The hierarchy of free play

What creates a great free play environment?

A friend with a ton of soccer experience cornered me at a conference, "I hate to break it to you but what you are doing can be done by anyone...I could go to the local park and have free play."

And I told him he certainly could and we would love that because we want to see it spread.  But he wasn't doing it right now, why?  He was simply threatening to do it, like I threaten to clean the garage...I know it's a good thing and needs to be done, but I have so many other important things to do.

But it did get me thinking.  Really, what are the elements that have made JOTP work?  Why was it so uniformly ignored?  

One of the reasons that I think free play is acknowledged but ignored lies in it's very very basic elements.  It takes forever in free play for one kid to learn one thing.  Why do it when in 20 minutes I can give 16 kids the basics of shooting?  Or dribbling?  How can we plan if we don't know where we are going? Teams have competitions, kids need to work together, get to know each other...etc.

My point here is that we are skipping steps of development.  Where there is no model in sports per se that show proper steps, there is in the world of psychology.  By studying these examples and also looking at examples of free play success stories perhaps we can unlock some learning cues that make certain places work so well and allow other coaches (like my friend) replicate it.

Maslow's Hiearchy of Needs

From Wikipedia:

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation."[2] Maslow subsequently extended the idea to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity. His theories parallel many other theories of human developmental psychology, all of which focus on describing the stages of growth in humans. Maslow use the terms Physiological, Safety, Belongingness and Love, Esteem, and Self-Actualization needs to describe the pattern that human motivations generally move through.

Maslow studied what he called exemplary people such as Albert Einstein, Jane Addams, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Frederick Douglass rather than mentally ill or neurotic people, writing that "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy."[3] Maslow studied the healthiest 1% of the college student population.[4]

The model is usually shown in the form of a Pyramid:

 

So Maslow's theory postulates that one foundation is fulfilled before moving up to the next. Get your needs met, take a step up.

How do you replicate a great free play environment?  This is how we qualify a great free play environment:

•               a) Soccer

•               b) Everyday

•               c) Everyone is welcome

The games in the favelas of Rio, the sun baked futsal courts of Sao Paulo, the school yards of Brooklyn (basketball) the frozen ponds of the Phalen area of St. Paul...what is it about those special environments that attracts and then produces players? Using Maslow we can identify five key elements of a great free play environment:

  Basics.  Kids need to know where their next meal is coming from. So if the place is not walking distance from home simple plans to reboot kids will go a long way.

The environment needs to be safe, not just for the parents peace of mind, but also for the kids who need to risk take within security. A physical shelter is key as well.

 Cooperation comes first.  Kids don't just want friendship, they need it.  Free play environments create a breeding ground to test and build friendships for life. 

This is where most clubs begin (and end), insinuating that all the other needs have been taken care of.  Because of this clubs have a lot of back filling to do.  Ask a club coach how much time he spends on managing kids issues, focus, motivation, attitude.  If done right, however, competition is key to the next step in motivation.  Here it is where skills training, skill games/contests and high tempo scrimmages against each where striving to achieve becomes a skill practiced and built over time.  This is all the kids need as far as competition, competing on travel club teams is indifferent to real learning and is not a real priority until the next step is achieved consistently.

 Have you ever been at that place where the world slows down?  This is where your highest abilities meet the highest challenges.  (Find the semi final of Euro 2000, France  v Spain and watch Zidane). It is not about success, but it is about the moment of success or failure.  It is autonomous, it is not thinking, it is being.   When you are here you know it and so do others. And you want to get back.  This is beyond competition, this is creativity, imagination, joy.  And getting their takes practice.  

Put all these 5 elements together IN ORDER, and no matter what the spot you have a powerful cocktail of creating self actualizers.  This is what we "reach" for.  And once there we want to go back.  But we don't jump, or skip steps, we step up and reach.  And like anything we practice,  we get good at it.  

Ted Kroeten

Joy of the People

The nonsense of over passing

Looking to get some exercise one day my brother and I called up our good friends, the Kasanezky's, Sergio and Victor, we invited them to come over to, well,  play.

The four of us had struck up a friendship that always seemed to wrapped up in games and competition, we all played soccer together on the Internationals, but the two Brazilian brothers were infatuated with learning the American sports and wanted to compete all the time in touch football, softball, whiffleball, tennis, hockey, whatever. They found successes and failures as they explored these sports, always creating hilarious stories and images (don't get me started about the ice hockey experience).

