Transcript by Coach KW. Click a time to jump there.
0:00 Hello coaches, welcome back. So… how many times have you had this session planned…
0:05 You go to the field, you get it all set up.
0:06 You explained to the kids, you think this is going to be great.
0:09 They start to get into it, and it completely falls apart.
0:12 They don't seem to understand it.
0:13 Maybe 1 or 2 of them do.
0:15 You’re all getting frustrated. They're getting frustrated.
0:17 Maybe you start yelling a little bit.
0:18 You abandon, you move on to something else.
0:20 And then you think afterwards. Are they not good enough?
0:23 Am I not good enough? 9 times out of 10.
0:26 What the problem is, is the session you brought them wasn't appropriate for the age and stage of development across these 4 domains that we're going to show you.
0:33 In the 1st video, we're going to talk about the brain, cognitive and social development across the ages.
0:39 In the follow-up video, we're going to talk about the body, physical and maturation processes, really important concepts, things that we learn in education degrees that really explain
0:49 how kids learn and what they can do, and it's super important to keep these in mind, when you're doing your trainings, because most times, like I said, that session you brought
0:58 isn't that it's a bad session or you're a bad coach, Or the kids are bad players.
1:03 It just wasn't appropriate. The concepts weren't for your kids at this time.
1:07 So I'm showing you these documents where this information come from.
1:10 They're not publicly available from a direct link, so I'm not going to link them, but you can Google them.
1:15 I would say take the US Soccer coaching licenses and take, if you can only take one course, the United Soccer Coaches Foundations of Coaching.
1:24 I have links down below. That might be the best single course you can take online that will give you a lot more detail, then take the US Soccer
1:32 grassroots coaches. I think it helps a lot that way.
1:35 But let's get into looking at the brain of our kids and how they learn and when they're able to do certain things and who they're able to do it with.
1:43 So, let's go back and talk about that.
1:45 Those ages and stages, something we're really focusing on in our town program and in the new coaching course that I've developed for the town and I'm thinking about perhaps releasing to
1:55 wider public. So let me know if you're interested.
1:58 But it's the whole thought process of every age group has some very finite and concrete, cognitive, physical, and social aspects that really kind of queue up what it is they
2:12 can and can't do for you in a sport, in a team environment, and all connected that make the differences here.
2:20 It's why we don't teach calculus to a 1st grader.
2:23 It's not because they're lazy or dumb or anything else.
2:25 It's just they don't have the cognitive ability to have that abstract thinking of looking at DX/DY over, you know, 92x and being able to figure out all these constants and variables.
2:36 That's just not what their brain is ready to do at that age.
2:40 And it's the same for teaching soccer.
2:43 Again, remember, I said teaching soccer, not coaching soccer, because that is a big difference and that's what we're talking about here in this little series.
2:50 So let's take a look at this 1st graphic here with these 4 tracks, right?
2:53 Here's all the components that make up a human at whatever age.
2:59 And here's the ones we have.
3:00 We have our cognitive windows. What are those they can think about?
3:03 How many of people can they hold in their heads?
3:05 How many variables are going on?
3:07 Whether they even plan ahead at all, only react to what's in front of them.
3:12 We have the physical, right? What their body can actually do, balance landing, changing direction.
3:17 Changing speed is a big one.
3:18 You'll see little kids. They only have 2 speeds, 0 and full.
3:21 They don't know how to use the throttle to do anything in between.
3:25 So change of speed when we're doing dribbling moves can be really challenging for them because they only have too.
3:31 Stop and go. And more importantly, what training actually improves at this age, which is not what most people think.
3:39 We'll talk about that in much more detail later on.
3:42 Social, who can they do it with, whether they are genuinely cooperative and can cooperate with others, or whether they can only take turns at pre-K and K, they literally are egocentric.
3:54 The world revolves about them. They only know them, they can only consider how they feel, and the ball is their toy.
4:01 And so when they have to share it with others, it feels like to them that somebody else has taken their toy.
4:06 In 1st and 2nd grade, it gets a little bit better, and as they get older, of course, it expands.
4:12 And then lastly, that whole social pit, who they can do it with, whether they can genuinely, you know, listen to you, who matters more in their locusts, whether it's their parents,
4:24 than their coach, than their peers.
4:27 That's part of that social thing.
4:29 And again, it has a huge effect on both genders and in different and unique ways, which are important to understand.
4:36 And then, of course, we take a look at that total maturation.
4:39 When their body changes, the timing of the things that happen to them, which is its own thing and it lands about 2 years apart for girls versus boys, and we're going to spend some real time on that
4:49 later because it almost nobody explains this to volunteer coaches.
4:52 And here's really, again, we'll come back to that point.
4:55 Most failed sessions aren't that you were bad at coaching, it's that you had a mismatch on what you were trying to coach along one or more of these 4 channels.
5:04 So let's pull up this next graphic that goes band by band age by age.
5:08 I think you'll find this really interesting, right?
