14

Yeah, look, I've got some quite strong views, but I think quite logical ones as well is that the game like football and most of the sports is the same. You know what I mean? So it's two teams, a ball and two goals. Right. And what we do when we coach is we zoom in and out of that game. So we'll zoom in on a certain technical aspect or a certain tactical thing, or we'll give every kid a ball because we want them to be more proficient with the ball.

for 15 or 20 minutes. So there will always need to be a consistency because everything has got to fit that game. Everything you do has got to kind of have a relationship with that. And that sounds ridiculous to say out loud because it's so obvious, maybe we forget. What I find really, really helpful is, and this is probably something that's...

Mark Carroll (: 26:59

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 27:06

I would suggest might be a deal breaker between, you know, in this part of the conversation, because if I deliver the same football session, right, frequently.

it's different than delivering the same defending session or the same zoom in part of the session. So I'll backtrack a little bit. I work and I have done for probably, I don't know, 10, 12 years of some shape or form. And most academy coaches will work the same around a curriculum.

Mark Carroll (: 27:27

Hmm?

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 27:41

I know some coaches now will go, my God, I definitely don't have time for curriculum. definitely like it's like it's a further barrier. What I find is it actually helps me with time. helps me with all that. So instead of getting home from work and going, OK, I've got to come up with another session of delivering my back pocket session the last two weeks, I've got to give the kids something different. What do I do now? And you end up thinking and overthinking and thinking and overthinking.

Mark Carroll (: 28:09

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 28:10

what

I find the curriculum does. our curriculum, so in your phone, our curriculum this week says, defending when outnumbered, right? Just plucking a topic out of the sky. Okay, all right, how do I coach defending when outnumbered? And then you go into that sort of individual process. And then you take your phone out next week and it's an in possession thing. So it's, don't know, penitent of passing, right? And then you go, well, how do I best teach that to this group? And suddenly you've got, you're straight to the point.

Mark Carroll (: 28:31

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 28:38

So you're not in the car thinking, well, I might do that. And then I might do something different. You know what I mean? It kind of is streamlines that part of your planning and it helps you not be repetitive. Now you might do the same defending when outnumbered session that you did last time because that went really well. And, you know, the kids will be able to jump straight into that exercise. That was a little bit complicated last time, but I was able to get out.

Mark Carroll (: 28:40

What's the, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So like the change of stimulus is just through the curriculum because it gives natural diversity of thought as to what you do. But I suppose it avoids you having to make decisions. You're trying to take the control outside of yourself and letting the curriculum tell you. Which is a thing isn't it? It's paralysis but analysis otherwise.

Ray Power (: 29:07

quicker this time because of that repetition.

Exactly.

Totally. Exactly.

Exactly. So if you're on a, I don't know, if you're on a motorway coming up to a toll bridge and there's 10 lanes or whatever, then you can spend all your time figuring out which is the best lane to get in or I don't know, someone that you sat and have a said, you know, get in lane four and you just get in lane four and you proceed, you know, in that lane because you literally pick a lane. So having that, it's not out of your control, but it's,

helping you get straight to the point of what you're doing. And I've felt, probably I've found more than anything is when I have that, like you said, that paralysis by analysis stuff, when you have too many options, you end up kind of, and I've done it myself where I've kind of doing that for an hour and you still arrive on the pitch and you're putting the cones out going, what am I doing here? Like I haven't picked anything yet. And that's when I think you get noise and you get a poor performance from yourself because you're too busy.

Mark Carroll (: 29:57

Mm.

Ray Power (: 30:20

sort of chugging through that process still.

Mark Carroll (: 30:22

Even with an acetylcholine as well, isn't it that sometimes you have each block of acetylcholine maybe lasts more than just a single session. It might be a week or two weeks or whatever. Because what I sometimes, and I'm curious to know what your thoughts are here, because sometimes what I feel coaches, again, under this idea that we need to constantly create a new stimulus. Sometimes I think, it's kind of like, and this was sort of a thought I think that came through having a bit more of an understanding around gamifying coaching a little bit.

It's a bit like when you play a game and players develop, or you play an exercise, and players do so well on it to a point, and then the session ends, and then you go back to level one of a different exercise. I always sometimes say to coaches, maybe if they got so far in that exercise and you know what, it was working well, you could restart that session, and that session from, if it's not necessarily.

level one of the same exercise, but go, start where you finished in the progression of exercise one, go back to exercise one at the start of that session, but start on the progression. So like you've kind of, you're recycling the session, but you're doing it in a way that's just, that's continuing from where they left off in a good sense. like pedagogically speaking, there are benefits from reusing sessions in certain respects, isn't it? I don't know if you've found other ways in which you might recycle with good intent.

Ray Power (: 31:40

Yeah, it can.

Yeah,

it makes a huge amount of sense because I don't know if there's an end to that sentence. It just it makes sense, right? Because they they have a reference point, they have they have a starting spot already. Like to go back to the very start kind of seems a bit of a time waste. Now it's in football, it's slightly different because like when you're learning in a classroom,

Mark Carroll (: 32:01

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 32:07

Once you absorb a certain piece of learning, you have that forgetting curve or whatever it is. Whereas in football, have, it's more about practice and more about kind of connecting mind and feet or brain and feet or whatever. Yeah, I've found this, something we use actually here is what we call a training map and something I've been working really quite hard on the last, probably the last 12 or 18 months. Training map or training diet, depending on how

trying to explain it. it's, if you think of football training as something between unopposed, all 20 or all 16 players you have, they have a ball each, right? So that's one player, one ball. And the biggest you'll probably get to is 11 v 11, right? And then, I don't know, you're in that environment where you have, I don't know, 30 kids show up for some reason, because it's...

