Motor Skills | Transfer | Games
Rugby consists of countless technical aspects. As coaches, we can always make ourselves aware of how we coach but these days, not a lot is given to what we coach. There has been a lot of discussion and research on the merits of play over drill, of games over practice, of constrained over free-play. Here are some of my thoughts!
In my opinion too many coaches use the professional player as the ideal model of delivery, without realising that this is a route to failure for their players. Modelling your movement patterns on someone-else is difficult enough, make that person an elite athlete with remarkable highly trained motor skills and failure will arise even more often.
Professional Player & Basic Skills
Modelling behaviour and movement is an excellent way to learn if you already have these attributes, playing games with specific constraints for controlling player behaviour is an excellent way to develop rugby skills… but only if you have them in the first place.
Let’s be realistic, you don’t think that Danny Care passes the way he does or Box Kicks with such accuracy just through playing games? Countless hours of deliberate practice, closed practice, motor skills development and flexibility training have gone into him being able to move his body in a coordinated fashion to perfect the movement that is then transferred into a game.
So what do we need to give our players?
MOTOR SKILLS: These include the basic or fundamental movements and sports specific movements. Make them fun based but they have to be technically correct for effective motor recruitment.
TRANSFER: In your session make sure we give the players the opportunity to transfer these motor skills successfully. That means using constraints to achieve success and learning.
GAMES: Every session must have a games context, you must see if the player can take these transferable motor skills and apply them in a realistic game environment… going from games to motor skills is another valid methodology, if you know what you are looking for!
