John Allpress: why we need our young players to become ‘good drivers in heavy traffic’
Coach | Approach | John Allpress | 04.06.2021
Former head of academy coach development at Tottenham Hotspur, John Allpress, explains why young players need to stress test their techniques in games and game-related practices to become more skillful.
Learning:
• The difference between learning and practise
• How the coach, not the game alone, helps players progress
• Why the goal of learning should be unconscious competence
Learning and practising your techniques on your own against a wall or garage door certainly isn’t time wasted. But we do need to appreciate that deploying and producing those techniques regularly, on demand, in the hurly burly of a football match is significantly more challenging.
Good techniques are the bedrock of skilful play. As such they need to be stress tested with regular exposure to the game, either while training or in matches, in order to develop them to a standard where pressure can’t break them.
This environment also helps develop the know-how and experiences to be able to predict more accurately which technique may work best when split second decisions must be made.
