2 strong components that will help you win games. 

By Luis Gonzalez 

It’s time to get ahead of the game. Yes, I’m talking about Health performance and Fitness conditioning. \

Winning games is important. However not as important as developing your players health, wellness and performance. Without these three components you will run in circles wondering why you haven’t won a game. 

All major US teams as well as European teams have their players in tip top shape. Resulting in wins, game improvements, development and club recognition. That is why they’re the biggest and best in the world. 

Teams are able to identify opposing team players who haven’t been in form and exploit them, giving them a big advantage. 

Darcy Norman, a seasoned coach specializing in performance for the United States Mens National Team (USMNT) and Leo Shveyd, Owner of Advanced Wellness Personalized Training & Sports Performance have developed key frameworks and strategies focusing on their teams mental and physical states. 

Leo realized that the right kind of training could help you get BETTER and “own your potential”. But finding that “right kind” proved more difficult. He wasted countless hours working “harder, not smarter”.  

All Coaches want to achieve club goals and maintain a healthy squad that performs at a high level. The course below shares world class secrets on how to come out on top. Here are all the tools necessary. (Click on image to play video)

By Brendan Hall

From the Hudl Blog

No pitch? No prob­lem. Here’s how you can keep your play­ers moti­vat­ed and engaged with some unique work­out plans.

The pro­grams thriv­ing best dur­ing this pan­dem­ic are the ones who know how to turn a dis­ad­van­tage back into an advantage.

That means not only tak­ing the time to re-eval­u­ate your program’s phi­los­o­phy and game mod­el, but also how you imple­ment strength and con­di­tion­ing strate­gies. Lots of teams across dif­fer­ent sports are tak­ing advan­tage of video con­fer­enc­ing to adjust their play­er devel­op­ment for the bet­ter. Here are six ways you can lev­el up dur­ing this time.

Get Back to Basics with Remote Workouts

We’ve found that many teams across dif­fer­ent sports are embrac­ing high-inten­si­ty inter­val train­ing (HIIT) as a team over video conferencing. 

There are plen­ty of ben­e­fits to this work­flow. These work­outs are often short, last­ing under an hour, and place empha­sis on core strength, car­dio and body-weight exer­cis­es that trans­late across dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines of sport. 

If there are play­ers that can’t make it, you can record these ses­sions and upload them to Hudl for them to do lat­er. Short dura­tion is key in these work­outs, so if they can’t do it live, make sure they have a good stop­watch at the ready.

Be sure to mix it up. Players are more engaged with a work­out plan when there’s an ele­ment of com­pe­ti­tion thrown in there. A quick YouTube search will uncov­er thou­sands of free work­outs for you. Or if you like, here at Hudl we came up with this pub­lic doc­u­ment of var­i­ous remote work­outs that can all be done in just a half-hour. Pick one and go!

Embrace the Elements with Cardio

Not hav­ing access to a field shouldn’t be an excuse to avoid fit­ness. Instead, it should be a rea­son to expand your horizons.

Take the USL club OKC Energy FC, for instance. Unable to access a pitch for fit­ness train­ing, assis­tant coach Leigh Veidman sent them to a near­by lake, where they were able to eas­i­ly main­tain social dis­tanc­ing and were more moti­vat­ed to go a few extra miles (Because hey, who doesn’t love a good run with some scenery in the background?).

Plenty of free apps like Runkeeper or Strava are avail­able to track dis­tance, time and pace. Or if you’re up for it, you can try leg­endary run­ning coach Jerry Schumacher’s patent­ed ​“Badger Miles”, which mea­sure dis­tance by sev­en-minute pace — regard­less of how short or far you actu­al­ly go.

Keep Running at Optimal Speed

Endurance runs are great for ath­letes in any sport. But for soc­cer, what you do with your speed and agili­ty work will get you ahead.

Some say you lose your speed quick­er than you lose your strength. You def­i­nite­ly lose it quick­er than your endurance. So even if your play­ers can’t get out for a long run, they should at least work on sprints in their dri­ve­way or yard. 