5:10 So, U 8, 1st and 2nd grade.
5:11 We play 4v4 for a reason.
5:13 A kid at this age, sees themselves and the ball, and maybe a friend.
5:17 So that's where they are coming out of that egocentric stage and can share with a friend.
5:21 So anything past the number 2.
5:24 They really don't even see it.
5:25 So even when we're playing in that 4v4, playing in a 1-2-1, they're usually connecting to one other player at a time.
5:32 They're not considering the other 2 at any one time on the field.
5:36 It's whatever's in their field of thought of vision that they are now connecting with.
5:41 And that's not selfishness, that's just development.
5:43 That's just how their cognitive function is developing.
5:46 It's how their brain is processing the world.
5:48 It's limiting the number of things because it can't process anymore.
5:53 Here's a really interesting fact that I learned, though.
5:56 Have you ever, when you kick or throw a ball at a kid.
6:01 Uh, and you throw it over certain speed.
6:03 Have you ever seen them kind of go like this?
6:04 Like, they think like, like, instead of just catching it?
6:07 They put in a hands-up? has a really interesting physiological phenomenon.
6:11 Over a certain speed their optic nerve and their brain can't track that object over a certain speed.
6:17 So what it looks like to them is they see it in multiple positions.
6:21 So it actually looks like there are multiple balls flying at you.
6:24 So you know that feeling if somebody takes 2 or 3 or 4 tennis balls and throws them at you and you just, you kind of put your hands up because you're not where to go.
6:31 That's what happens with a kid at that age.
6:33 It's one of the reasons we don't use keepers at 4 before that each, because a ball struck at them over a certain speed, they are no longer tracking it.
6:43 They freeze because they see it in multiple positions.
6:46 And honestly, what used to happen in our town at U8 when we played with keepers is the kid would just get smashed in the face because they would just freeze
6:53 because they just panicked when they saw that.
6:55 Really interestingly a factoid back. So back to the slide a little bit.
6:59 So. One instruction at a time, 2 step instructions just don't land.
7:04 You can't say, go around the cone and then pass to Jimmy.
7:06 They get around the code and then think, oh, what's next?
7:09 Because they're only seeing 1 or 2 things in front of them, because that's just what happens in their brain.
7:14 They can't really predict where a teammate's going to be, so they can't really anticipate motion.
7:20 They can't play a ball into space for somebody to run onto.
7:23 Which means 1v1 and 2v2 is their entire world, basically, which is not a bad thing.
7:28 It's when we need to work on these things.
7:31 And there's a reason we'll talk about that on the social side.
7:34 Again, it all ties together. What they are doing really is what they call parallel play.
7:39 They can be playing with somebody, but they're not playing with them.
7:43 They're playing beside them, and that's a real differentiation on what is going on in their brain.
7:50 Okay, we're hitting 3rd grade and 4th grade, U10 7v7.
7:54 Now 3rd players appear. This is big because suddenly 2v1's and 3v2's, 3v3's, they can start to see all those possibilities.
8:02 They can connect their spot on the field, and that's where the 231 really comes into play because each one of those players is basically connected to 3 players at
8:12 once, at least directly, but they can also predict a little bit further out the things.
8:17 They're starting to scan with prompting, and this is where that really important, powerful question, "What do you see?" really starts to come into its own because now they
8:26 can start to describe and predict what it is they see and can now process.
8:31 Oh, there are multiple choices I could have done here.
8:34 If you watch some of my 7v7 stuff, you can see why that question shows up all the time.
8:37 They can also hold a job.
8:39 They can hold down, as I say in my 7v7 videos, a role and responsibility, because if it's clear and straightforward, they can keep onto that for as long as you need them to,
8:52 because now they can say, ah, my job is X and here are the rules.
8:56 I can follow those rules, as long as this simple and straightforward.
9:01 Socially, friendships are now starting to run everything and they notice fairness very much so.
9:06 Who gets picked, who plays, where, how much playing time they have?
9:10 So you've got to be really careful about what you're doing and how you're doing it, because they will pick up even the slightest changes and feel it and perhaps react
9:20 to that, uh, negatively, obviously. So what that means with 77 is now, we're starting to be able to do roles, positions, we use our width, we can play out of the back.
9:30 One V one still. It all becomes real here because they can absorb all those pieces and parts.
9:36 Okay, we hit U 12, 5th and 6th grade, 99.
9:39 Now that I can genuinely think about what the next thing is, and the next thing after that, they can sequence and imagine and play out possibilities across a wider range of things.
9:50 It's, you know, it's the whole uh, X times to the uh, power of 3 or four.
9:56 They now can start to multiply out what they can see.
9:58 They can see the team as a unit and not just a group of their friends.
10:01 You can hand them a principle instead of an instruction, you can say we're compressing, or we're do we're stretching, or we're doing abstract things, and they can start to put that in
10:11 their minds and pull it off physically.