I don't know, a big group or it's a community setting or it's something that two merged teams have to train together one night. You might end up doing this kind of, okay, let's say there's 24 kids show up. So you go eight, V8 and then eight on the outside or whatever. But there's a top and a bottom to football coaching. So you have a selection of high ball ratio stuff.

So one player, one ball, one player to maybe four balls, sorry, one ball to four or five, four versus four, five versus five. And then you have the other end. So you have technical stuff and tactical stuff. And then you also have what I would call sort of like alternative variations of that. So I'll explain a little bit slower. So if I've 12 players, I'll give you a real example, actually.

Mark Carroll (: 33:55

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 33:55

A couple of

days ago, I had to go into my back pocket because out of a circumstance, there was 24 of our senior male players available to train. of the staff were here. It was one of them random days. We're here, there and everywhere. There was some injuries. was some stuff going on at school. So there was 24 boys there. There was no goalkeepers. And I wasn't expecting to coach that group. So I'm rocking up to the pitch. The equipment's there. The players are there. So I've got to come up with a worthwhile session.

Mark Carroll (: 34:14

Hmm.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 34:24

We've got a curriculum topic, so I know where I can go with it. So what I do with it with a training map is you go right. I want to hit and these are older teenagers, so I want to hit high ball ratio and we'll work that towards, you know, lots of technical stuff, so lots of ball contacts and we'll work the way through small sided, medium sided, large sided and then something alternative and that alternative would be outnumbered or.

Mark Carroll (: 34:34

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 34:51

neutral players or stuff like that. So the 24 players, it ended up being a, I call it a ball mastery, I suppose, but a highly technical one ball two player exercise. Then we moved to two 6v6, two 6v6s happened at the same time, the two 6v6s became 7v5, then 8v4. And then we finished eight versus eight versus eight. Right, so we basically we hit what I would say are the four or five zones.

Mark Carroll (: 34:53

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Ray Power (: 35:19

do that. And that was in one session. To your point where you started on this was do I like if I do this today, should I start with that again tomorrow? We use that training map to say instead of one session would be like across a week, you need to hit these zones. So it's tempting here to spend a lot of time in that one, that 11 v 11, that one ball to 22 players environment.

Mark Carroll (: 35:37

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 35:44

And if we found that we've been stuck in that for a couple of days, out of circumstance this week, it happened. So we ended up, that's why I started the section with a really low one and spent a lot more time in that environment. that's.

Mark Carroll (: 35:56

So is

that thinking then about how you can maybe repurpose a single exercise by maybe tweaking other constraints around the size, the image? I mean, even if you consider, and this might just be a wee bit of a shortcut for coaches, any attacking exercise you do by nature has a defensive element to it that you could flip. There's no such thing as a one-v-one only from an attacking standpoint. It's a funny one.

Ray Power (: 36:19

Absolutely.

Mark Carroll (: 36:22

going back to that before we move on from the sort of, well not move on from the specific element of the planning process you mentioned around the back pocket and stuff like that. Does that feed into, so I'm curious to know, so that you can refer back to things easily, even when maybe the session was done maybe a month or two ago, whatever, is there any specific bits of information, like how much information do you note down as a coach when you're planning?

for that future reference. I know at the time and certainly as you become more experienced, you don't necessarily need, you don't need as much detail in your blueprint and delivery. You know, they sort of become cues over time, don't they really? But for the purpose of having a backlog, is there maybe a minimum information that you would maybe set to have so that you don't have to go all the way back into the back reaches of your mind again at some point down the line?

Ray Power (: 37:02

Yeah.

Yeah,

maybe. One of the things we could do is we could be dead flexible and go, well, actually, doesn't really matter what I remember about it or where it went for me, because that's only going to be my kind of opinion and judgment of it. So if we're going to run that again, let's run it again. if they get to, let's gamify it, as you said, if they get to level two or level one, they're just kind of flicking through. Then we go to level two. Then, you know, we don't have to spend the same amount of time or energy.

in those spots. And it's always interesting, know, when you do Doug Lemoff has a word for it. can't off the top of my head remember what he calls kind of referring back to previous learning. There is a word for it. It's just skipped my mind. But that idea is actually really quite strong. then finding what that prior learning has left, but with the players, not necessarily with you.

Mark Carroll (: 38:04

yeah,

yeah.

Ray Power (: 38:05

You

know what I mean? It makes a lot of sense. And if football is that two teams, two goals, one ball, then and people play it day in, day out with those environment. We don't have to, I don't think we need to worry too much about the repetitive side. If that's the kind of thing we're repeating. Now, if we're just repeating the same drill, because that's just what we do. And by drill, I mean that the old, you know, cones in a line and

Mark Carroll (: 38:26

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 38:34

you do A before you do B before you do C, like that kind of drill stuff, I'd be massively against, especially if it's gonna just be repeated over time because it's just a constant little thing.

Mark Carroll (: 38:37

Hmm.

And

does that feed Ray into what you were saying around, basically, just by game-based practice, you're able to sort of, it's dynamic activity regardless of past reference or this and that. So it's an easy, it's a good habit to get into purely because you get far more likelihood of landing just because it's playing the game again. And it's just coming, and it's knowing what they know and it's not over-complicating matters a little bit, isn't it?