Even if you don’t have a stack of cones to lay across the yard for agili­ty work, you can use any house­hold objects. SoccerCoachingPro has some great ideas for cone drills your play­ers can do at home, includ­ing change of direc­tion exer­cis­es and lad­der drills.

Fine-Tune Your Technique Training

Hopefully, your play­ers all have access to a ball. Getting touch­es in every day is bet­ter than noth­ing, but con­sid­er set­ting a dai­ly goal of 500 to 1,000 touch­es. Pending the age lev­el, these could be sim­ple drib­bling drills or wall pass­es, or more advanced tech­niques that mir­ror the pros. Either way, most ath­letes can ben­e­fit from build­ing up their weak­er foot.

There are thou­sands of drills on YouTube that you can lever­age. Message the team a link to the ​“video of the day” via Hudl Messenger and hold them account­able by requir­ing them to upload a video of them com­plet­ing the drill to your Hudl Library.

Another way to hold them account­able while keep­ing things fun is to hold com­pe­ti­tions. Here’s a few ideas:

• Most jug­gles in a row — feet only
• Most jug­gles in a row — head only
• Most jug­gles in a row — left foot only
• Most jug­gles in a row — right foot only
• Most around the world with­out let­ting the ball drop

Or you can even try the famous ​“Pele 7” jug­gling chal­lenge, as demon­strat­ed here by TechneFutbol’s Yael Averbuch. TechneFutbol also offers some great paid plans.

Make it Better with Video Review

The next best thing to play­ing the game is watch­ing the game, so raise your team’s soc­cer IQ by review­ing past games. IMG Academy Technical Director Andy Thomson says his pro­gram was able to get at least 90 per­cent engage­ment from their ath­letes and found them mak­ing bet­ter in-game deci­sions by break­ing down their per­for­mance using the IMG game model. 

Give them assign­ments to break down games and have them present to the team, or to you or anoth­er coach in one-on-one reviews. You can even incor­po­rate footage from the best in the world. Cincinnati’s David Robertson sees this is a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to stoke their pas­sion for the game.

And don’t for­get to add in some humor. Consider throw­ing in some bloop­ers to your film review, or some fun­ny moments from your game footage to keep the mood light. Connecting moments to laugh­ter is a great tool for memorization.

Get to Know Your Players

Part of play­er devel­op­ment is giv­ing your play­ers an envi­ron­ment where they know peo­ple care about them. Given recent events, it’s nev­er been more imper­a­tive to cre­ate a pos­i­tive out­let for every­thing that’s on their minds, and to let them know they are supported.

At Georgia Gwinnett College, head women’s soc­cer coach Mike Giuliano sends his play­ers per­son­al­ized video mes­sages each week remind­ing them why he is grate­ful for them, and how he sees them as a leader in his pro­gram, using spe­cif­ic exam­ples. Remember, your ath­letes know when you’re not being authen­tic — per­son­al­ize your one-on-one com­mu­ni­ca­tion as much as possible.

As we not­ed in pre­vi­ous install­ments of this series, your play­ers won’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.

***

Why reserve your video analy­sis soft­ware just for review­ing games? You unlock the full pow­er of film when you incor­po­rate it in every facet of your pro­gram development. 

Want some more ideas on how to use Hudl in every part of a remote work­flow? Talk to an expert about all the ways it works for you, then take a look at all our offer­ings and see what fits best.

From the Hudl Blog

By Brendan Hall

This girls soc­cer pow­er has long stood out for its devo­tion to film analy­sis. Adopting Hudl’s auto­mat­ed report­ing has only super­charged their abil­i­ty to play with­out thinking.

Before DVDs, before 8mm cas­sette tapes, and well before your aver­age soc­cer team invest­ed thou­sands into dis­sect­ing every inch of the pitch, Todd Kelly was already a film buff. 

But when the Loveland (Ohio) girls soc­cer head coach says ​“you don’t know how excit­ed I was” to adopt Hudl, he means it. 