So one day in early spring the four of us set out to the park for some 2 v 2 soccer.  We threw down our jackets and played USA vs the Brazilians.  I can't remember much about the score or the game, but I have a feeling how it went by what happened next.

As we  were walking home  we stopped at a basketball court.  It was around the time of the final four and Brazil had recently beaten Team USA at the world championships.  The two Brazilian brothers actually wanted to take on the Americans in 2 v 2 half court basketball.

So the soccer ball became a basketball and we checked the ball into them, immediately it was like an circus of activity. They passed and moved and passed and moved and passed and moved some more all punctuated by high level communication of "here," "pass," "got it." My brother and I almost fell over laughing and thinking "what these fools were doing?"  After a ridiculous 45 seconds of passing and running, always on the perimeter, they would launch this crazy-bad  3 point shot that would most likely miss the rim altogether.

Then when we got the ball one of us would  get down low, they would double team, we would make a simple pump for the basket where both players went in the air to block it.  We would simply duck under the blocks attempt to lay the ball in. For Glenn and I, who grew up playing more than a fair amount of basketball, we were interested in  beating players off the dribble, and the final moves in close to the basket.

The game went on like this, they passing, us posting up or driving by them.  The game was not close.

But to this day they think they outplayed us.

I wondered: was this crazy-hustle passing game with no purpose that the Brazilian  brothers displayed in the basketball game similar to  what we looked like when we took on the Brazilians in soccer? Do we equate, like they did in basketball, hustle passing and needless work with success? Domination?

The reverse was most likely true in the soccer game where  Glenn and I perhaps over passed (I do remember a look of amusement ), while the Brazilian brothers  applied skill over athleticism, even individual skill over collectivism.

The reverse was true in the basketball game. They over-passed, over-ran, even over-hustled.  Sometimes we just sat there watching them, half laughing...look at them go...when will they penetrate of come inside?   For us in basketball it was enjoyable to fool them, to make them jump, to show all our tricks and it did not take us a second of thought. It was truly 'play,' and we would toy with them. 

I thought this is something to think about as we evaluate play in the youth teams we see.  Passing is simply one weapon.  The other is dribbling (both possession dribbling and dribble penetration).  Both need to be developed, but the dribble is more basic, more individual and takes more time to experiment and create a "voice."  Once this is developed then the collective communication of passing  become the next step.  Can't have one without the other. Xavi started out as a center forward.  While Messi and Iniesta are probably the two best in the world at passing and dribbling in balance (Messi more dribble, Iniesta more pass).

1) Most youth passing games are coach or parent focused and orchestrated. (See the U11 boys team from California everyone is talking about). While this looks good now--where will they be 10 years from now?  Watch closely at their decision making close to goal, there is very little 1 v 1, the question is  will they be Menudo or Ricky Martin (who was also a part of menudo...)?

2) Players must be allowed to explore their individual skills: dribbling, shooting, possession dribbling and finishing. If it is not allowed within the team environment for collective reasons it must be allowed to expand in other environments.  This is vital as each player needs two weapons the ability to pass and the ability to dribble.

3) Transition, so vogue right now in coaching circles, is extremely important to winning and losing, but not so important in skill development.  It tends to reward the fast over the skillful, the strong over the creative. Take a lesson from basketball where half court basketball, a game without transition, has become the gold standard of skill development.  Soccer needs to attend to games like this that allow kids to experiment skill over athleticism.

4) Anyone looking for an easy basketball game contact me and I will line up a game against the Brazilians, and you can see this phenomena for yourself...but be careful if you take them on in soccer.

Repetition, Technique, Barcelona and Differential Learning

Repetition is important, right?  How else do athletes develop that perfect stroke that works in all environments?  How does Michael Jordan  have that perfect form even when off balance?  How does Messi chip the goalie moving at all speeds both left and right?   But, according to  an exciting new and revolutionary learning theory called DIFFERENTIAL LEARNING, these athletes did not develop through repitition but through the cultivation of superior  body listening skills (or cognitive perception) and because of it have developed a higher level of movement adaptability (cognitive flexibilty).  The best sport movements are not grooved through repetition-- just the opposite...