Ray Power (: 39:05

Absolutely.

I asked a group of coaches that I worked with, there was about 12, 10 or 12 of them, a really open question. I said, what can't you coach in a game? And they kind of, there was that long pause and you know, the closest I think someone got, like if you talk about small side of games, probably the closest technical thing that you can coach might be heading.

Right. And that's kind of frowned upon these days anyway. So, you know, because it's small, you don't have area boards, you don't have that natural thing. Anything else, whether it's attacking, defending, transitioning, whether it is a technical thing will come up during that game. Now, if you feel like you need to manipulate the game so that what you want to coach does come up. So if I want to coach defending when outnumbered,

then, okay, let's put two neutral players in there. So that's when the opposition has the ball, you are always outnumbered. And then when you have the ball, the opposition is always outnumbered. So I can get my teeth into that particular topic. If you want to, and coaches do this all the time, we just don't really call it anything. If you want to see more passing, then you say, okay, you need to play six passes before you score a goal or...

Mark Carroll (: 40:13

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 40:25

You know, your goal will count six points if you have six passes or whatever it might be. And coaches have been very good at that. But what we've also been good at, maybe to the detriment, is that we just completely rip it out. What we want to coach, we rip it out of the game, just so it's too far removed from the game.

Mark Carroll (: 40:43

Because there is a spectrum there, isn't it? think, in one side of it, the game in its most naked form, that isn't always the best teacher, because particularly if you're wanting specific practice or some sort of deliberateness to what you're doing, because sometimes things will happen coincidentally and again, it's just not compact mentalised at all. But equally, the more you compact mentalise or focus, the more you run the risk of it becoming like a drill or becoming too decontextualised.

Now, I must say, in all sense, it's wee bit of a difference. think personally, you can get good drills, but there's a lot more onus on the expertise of the coach to ensure that the drill remains functional. It just depends on the words that we attach to things, if it's still a drill. At that point, it really depends, but that is always the risk, isn't it? You're running, and I suppose you're trying to get the, is maybe the habit about make it as compartmentalized as it needs to be, but no more than that. Is it kind of just trying to, no more than it needs to be. Maybe that's the sort of the sweet spot there.

Ray Power (: 41:22

Yeah.

Yeah,

t to make sure that they have: 1000

Mark Carroll (: 42:05

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 42:10

mastery of the ball, like being comfortable with the ball and I'm going to tell them to turn like this and I'm going to tell them to use the left foot only or whatever it might be. Like, can you justify why you're doing it and how it will fit back into the game? So I think it's pretty well acceptable that the more times, the more time kids spend with the ball, sort of pre puberty, the kind of better the technical actions tend to be as they go through the game.

Mark Carroll (: 42:32

Hmm.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 42:37

Now

you've still got to factor in the game's reference points and all that sort of stuff. there will be, it's better to do that sort of exercise with some traffic and interference from other players rather than through five or six cones where you're slaloming through arbitrary objects that just don't move. There's some outcomes like that, of course. But where you can.

Mark Carroll (: 42:58

you

Ray Power (: 43:03

start with the game. It's one thing that I do and I don't hear it very often. In fact, I don't hear it at all, other than kind of reverberating around my own head. It's that if I'm planning a football session around whatever topic it is, and maybe this is a habit thing because people create habits to make themselves efficient. You said lazy earlier on, but that idea of being efficient, like I just need to get this done well, correctly, as quick as possible.

Mark Carroll (: 43:14

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 43:30

So if I'm planning a session on X topic, it will be, well, how do I best with the group in mind, how do I best coach that? Right. So let's say it's, I don't know, something we've not mentioned already, like counter pressing in football, right? So the idea that you lose the ball and you try to regain it within a small timeframe. So how do I best coach that? And it might be,

Mark Carroll (: 43:30

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 44:00

I have, normally I have four parts to my session, know, a technical warm up, have some sort of possession game, I have the next game, and then I have the biggest version game I can play. Maybe it's number three, section number three, where I can teach that the best. So I will plan that first, because that's got to be the most important, like theoretically I'm saying that to be the most important thing. For something else, it might be, well, I'm going to use that in the...

Mark Carroll (: 44:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ray Power (: 44:27

The biggest former game I can have on a Tuesday night is a 7 v 7. Right. And I've only got one goalkeeper, so I've got to do something different up the other end of the pitch. But that's how I'm going to coach. Um, widely, right. Whatever it is. Or, um, I'm going need to coach up the playing up back through what we call it football. That sort of, that kind of forward pass that disturbs the backline. It's like, right. I'm going to coach that in the first part, in the technical part, because.

the group won't know what that is and that they won't really have a visual on it. And then we'll move my planning forward or backwards, depending on where it got.

Mark Carroll (: 45:03

Yeah, yeah. That

seems like quite a cool way, really sorry to not interrupt your momentum. Just as you say, that I think is really useful because if we're constantly just thinking that every exercise has to keep building upon the one before, you're never really reaching any one central part of the training session. And also, you're not giving yourself a head, you're not giving yourself...

enough hints as to what you could do to fill either side of that. I'm thinking in contrast if I then go, right, this is the, maybe I can't think of five or six exercises, but I can think of the best one, and what's the one that I would love to see? And I get that down and I see all the points, and now from there I can go, right, what could build to that? What could maybe round off after that? And then you've got your, do you think that's the hard part, it? And certainly when you start coaching, even when you keep on coaching.