10:13 But socially it does flip. Now peer opinion matters more than our opinion, and the fear of looking bad, in front of their friends is a real live thing that will change what a kid is
10:24 willing to try to do, and it is different between boys and girls, and other places I've said, boys compete to make community, girls need community in order to compete.
10:35 And you really have to land on that and be careful about that because girls are going to take looking bad in front of their friends much harder if they don't feel
10:44 safe already, where boys, they're going to rib and joke with each other, but they're going to fight like hell.
10:49 Because that's what competing means to them, and when they compete, they bond.
10:53 So it's just a different way of approaching the same thing, but you have to be ready and aware of that.
11:00 So now with that 9v9, that means we can switch the field more easily.
11:04 We can compress, we can play possession because players can now start to connect multiple things before they happen and understand - ah, when my left back has the ball.
11:14 I need to step 3 passes back because that 2nd pass that goes to my 8, then then going to be able to turn and play it to me.
11:21 They can connect all those things together much better as they go through this age and stage.
11:26 But it also means that some of the things we needed to do early on, 1v1, playing out of the back, all those sort of things where there is a risk of failure,
11:36 it's important we started those early because if now if we try them now, they're going to be incredibly reluctant to look bad in front of other people.
11:44 That's that social embarrassment. And so that's why it's much more difficult to get players to learn to take players on 1v1 or play out of the back
11:53 and use those risky passes in a game situation because they just don't want to look bad.
11:58 So there are windows of learning, just like there are windows of learning to language and everything else, that are important in soccer, and those are a couple important ones that happen early on so
12:07 that they are comfortable at doing it at this 9v9 and older range.
12:12 And now we hit U14, 7th and 8th grade, 11v11.
12:16 in the full adult game for the rest of their lives, which means more abstract topics are available to us.
12:23 They can watch live matches and be able to imagine themselves and see those abstract concepts and be able to better bring them back to the game, whereas before they can watch a game and
12:32 see a player or two and understand some of the movements that one player is doing.
12:36 Now they can see whole team or multiple player combinations, midfield rotations, overlaps, underlaps, being able to respond to what other players are doing based on just nonverbal cues, all those things they're much better at, right?
12:51 Socially is about identity and belonging.
12:53 You see kids experimenting with dressed with haircuts.
12:56 All sorts of affectations, right? They're just trying to find themselves.
12:59 It's middle school. If you're a middle school teacher, bless you because I could never handle that.
13:04 And so about that identity and belong, it also means a kid would rather say, nope, I'm not doing that before being embarrassed in front of their friends.
13:13 So now it's become even more extreme.
13:15 They'll actually just drop. And that's why you see a lot of kids just dropping out at this level is if they don't feel that they're accomplished by this point, sometimes their reaction
13:23 is, “I’m just done”, and that's when we lose them.
13:26 So it also means with this full game, we can have honest conversations about their roles, because they can handle being more honest here, but again, what they can't handle
13:35 is being made to look foolish.
13:37 So with this graphic here, it's something, it ties it a little bit together here, right?
13:41 It's something worth noticing We go 4v4, 7v7, 9v9, 11v11 at certain ages.
13:46 Why? Because that's the number of players, probably the team itself can manage.
13:52 For before, they're only really connecting with one other player at a time, 7v7.
13:57 Now, as we said, those positions are now connected to 3 or more and they can handle that.
14:01 They can see it. As we add more players and we make the field bigger and there are more combinations and permutations.
14:08 Cognitively, they're more advanced, they're able to handle those commodations and be able to see the possibilities, and that's why the field and the team gets bigger.
14:16 Also remember this. This is why we push those harder things early.
14:20 It's directly related, playing out of the back, playing 1v1 really working on those individual skills, taking players on.
14:26 Again, they're not embarrassed in 4v4 and 7v7 if they fail, but if they never learn those and don't have successes then, when you get to 9v9, 11v11, they
14:36 will not try for you. They will take the safe option every time.
14:40 And when they take the safe option, they're not complete soccer players and we've done them a disservice.
14:47 All right, so I think I'll stop it here.
14:48 That's the 1st half, the brain.
14:50 Uh, what they can think and who they can do it with.
14:53 In the next video, we're going to talk about the body.
14:55 Talk about the physical development and that maturation process and how it affects kids as they go through the ages and how it affects boys and girls at different times and different ways.
15:03 Because that's a part that you cannot ignore depending on which gender you coach.
15:07 So that's the next video. If you found this useful, please, like, share, subscribe, put the bell, so you don't miss the 2nd one with the body part,
15:15 the physical and maturation part, because I think a lot of coaches, they tend to skip the brain and go straight to the body, and I think that's the wrong order to do it in.
15:23 As an education, background, major teacher.
15:25 Um, you can't ignore how they learn before you try to make them do stuff.
15:30 So that's in the next video.
15:31 I appreciate all your time and efforts out there on the field.
15:34 I'll see you real soon. Thanks so much.
15:35 Bye- bye.