Version 1.0 of Kelly’s film break­down process a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago was a bear, near­ly wear­ing out the fast-for­ward and rewind but­tons on his VCR. Minutes stretched into what felt like eons as he searched for the right moments to pin down. 

This was a process that typ­i­cal­ly took sev­en to 10 hours of his week. But to take it to the same depth that he does with Hudl? He says that would have tak­en him ​“about 20 to 24 hours”. With Assist reports, he’s doing it in as lit­tle as five.

“We couldn’t do what we do now with­out Hudl,” Kelly says. ​“There’s no way.”

In the days before a match, play­ers get a game-plan­ning pack­et that can exceed two dozen pages, using screen­grabs tak­en from Hudl film. With every data point on Assist reports tied to video, cre­at­ing one is sur­pris­ing­ly easy. 

Need to see how a scor­ing chance came about? Kelly clicks to the mark on the shot chart and takes the freeze-frame he needs. Wondering why they’re so strong in the mid­field? Kelly can open up the pos­ses­sion and pass string charts, see how their attacks built up, and stop where he needs to. No more search­ing blind­ly through an entire half of footage.

This work­flow allows the Loveland coach­es to com­mu­ni­cate robust infor­ma­tion in sim­ple terms. A typ­i­cal pack­et is whit­tled down to five talk­ing points: 

• Three things they need to do well to win.
• Two things they need to elim­i­nate from the opposition. 

And then on game-day morn­ings, head coach Todd Kelly tells them to take that pack­et and ​“throw it in the trash”. They’re done thinking.

No prob­lem, coach. Everything’s already com­mit­ted to mus­cle memory.

Streamlined Corner Kick Reviews

Loveland has a well-earned rep­u­ta­tion for mas­ter­ing cor­ner kicks. And with it, con­fi­dence that they’re nev­er out of a game. So nat­u­ral­ly, this is the first thing Kelly looks at when he gets Hudl Assist reports on his game and scout films. Clicking the cor­ner kicks col­umn on the game report pop­u­lates them all in one neat playlist.

As such, Loveland ded­i­cates expan­sive time prepar­ing set pieces. It’s not uncom­mon to spend a half-hour of every prac­tice on this area, and hours dis­sect­ing them on Hudl.

On game nights, the Tigers may have as many as 16 set plays on their menu, depend­ing on how the defense lines up. That also means play­ers have to be pre­pared enough to know, in an instant, which of those plays to run.

“For us to be able to do that gran­u­lar and that lev­el of detail comes from watch­ing us on film and what our oppo­nents are doing,” Kelley says. ​“So that we can pre­pare our kids, ​‘When you see this, because we’ve seen it on film of our oppo­nents, this is what you need to do, this is what [set piece] you need to run.’”

Pass String Data Makes a Difference

If you were to run Assist reports on Loveland’s 2017 state cham­pi­on squad, you would have found the Tigers were very direct, with few pass strings. This meant at times bypass­ing their skilled mid­field, to take advan­tage of some excep­tion­al tal­ents both at the back and up top.

This past sea­son, Loveland’s per­son­nel sug­gest­ed they’d be able to effi­cient­ly string pass­es togeth­er through the mid­field. But there were some issues. By look­ing through the pass string data on his team, assis­tant coach Dan Donovan made two key discoveries:

1. When the ball was played to a Loveland play­er with an oppo­nent clos­ing down, they were turn­ing the ball over too quick­ly.
   ​“It wasn’t that they don’t have a good touch, it was that the touch was in the wrong place.”
2. Some of their off-ball move­ment was sub-par. Their runs didn’t stretch the defense enough, nor were they timed cor­rect­ly.
   ​“It was still being, you know, stand­ing behind two defend­ers too late, and it caus­es us to have two or three touch­es on the ball-car­ri­er before the per­son was in the window.”

As a result, the Tigers made sig­nif­i­cant changes to their prac­tice reg­i­men to work on those fix­es. The pay­off was anoth­er region­al final berth. And with it, proof that con­firm­ing your hunch­es with visu­al data strength­ens your coach­ing lessons.

That goes for scout­ing, too. Loveland finds that the data on pass strings tends to reveal a lot right away about an opponent’s style of play. 