Ray Power (: 45:46

Yeah.

Mark Carroll (: 45:55

You're always trying to find your anchor point, I suppose, in some sense, but sometimes the sort of every exercise, even if we know that we're trying to progress, but sometimes having the same expectations of every exercise has to be the goal standard. It's not conducive as a habit to more efficient planning and it probably gets you in a bit of a rut.

Ray Power (: 46:15

Absolutely. look, if I, let's say that third part of the session is the gold standard part of what that session would be like, that's going to be the main body of teaching and learning. Like I can be sure that I dedicate enough time or enough energy into that part. So if that means the second part's a little bit shorter or the last part is a little bit longer, maybe at least I can go into that and go, right, the substantial body of my coaching is going to be in here. So therefore.

Mark Carroll (: 46:25

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 46:44

if it's going to be substantial, I may as well put the best time into that. Because it's like whether it's writing a book, whether it's about putting a CV together, you will probably when you're when you're doing your coaching session, you'll probably put more energy into the first part than the last part. Because if you if you walk away from it and you come back, you start again.

So, know, your warm up ends up being or the technical part of your sessions of being, well, I'll do that. And then the progression can be that and that player will move there. And then the next progression would be that. And you kind of have this thing and then you get to the end and go and then we'll play a game and then it's finished. Yeah. Yeah.

Mark Carroll (: 47:06

Mm-hmm

I guess you fizzle out, maybe that's the point where you need to get in the car and you need to move. So

you're getting incrementally worse as the session goes on. that maybe where, because I know obviously we've been a wee bit, we're trying to be fair to coaches about how we can plan quicker and be more efficient. I believe that was advocate, however, because you'd mentioned about looking at your back pocket and this and that. Is there not also a bit of a, there's pain that we can put ourself through as a habit, but I think one of the.

Ray Power (: 47:28

Absolutely.

Mark Carroll (: 47:47

One of the things where I think elaboration and plan on paper can be good is it's not always useful at the time, it's not always enjoyable at the time, but for the capability of then five months time, five weeks time, the more information you can put in now, can create for an easier recycling process. If that matters to you to look back on it, because what I say is like, see,

I've been in environments where I've had to upload sessions to databases and your infographics and it can be really annoying. Obviously we're starting to focus on individuals, oftentimes the reason for the databases is for sharing across people. But sometimes doing the heavy stuff today can make your tomorrow lighter, can make next month lighter. So it's like sometimes there is a bit of a purpose as well to having a bit of a headache if it's maybe in a Sunday afternoon because

Ray Power (: 48:29

Yeah, yeah.

Mark Carroll (: 48:37

It's not to say the next Sunday afternoon's also occupied. You might be doing yourself a favour by having a bit more of an elaborate planning process for the times when you need it to be shorter. I don't know, you know...

Ray Power (: 48:47

I know what you mean. it's, yeah,

you're basically what you're talking about is that you're going to have a net gain over time, and then it will be worth it. And we do this all the time and not consider it like we go to work because at the end of the month, at the end of the year, we have to pay for the house and the car and all that sort of stuff. your habits are affected. You use the word lazy earlier, I wanted to sort of

Mark Carroll (: 48:54

Bye.

Ray Power (: 49:11

stay away from that and start talking about being efficient. Like our habits have us being efficient. Humans by their nature are efficient people. And sometimes that will be take the shortest drive or the shortest whatever, the shortest point for me to be. But you know what, if I'm listening to this pod, right? And I don't know if there's 20 minutes left in the pod and I'm two minutes from home. If the pod really matters to me, I'll drive the long way home.

I'll drive around, you know what I mean? It becomes a different set of habits because you have something in there that's more important. So the easy thing for me to do would be to just kind of figure it out. And when I get there and all that sort of stuff, but it makes it harder when you're delivering because I don't know, the kids are looking at you going, that's the same exercise you're doing again or OK, we'll do it. You know what mean? And the hour.

Mark Carroll (: 49:38

You know

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 50:05

I find personally find a good coaching session. It flies like time flies when you're having fun that whole idea or a poorly planned one or something that you're kind of not a part of or you just kind of shrugging through it drags and you're looking at your watch and you're like, you know, I've made sorry, I've made earlier easy on me rather than just putting in a little bit of time that will make this so much so much better for everyone.

Mark Carroll (: 50:12

Mmm.

rats.

Hmm. What about, yeah.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 50:33

and it's

Mark Carroll (: 50:34

And

Ray Power (: 50:34

all about what your net gain will be.

Mark Carroll (: 50:36

Yeah, and could we maybe, I'd like to maybe transition into, not even transition into, but deepen this topic of optics and how the players will see you, because one of the other habits, you made a post recently, and I've spoken a lot about this in the past myself, the layout of your session, like cones, and is there anything in that we might want to chat about, Raker? I think there's some things that people can overlook there, and it's a very easy win. And I just would, could we chat about that?

Ray Power (: 51:00

Yeah, totally.

