Like everyday life, technology has had a huge impact on sports coaching and performance analysis. It has expanded the possibilities for teaching the game, scouting players and opponents and provided feedback on individual athlete's or team's performances.
I have posted a few articles already about technology and coaching but today I want to focus specifically on how video analysis and feedback can add to a coaches ability to manage a team. Video analysis is one of the more widely accepted and utilized methods of sports performance analysis within soccer and can facilitate performance, development, education and recruitment. For the coaching staff it is important to define the objectives (or the information outcome) which underpin the team’s video analysis. These objectives should represent specific information that coaches and players want to know about their team and individual player performances, along with analysis on upcoming opposition teams/ recruitment. Without these objectives a video analysis process can become ineffective and time consuming especially during the season where the regularity of games limit the time we have for analysis. Furthermore, to build an analysis process the following details have to be considered; who is going to perform the analysis, what equipment is needed e.g. video recorders, computers and software, how they work in combination and how the analysis results will be delivered to coaches and players. Once this process is established/ mapped out it is important that it is maintained, with subtle changes made as and when required. our video analysis is dependent on the quality of your video recording/footage sourced, and there are a number of factors that influence the quality such as the film angle, how the performance is filmed, camera settings and equipment. For more information on this we have written a guide on how to film a soccer a match for analysis here where the majority of the content is transferable to filming training sessions and other performances. Crucially, it is important to be consistent in the filming set up and how the performance is recorded to avoid any issues with long term analysis projects. On away trips teams will often use the home team’s footage for their analysis. While this may be a great gesture from the home team and potentially problematic, it is best practice to always film your own footage as an insurance for the home analyst encountering any issues with their filming set up which affects their quality. For recruitment and opposition analysis a team will need to source good quality footage of the opposition/ player through your contacts, footage share agreements and/or exchange programs. Be aware that while teams may share footage directly with you in exchange for your own footage, some teams have a no footage share policy. More so if you are looking to recruit one of their players! Additionally, if you are getting your footage from different sources i.e. teams it is good practice to convert the files to the same resolution and file profile of your own footage using a video converter. If you are solely using your own footage then there is little need to convert unless you are generating large file sizes and need to compress them for file storage purposes. The majority of analysts spend their time in this phase of the process, coding/ clipping footage for analysis and spotting trends. Whilst every team and player different is the process and analysis objectives should be consistent with little changes as and where required. When the objectives are consistent, less errors occur in the analysis process meaning a greater accuracy of information can be achieved. This phase is greatly hindered when coaches/ players do not know what they want from the analysis process or request different and large scale changes to the agreed analysis objectives week in week out. Once any analysis intervention is finished, the coaching staff then have to consider how this information is delivered. The difficulty in feedback lies with the coaching staff finding the sweet spot for information provision based on other coaches and players’ needs. This can only be done by building a good rapport with the individuals and understanding their needs/ learning styles. By not finding the sweet spot, providing insufficient information leads to poor preparation whilst overloading an individual with information can lead to information overload. Furthermore, delivering the information in a way that doesn’t engage the player will mean that they will not process the information and take nothing from it. When holding game film review sessions with a team, it is important to consider the following; -Be innovative in delivery -Vary the method of feedback delivery -Concise and topical information, don't get off topic -Cater for the audience, individuals having different learning styles and senior players have different needs to an U8s team Every club, manager and analyst are different in their analysis demands and requirements. As a result there isn’t a generic ‘one size fits all’ process for video analysis that all coaches and analysts follow. The above process is a great framework to get teams and coaches started on their own video analysis process, they can then build on and personalize this as time goes on.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|