For instance, if your oppo­nent has few­er pass strings, that means they’re habit­u­al­ly play­ing direct. They’re look­ing to win the ball and imme­di­ate­ly play it for­ward, find­ing their tar­get down­field as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. More pass­es stringed togeth­er sug­gests a more pos­ses­sion-ori­ent­ed, build-up approach. They might knock it around the back line, try­ing to cre­ate pass­ing lanes by draw­ing oppo­nents out of position.

“You have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate all three of those things that are impor­tant in play­er devel­op­ment — phys­i­cal, visu­al, and the emo­tion­al belief.” Donovan says of Assist. ​“That’s how they’re going to work hard at it, repeat it, and not let it become a bad habit again.”

Crawl Before You Walk

The advan­tage of Assist is easy to under­stand. Donovan’s advice to coach­es new to Hudl is to focus first on the essen­tials. That means a two-step process:

1. Understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses.
2. Plan prac­tices around that knowledge.

Seems sim­ple, right? But it’s easy to get car­ried away at first.

“Just do those two things, before you get to any­thing else,” he says. ​“You just have to try. But I do believe that if you go and think about every­thing you can do, it becomes too over­whelm­ing to start.”

***

Hudl Assist doesn’t just empow­er your coach­ing staff to take your analy­sis sub­stan­tial­ly deep­er — it lets you do it in far less time. These reports are easy to digest. And with every stat tied direct­ly to video, you’ll give your­self count­less hours back while dou­bling down on details you nev­er knew before.

Learn More | Take a Demo

 

By Eric Moses

From the Hudl Blog

Head coach Colton Bryant explains why junior col­leges offer stu­dent-ath­letes the oppor­tu­ni­ty to devel­op and still reach the next level.

Regardless of what you’ve heard from coach­ing staffs across the coun­try, Columbia State women’s soc­cer head coach Colton Bryant knows the ​“Division I or bust” men­tal­i­ty is incor­rect. How does he know? It starts with Bryant’s own background. 

When he was a play­er, Bryant com­mit­ted to Kentucky. But an ACL tear lost him a schol­ar­ship to play for them. Turns out, this was a bless­ing in disguise.

Bryant’s mind­set had to change after the injury. He focused on con­trol­ling the con­trol­lable — with Div. I soc­cer now out of reach, he decid­ed to play at an NAIA pro­gram, Martin Methodist College. Two years lat­er, after a third knee injury had him switch from the field to the coach­ing staff, Bryant helped Martin Methodist take home the NAIA nation­al title. He still tru­ly believes it’s the ​“best divi­sion in the country”.

Today, as a coach of a new junior col­lege soc­cer pro­gram (cur­rent­ly play­ing their sec­ond sea­son), Bryant pro­vides oppor­tu­ni­ties for his ath­letes to grow on the field and, more impor­tant­ly, in the class­room. His thinks of his job as a devel­op­er — his task is to push play­ers in all aspects of life and get them noticed by larg­er programs. 

“It’s not just about the sport, it’s about aca­d­e­m­ic suc­cess, too” said Bryant. ​“In Tennessee, we have the best nurs­ing pro­gram in the state. Not Vanderbilt, not Tennessee, but lit­tle Columbia State.”

During recruit­ment, he tells coach­es and pos­si­ble recruits how his pro­gram doesn’t focus on the lev­el they’re play­ing at. To him, it’s sim­i­lar to work­ing a 9 – 5 job. You need expe­ri­ence. If an ath­lete comes to his pro­gram, they’ll get actu­al, on-field expe­ri­ence at the col­le­giate lev­el. And two years down the road, they’ll stand a much bet­ter chance at get­ting into a Vanderbilt or a Georgia because of it. Makes sense, right?

“Throw out the divi­sion, recruits,” said Bryant. “‘If [Columbia State] com­pet­ed in Division I, would you come here?’ If the answer is yes, then fol­low that instinct over the stig­ma of division.”