Yeah, definitely. And this is, let's see, I'm going back quite a number of years. I used to have a back pocket session that involved, like I could do it in a, I don't know, a large bedroom. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't relying on space. It wasn't relying on how many kids were there. It wasn't relying on loads of equipment. And it basically went from using the same space

I would only need to pick up a handful of cones, like 20 second transitioning from exercise one to exercise two. okay, let's backtrack a little bit. If I'm planning a session on whatever it might be, if I've got four or five different exercises that are wildly different in setup and space and all that sort of stuff, then actually I'm going to set up and transition between things potentially five times.

which is not optimal for anything. if you have a, and it's really hard to kind of explain this exactly without a visual, but if you have a warmup space or a technical exercise space that, I'll add a couple of more cones or the orange cones now mean, so the blue cones are for the warmup. If we add the orange cones in, those are your scoring zones. And then you pick up the blue cones and then the pitch becomes a.

Mark Carroll (: 52:05

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 52:21

7v7 pitch or whatever it is. So it just slickens what you're doing rather than having piles of Heathrow Airport syndrome where you've got piles of cones everywhere. It looks like the 215 from New York is going to land on your pitch any second because there's just so much going on.

Mark Carroll (: 52:22

Mmm. Mmm.

Bye.

Hmm and that and there

are there are cones is it like there's we I mean there's we hats I suppose as well like flat markers can be great if you're not trying to disrupt because it's like you said they're trying to get a balance correct between Allowing you to transition out and having lots of different things you're saying we have to also make sure that any one exercise It's clear what the boundaries of that exercise are and it's not all that stuff So like small things like that like news flat markers or news alongside. Yeah color-coded stuff that allows for

Ray Power (: 53:04

on our coverage.

Mark Carroll (: 53:08

You know, and for coaches maybe listening, at poolside, there could be a similar thing. It's just that it's trying to think how you can make that transition between exercise easier. If you're working with a coach, that's a different thing. And if they have a habit of working with a coach, then maybe they allow bit of fillers space time, know, maybe they're doing the activation game with kids or whatever. Is there something around the, is there something around how it sells the session as well to players like?

Because sometimes again, with the intent of efficiency, we sometimes can, like I hear sometimes principals around having a minimalistic set up. Now I get that, I think that's good in some respect for a coach because again, it creates for easier, that's fine, don't need to have more than you need. But I always think what meets for an exciting environment sometimes again, requires energy in the coach's part because it's like, if you go out and if you want to, I don't know, go to a supermarket or you go to a shop, a store.

how this store presents itself as a marketing tool. And I think if coaches consider how we present our sessions, it's a marketing tool for those that walk into that session. And again, I wonder, is again, attention there, isn't it? You can have too little stuff and you can also have too much stuff. Nobody want, I hate outlet stores. That's the reason. It's just, it's a catastrophe. But they need, know, they want excitement, don't they, as well. And what's your experience being around that? How would you instruct coaches to get into habits of making busy sessions or?

Ray Power (: 54:14

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't find anything. Yeah, yeah.

Mark Carroll (: 54:35

making sessions that are still, where would you be on that spectrum?

Ray Power (: 54:38

Well, I think it probably fits in to our entire conversation. I kind of have two points here on this that I don't want to get down a rabbit hole of one and forget the other. variety, a variety is a good diet, right? We used the word diet earlier on. So if you have variety in that, so if that variety happens to be in how you set up, so I want to coach, okay, there's a possession game I do where there's obviously boundaries.

but you score goals through gates. So there's small gates located randomly all over the inside. So when someone rocks up, they go, okay, that looks really busy. That looks really quite complicated, but you get into it and it's actually really simple. But the next day or the next session or whatever, the possession game that you're doing might only be four goals to represent the four sides and the corners. So I don't have a problem at all if coaches want to go in and they want to go,

Mark Carroll (: 55:20

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 55:33

This is the best way for me to coach this and it's going to be dead busy, know, but does it make sense? So if if I have 10 gates in the middle of this playing area, then the gate each gate, so each pair of cones at least has to be the same color. You know what I mean? Because if they're different colors, then it looks that's the look mental and starts to to play with the pictures in your head. So I think.

Mark Carroll (: 55:36

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 55:59

I think coaches could, a little bit like that outlet store versus kind of a store where you I can go to that aisle and I can go to, they do it in, they do it quite a lot here in, so Bangladesh, you know, is famous for garments and producing clothes and stuff like that. So they'll have lots of little football shops and there's no kind of system necessary, necessarily to like the sizes or.

Mark Carroll (: 56:17

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 56:27

club or the sport or anything like that, it tends to all be clumped together somehow. And they will, they sell, I'm certain they sell less because of it, because I don't want to trudge through everything. I want to go straight to my size and my sport and my favorite team or whatever it might be to see if I can have it. That, that makes most sense. So if I'm a player at a football session, I walk up, I want to at least know that I have a feel for what can happen.

or it will only take the coach a few seconds. And I mean seconds to go, okay, the white cones are your playing area. It's red versus blue. The colored gates you see to score a goal, you've got to pass through one of those gates and you get a point. Everyone understand? Yeah. Let's try it for a minute. You got it. You got it. You got it. Those two gates are too close together or the colors are too similar. It's causing some confusion. So I'll put them over there. Play. And that's, that's you done even with your kind of runway.

Mark Carroll (: 57:01

Mmm.

Hmm.

Hmm.

Ray Power (: 57:23

kind of looking to.

Mark Carroll (: 57:23

Yeah, yeah. So

you never want to jeopardize the simplicity of how they can actually enter that environment. Because that is true. And you know, I always find a challenge for coaches should be really, you can get your exercise started in 30 seconds. If you can't get it started in 30 seconds, either is it too complicated? You know, or should you be more succinct than what you're saying? Because

Ray Power (: 57:30

Never.

