Foundation of Joy

Jurgen Klinsmann should have been the next US coach. Too bad. He get's it. He recently said that the US system is failing, and we are on the wrong road toward healthy player development.

Look at soccer in the US. Imagine a pyramid with competition being the highest level of soccer and team practices being the second level, generally this is the limit to kid's experience today.

But there is a third layer, a "lost foundation," of free play and individual skills mastery (deliberate practice). This foundation, is what kids are best at. It is the the learning and socializing on the neighborhood parks in free play. And, is also perfecting that free throw all by yourself until you get it right. If you play sports, this time spent is the best of your lives. Time and time again great players site these foundational hours as their favorite, and the key to their creative development. I like to call this the "Foundation of Joy."

This foundation should be the first priority. Without this foundation of joy, kids miss out on the most important hours of skill development, creative skills, enjoyment and learning. Yet in the US this foundation is given almost no attention.

Free play alone does not develop players, recent studies on expertise point to deliberate practice, a vastly different thing then you are likely to find at your typical soccer club. It's sometimes fun, sometimes hard work, all the time challenging and improving performance.

So development must be carefully balanced, U10's spend much greater time at free play as they build social and technical strengths, they participate in very little DP, while a U18 may have the balance of their training focused in Deliberate Practice and performance improvement.

Recent studies using hockey have shown that those who participated in the most free play (pond hockey) as kids were able to handle the increasing amounts of Deliberate Practice as they became young adults. These players were least likely to burnout, more likely to continue playing and enjoy the game for life.

So Play, that relaxed, just for the fun of it time, turn out to be hours that once established, give us the power to charge through that hard work that comes later. Free play inoculates us from burn out.

In the mean time it would be easy for me as a coach to prop up a group of U12's with tough deliberate practice, and they would likely do well--for a while.

Thisis what is happening here. Our best players train hard and early under expensive coaching. And this is how the Pyramid in the US is upside down: because the competition is ramped up early, deliberate practice is ramped up early. The fun goes out the window at U12 were winning and performance is the goal, little time spent in play, worse, it is often by coaches held to be mindless.

However by the time they are 16 they have little left to give. There is not that foundation of play to draw on and the burnout begins.

So when that kid says "it's just not fun anymore," what they are really saying is that in order to find their way through to the next level they have to put in more ours where soccer is fun, they can build their creativity and find their game again.