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Six Ways to Enhance Your Player Development Remotely

by

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.


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