Finish.

Mark Carroll (: 57:48

And I remember, that was a challenge I had, and I remember when a coach told me to do that, I was like, oh, but it takes a minute, and you need to, it doesn't, it's like, if you think about your planning, it really should be so obvious to the players how to do it. And you know what, like, a habit, this is maybe something as well, I think that. Players ask questions, you uncouth that, and that's great. One question's good. Two questions, okay. If there's a third question, just get the ball rolling, and.

Ray Power (: 58:10

Yeah.

Mark Carroll (: 58:13

and get them to figure it out as they go. you know, I think that is another thing, isn't it? It's about how do we, because there's one thing about starting tempo, maintaining tempo, how do we get the exercise started? Sometimes we can get held up too much. And if we haven't got principles or rules in place for ourselves, how we manage that situation, if that's not a habit of ours, I think it can lead to very up and down sessions from one session to the next in so far as the level of activity probably as well. Is there anything you've done in the, if we could.

Ray Power (: 58:39

Absolutely.

Mark Carroll (: 58:42

I know we're coming towards the end of the conversation Ray, but in the management of your delivery now, is there anything you would maybe speak to there?

Ray Power (: 58:49

Like I was a bit, I suppose I was a bit off the cuff when I said bin it. If like, it's too, if it takes too long or it's too complicated, bin it. Like the, maybe this is a habit from writing as well. I find that if I'm chugging through a section or a piece that I'm trying to explain and it's not, I don't feel like it's kind of grabbing me off the page and I'm struggling to finish a sentence and all that. It's like, just start again, just start again. Just, just rip it up and find a new way to tell this story and say this part. And I find that with coaching sessions.

So you could, I'm a big believer in like explain it quickly and succinctly. I work in a second language as well in terms of, know, that's, and I have done in quite a lot of environments. So you have to be really, really concise in how you're explaining things. If we go back and let's look at another strategy, if we go back to that Gates possession game that we spoke about.

Let's say there's four different colored gates in that playing area. We could have a game where each of those colored gates gives you a different. So the reds are worth one point. The blues, to score in the blues, you have to dribble through it. To score in the greens, you've got, it's going to be two points and whatever it might be, the yellows or something else. So if I explain that to you all at the beginning,

Like everyone's going to be, oh my God, what does that one mean? And what's that one again? And what's that? No, that was two points. That was one point. You dribbled through the wrong color. Like it's going to, people's heads are going to fall off. If you go the first minute or two minutes, pass through the gates to score. Stop. Okay. Pass through the gate. You'll get your point. But if you dribble through the blue ones, I'll give you a double point. And then you let them play and that kind of embeds. And then you go, right. If you go through the, I can't remember what I said now, the green ones.

that does this. So you're of scaffolding it, right? You're making the information really chumped that by the end and by the time you're into your body, sort of some reason that you're putting those ideas in. By the time you're in the flow of it, anyone who rocks up is way behind. Like they're looking at this going, my God, like how is this working? But it works because you just give it in bite size information.

Mark Carroll (: 1:00:38

Hmm.

Mmm.

So is that like

there's a contingency there for latecomers, but also it gives you your progression. So it actually makes it easier for you as a coach. So you're not needing to start on A, B, D, unless again, there's a separate conversation if they've done some stuff in a previous session, whatever, but like just isolating it for now. You've given yourself room to grow and have your coaching points now for the progression. So it's like, it's good. It's a win-win. And then the players can keep up with it. They can move with it, you know.

Ray Power (: 1:01:28

Yeah, but that's the

most important thing. we, you ended there saying that, the players can like that's the most important part. Like if the players, I spoke about this on another pod recently, specifically remember being in a pre-match drill passing practice as an adult, as a, are you a foot B coach? I think I was probably at the time. So I've been around the environment and I could not get this passing drill that the manager was putting us in. I just, you know, the whole.

pass to A, run to B, all that sort of stuff. I just couldn't get it. And that was me, like a grown man in this environment day in, day out. So it turned me off that idea. So the most important things is that the players, kids or adults inside it are actually getting to the point they need to get as slickly as you possibly can.

Mark Carroll (: 1:02:04

Bye.

Yeah, I'm glad you said, know, I'm the same way. Like there is sometimes I watch sessions and I'm like, I don't have a clue what's going on here. And we're maybe the ones that are like, and I'm not even saying, I'm not even saying like, I'm saying good exercises, but actually find it hard to follow stuff. like you can imagine for players that are in front of you, you should always be doubly keen to make it as simple as possible. But that look is some, and this is actually, it's both a habit, but I think it's also both a protection for their confidence because

Ray Power (: 1:02:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

Mark Carroll (: 1:02:45

I used to be a player getting nervous about ensuring I understand exercises. I'm not even thinking about performing the sport, I'm thinking about understanding exercise. So that just shows the level of insecurity that players have. like, it's both making it easier for you, but it's actually a form of looking after players. It's just everything's judgment, just they're worried all the time.

Ray Power (: 1:02:52

Thank you.

Totally. I felt like,

genuinely, Mark, I felt like an idiot that day. I felt like an idiot, genuinely. And it sounds really over dramatic or whatever. But, you know, I get to the front of the queue, which I hate as well, by the way. And I was just like, I'm just going to go back to the back because I don't know what I'm doing here. And I'll just watch and I'll just survive the next few minutes until we move on. And clearly that's not optimal for anything.