There’s anoth­er key com­po­nent to the appeal of junior col­lege soc­cer: tuition and cost of liv­ing. Compare tuition between Vanderbilt and a com­mu­ni­ty col­lege near­by. In two years, a play­er would be look­ing at sav­ing some­thing like $30K while still gain­ing expe­ri­ence. Now he or she can step into a Division I pro­gram, know­ing they have what it takes. They’ve already devel­oped their game and found their nat­ur­al posi­tion. Being $30K less in debt than the per­son lin­ing up across the field is a real­ly nice bonus.

Bryant wants stu­dent-ath­letes to know the truth about junior col­lege-lev­el play — there are end­less ben­e­fits. ​“I’ll con­tin­ue to do the lit­tle things to make my pro­gram more appeal­ing to the naked eye, ­and we will always pro­vide top-notch train­ing to those ath­letes com­mit­ted to us,” said Bryant.

But high school and club coach­es need to be telling their play­ers too. There’s no need to only look for Division I pro­grams. To learn more about Columbia State women’s soc­cer, or get in con­tact with Coach Bryant, vis­it their web­site. 

This article was provided by Coaches Toolbox

A list of personality traits that successful athletes tend to have in common.

You probably don’t agree with all of these and would change the wording on some of them, but my hope is that this stimulates your thinking on how you can more clearly define and list for your athletes what you feel leads to success.

We all have our own definition of success. I like John Wooden’s definition: “Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

Or, you could use some of these as ideas for your athletes in a system similar to Jon Gordon’s One Word concept from his book One Word That Will Change Your Life

A starting point for creating your own list…

DRIVE: Desire to win or be successful; sets and maintains high goals for themselves in athletics; responds positively to competition. Desires to attain athletic excellence.

AGGRESSIVENESS: Believes one must be aggressive to win; will not allow others to push them around in competition.

DETERMINATION: Willingness to practice long and hard; often works out willingly by themselves; persevering, patient, and unrelenting in work habits. Works on skills until exhausted.

GUILT-PRONENESS: Accepts responsibility for own actions; accepts blame and criticism even when not deserved; willing to endure physical and mental discomfort.

LEADERSHIP: Enjoys the role of leader and may assume it spontaneously; attempts to influence or direct others in a positive way.

SELF-CONFIDENCE: Have unfaltering confidence in themselves and their capacity to deal with things; handles unexpected situations well; speaks up appropriately for beliefs to coaches and players.

EMOTIONAL CONTROL: Tends to be emotionally stable and realistic about athletics; will rarely allow feelings to show and performance is not affected by them; not easily frustrated by bad breaks, calls or mistakes.

MENTAL TOUGHNESS: Accepts strong criticism without feeling hurt; can bounce back quickly from adversity; does not need excessive encouragement from the coach.

COACHABILITY: Receptive to coaches’ advice; considers coaching important to becoming a good athlete; accepts the leadership and cooperates with authorities.

CONSCIENTIOUSNESS: Tends to be exacting in character, dominated by a sense of duty; will not attempt to bend rules and regulations to suit own needs; places the good of the team above personal well being.

TRUST: Accepts people at face value, believes what the coaches and teammates say and does not look for ulterior motives behind their words or actions; tends to get along well with teammates.

The Way to Victory

Victories of life are won not on the fields nor in the marts where the deci­sive struggle takes place, but in the obscure and forgotten hours of prepara­tion. Success or failure lies in the hands of the individual long before the hour of the final test comes.

In the higher fields of success, there are no accidents; we reap precisely we what we have sown and nothing else; they do well precisely what they have prepared to do and they do nothing else well.

The world puts its force into us when we put ourselves in right relation with it: Experience makes us constantly wiser if we know how to rationalize it: Time deposits all manner of treasure in our imagination and memory if we hold the doors open.

Nothing is lost upon a person who is bent upon growth, nothing wasted on one who is constantly preparing for their work and life by keeping eyes, mind, and heart open to nature, people, books, and experience. All things that we have seen, heard, known and felt come to our aid at the critical moment to make our thought clear and keep our illustration luminous, our speech eloquent and inspiring.