Mark Carroll (: 1:03:27

No?

Ray Power (: 1:03:28

And, you know, if, if ultimately if the players involved in it, if they're struggling, the ego environment that football is, it probably means the coach is going to start getting antsy with the players and the coach will start blaming the players for not understanding and you're not listening. And we did this last week and you weren't listening then either. And I remember watching a coach, highly experienced, highly qualified doing a, the session was to start with a passing practice. So the passing practice was in their shape.

So there was a point where the centre-back had to open up and play like a diagonal pass through a full-back. And it kind of kept breaking down off that centre-back. And it turned into, I think we went over the allotted time, never mind the allotted time for that practice, we went over like the hour and a half still on this practice. And the kid was getting slaughtered and we would change that player because he can't do it. And then the next player going in and going, okay, can I do it? And he was trying to play this diagonal pass. It was just inappropriate.

Mark Carroll (: 1:03:58

Mm.

you

Ray Power (: 1:04:21

And it's one of them situations where you go, do you know what, my net gain here is to move on, is to go, right, do know what, I'm gonna move on to the next bit because that, or we'll go back to the bit before without the diagonal pass.

Mark Carroll (: 1:04:21

you

Yeah, yeah.

So you're not, they're not coaching for the drill, they're coaching for the sport. It's a different thing, isn't it? It's like the exercise shouldn't be the end point. It's like that. So I'm curious, just in time that we've got remaining, what about, what are habits after this, after coaching? Where that be in the session or where that be after a match? What, is there any habits you have, maybe more thinking about reflection?

or habits that you've felt, just wonder about being such a, you've been such an experienced coach. What's been helpful? Is there any habits that you think have informed that element of the process?

Ray Power (: 1:05:04

I'm

not sure I know of any outside the only coaches that I'm aware of that formally reflect on their session, like pen and paper, do it again, whatever the review part are coaches in a with professional teams where they finished a session and have a staff meeting to debrief how you think Johnny did or how you think, you know, who should we play?

A or B on Saturday and all that. And it's kind of a performance reflective. I don't know. And maybe some of your listeners will say I'm completely wrong on this, but I don't know of anyone who reviews the way they tell you on coaching courses to do. And I know I certainly don't. I would say I have some sort of reflective log in mentally that something like that works or.

I tried to coach counter pressing in the best way that I can coach counter pressing, but it didn't quite work. Why? And just get straight to the point. So instead of this kind of real generalize what went well, what didn't go so well, all that sort of stuff that just becomes like, I'm pretty certain no one has a very few people will have a habit of that because it's just a bit too repetitive. What went well, what went well, that's fine. But getting to the point of that.

Mark Carroll (: 1:06:12

Hmm.

Hmm.

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 1:06:26

That went well, I'll do it again. Or that part just didn't work. So that session I was talking about earlier, when it went to eight versus four, you remember I was saying the 24 players and we went six versus six, when it got to eight versus four, the eight players would score with eight passes, the four players would score with four passes, right? Just a little bit of a quirky little thing I thought. The four never got to four.

Mark Carroll (: 1:06:39

Hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 1:06:52

because they

Mark Carroll (: 1:06:52

Mm.

Ray Power (: 1:06:52

were too severely outnumbered, the space was too small, load of different reasons. If I made the space bigger, then the four would struggle to get the ball at all. So, you know, it kind of ends up, well, hmm, when I do kind of circle back to doing an exercise like that, you know, what do I do? Do I make it eight versus four? So you have to get nine, you have to get three. Do know what mean? What's the way I could tweak that? But I think if it means something to you, you kind of carry those lessons around, you know?

Mark Carroll (: 1:06:56

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Hmm, so it's trying to still individually. Does it mean it's interesting you say that right? So Actually, there's two points here. What touching what you just what I've got light rays when you mentioned things around like the net return? Good I think that's one thing isn't it because sometimes again and I think this is a bit coaches being fair on themselves and treating themselves as performers who have Like just the same way players have they have good spells in a game their passers But what's the net the net outcome of the session because maybe you know, sometimes we

And this is the hard part. Sometimes we reflect on our session based on the last exercise we've done or the worst exercise of three or four great exercises. It's like, I wish sometimes coaches, and it's something that I think I get better at doing and it helped me and it kind of brings on, I want you to respond to your initial thinking. It's interesting in different perspectives, but just recognizing you've done some good stuff. You've probably done more good in a session than you did, so like that in itself is really important to keep aware of.

particularly to avoid that sort of perfectionism, maybe impact in our confidence. The other thing you said, and I actually completely agree, I think across a long term, really formalized reflection isn't always, it's not always sustainable. And this is just my own experience. I did have a period, and this was when, this was more when I transitioned from community sport into sort of academy sport. And it was actually because I struggled with the,

going up a level, at least I struggled with being in an environment that was far more high quality than what I'd been used to. And there was a period where my confidence wasn't great. And what I found was helping with that was I had a journal, where basically after each session, I went home and I would actually say what went well. But I'd done it because I had to ensure that I had three good points for any two bad points. And it was actually partly because I needed that psychologically. So I needed to ensure there was a ratio of good to bad.

Ray Power (: 1:09:05

Yeah.

Mark Carroll (: 1:09:08

So like for people they were like, listen, I think, but I went away from that eventually when eventually I felt, you know, I was comfortable in my own skin. So I used it for a spot of my development. It wasn't a longer term thing. Now it is a bit more organic. Now it is, but that's been built on my own psychology a little bit. I just wondered,

Ray Power (: 1:09:26

You did it because you

did it because it was important to you at a time. And when it's not important to you, you stop doing it. You know what I mean? And it wants in front and center. And that's that's habits, you know, because we have certain habits that we have to do, whether that's, I don't know, going to the toilet in the morning or whatever people refer to all the time or eating or certain bad habits are there because we kind of were compelled to do them.

Mark Carroll (: 1:09:34

Bye.

Mm-hmm.

Ray Power (: 1:09:54

But otherwise, like I'm not sure if you're a volunteer coach in a community environment where it's probably costing you money to coach and it's costing you your time and stuff like that. Like there will be a greater importance to why you're doing it to trade it off against that. And just like you said there, when it's important to you, you do it, you will journal and all that. If it's not, it's, you just won't. That's what habits are. So making them realistic.

Mark Carroll (: 1:10:17

Yeah.

Ray Power (: 1:10:19

And yeah, giving yourself a break as well is important for sure.

Mark Carroll (: 1:10:22

But certainly I think the main thing there as well around reflection is to do something. Even if it's a short thing, think, with reflection. Even if it's a long whatever. But actually reflect. I mean, I always go back to this quote. was a, go through the old, there was a paper that's always stuck with me around 10 years of coaching without reflection is one year of coaching repeated 10 times. And I always think that because like, if you're not active in reflection and it's not the sexiest thing in the world to fight with reflection. It's just, you know, it's not entertaining. It's not saying.

but it is by God the fastest way to get better. Like, you know, actively reflecting and just turning it over and making a habit of doing something I always think is really important because it's just not, it's just forgotten about. It's assumed to just happen unconsciously, you know, and it's just, yeah, it's interesting to get your thoughts out.

Ray Power (: 1:11:09

Yeah, it's taken a small circle

because ultimately your habits got to fit into how you work and all that. So you might you might review a journal I might review in the car on the way home or you know what mean? Or you sometimes you reflect for longer because it went bad or sometimes like some of I'd get if I'm the coaches I work with, I will tend to get sporadic messages like 20 minutes after I finish coaching. It was horrendous.

Mark Carroll (: 1:11:26

Mmm.

Ray Power (: 1:11:36

this or this game is brilliant or all that. So it's got to fit in with you, but you've got to help it fit in, which is, I would suggest habits in a nutshell.

Mark Carroll (: 1:11:44

Hmm, no honestly, it's fantastic. Could I challenge it? And the thing is, it's a shame in a way that there's only so much time we have to be, this is a topic you could talk about endlessly, isn't it? There could be a part two and a part three to this. hopefully the people that are listening are probably thinking of their own habits as well that are coming out and ones maybe we haven't got to. Could I challenge you to think, I like to kind of round off the session sometimes with like two or three coaching hats. And could I maybe challenge you to think, could you summarize some of what we've mentioned so far?

not in the specific elements of it, but just around what are your three, two or three takeaway points that you would maybe suggest to coaches around habits that really I think can get at the importance of considering this topic as a whole. we could maybe chat, apologies, that's a bit of a, know, sometimes easier said than done.

Ray Power (: 1:12:23

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I'm not the greatest fan of, you know, listing stuff because there's always something you miss off. think but like the first the first things that I thought of when we kind of agreed to kind of talk about habits and coaching was the place I went straight to was like, how how does planning fit into my life? How can I make it fit in? And I don't mean forcing it in, but how do I stack it up with something I already do?

Mark Carroll (: 1:12:34

Aye, aye.

Ray Power (: 1:12:56

You have to do that. Like we said about the reflecting part, the reflection or the planning, all of this has got to suit you. Otherwise, you're not going to feel like you're ever doing it right. So if I decide tonight that I'm unhealthy and I'm going to set my alarm at 5 a.m. because I'm going to go for that hour long run tomorrow morning and it's going to be great and I'm going to have either tiger on in my ears.

If that doesn't happen, which it probably won't because I've never done it in my life before, then I'm going to turn the alarm off. I'm going to fall back to sleep. I'm going to feel rubbish about it. Right. So it's not, it's not, if it's, if it's too far removed from how you are, like you, read all the business books, like the 5am club and such and such a CEO is up at 430 in the morning. Like not everyone's built for that. And I would love coaches in my world to understand that.

that fit the best version of you around you. And, you know, we can do it in a real efficient way or a real lazy way and go, well, I've only got five minutes to plan, so I'll only use five minutes and it'll just be whatever, like a get out of jail. A genuine, like this is the best version of me because I'm going to do my planning at this time in this way. Because that's to go right back to the start. That's what makes me feel like I'm a success when I coach.

that's my favourite part of, you the best part of me being as a coach. So yeah, I think that's the core of it.

Mark Carroll (: 1:14:23

Hmm.

Yeah, honestly, it's been fantastic just getting your insights and having someone who's been coaching for as long as you have and across so many different continents as well included in that race. just honestly, I can't thank you enough. Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for coming on. Yeah, for those that are listening guys, I hope you found that even a 10th is interesting and as informative as I have. And yeah, we'll see you next time. Thanks again, Ray.

Ray Power (: 1:14:30

Thank

Yeah.

Yeah, pleasure. Real good. Thank you.