 
Differential Learning is a new teaching that focuses on creating "Cognitive Flexibility," by challenging the player to decipher complex messages through the introduction of  kinestetic "noise."  It's counter-intuitive and yet, it makes sense, and when you take a second look at why and how it works it's easy to see why the most successful and influential youth clubs have adopted it to great results.

“The idea is that there is no repetition of drills, no correction and players are encouraged not to think about what has gone wrong if they have made a mistake,” explained Professor Wolfgang Schoellhorn of Mainz University, an expert in kinesiology and a pioneer of Differential Learning."

This, of course, runs counter to the instincts of every coach. If you are not correcting or fixing mistakes, what is a coach to do? This coaching may not be appropriate at all age groups, as younger players definitely need to master the proper technique to improve as players. However, for beginners and as technique improves, allowing mistakes and constantly challenging players with new drills furthers the players’ learning more than doing the same drills over and over.

“Players have to take responsibility,” Schoellhorn added. “They have to be creative and take responsibility and have to find the optimal solution. It’s a whole philosophy.

When coaches answer all the questions, they take the responsibility and limit players creativity. Coaches who create novel learning environments, encourage mistakes and give players  responsibility for their learning develop better decision-makers through their more creative or novel approaches and better cognitive-perceptual skills.


2 KEYS TO THE THEORY:
1) There is no perfect technique because the technique is always different and changing.  For instance, Chistiano Ronaldo would be a good model in copying perfect shooting technique, the problem is CR does not shoot exactly the same way twice.  Ball movement, wind, grass, shoes, everything basically, forces him to slightly change the shot each time, he never shoots the same way twice. Since there is no perfect technique it is useless to pursue.  Instead the theory instead focuses on building the  "Listening Skills," around the objective movements.

2) Adaptability is more important that perfect.

"All techniques are Darwinian. Meaning, every skill is like an ecosystem filled with competing techniques. Weak techniques disappear; strong techniques thrive; refinement never ends."  --Daniel Coyle "The Talent Code"

Because Technique is changing the ability to adapt and try out new methods becomes more important. A good example is CR's new the new knuckle ball technique. The modern high level soccer ball that is lighter and allows CR to create dip and swerve.  But try this technique with a 1978 leather "Tango" Ball and the shot flies 12 meters over the goal.  Talk to anyone who was brought up learning ground strokes with a wooden tennis racket--those long and fluid, eastern grip stokes focused more on flat drives. Yet today the composite rackets with larger heads allow strokes that can provide violent spins, with extreme western grips and open body stance. If a player focuses only one the stroke, he is stuck in the 1960's, if the player was messing around, mastering lots of movements with the racket, spins, a large variety of of tennis "noise" is created from which you must extract the useful.  This extraction at the appropriate time, the ability to chose and then execute the appropriate movement seems to be the key skill and the secret to Differential Learning Technique.

2 KEY QUESTIONS ASKED BY THE ATHLETE
1) Cognitive perception: what is my body doing andf what is the outcome?
2)Cognitive flexibility: how can I change the movement to create the desired outcome?
Studies in shooting a soccer ball using differential Technique have shown to be more effective then tradition  techniques.    (download the PDF)

HOW TO TEACH:
Coaches provide lots of different variation around the objectives.  A coach focusing on free trow shooting for example, would get better results by NEVER having kids shoot free throws, but instead shooting from all other areas, using odd objects, like tennis balls, medicine balls, different level hoops, sitting down, backward etc.

All this sounds like messing around, appears like play doesn't it?  (Perhaps this is another key--but that's another blog).

Three top academies are using Professor  Schoellhorn ideas: Michael Bruniniykx of Standard Liege, F.C. Barcelona, and Joy of the People :)

If the best and most entertaining football team in the world is using Differential Learning, shouldn't you?  As you watch them play you see their ability to read the play, make decisions and play creatively. Do you see the same in the players that you coach or train? If not, how can you change your approach to stimulate better learning and more cognitive flexibility on the field?

No mistakes, only learning, listen to your body. Adapt. Invent. Enjoy!

Give it a try.

Finishers are made, not born, here's how

change the ball, change the surface

An interesting thing happened one day. It was hot, mid nineties and humid. Outside we placed a large sheet of canvas, put goals on them kept the hose running and the kids cooled down on a splash court. As the kids filtered back inside the gym they stayed barefoot. The game going on was a pick up game of 7 v 7 in the gym to futsal goals (3 x 2 meters) with a soft play practice volleyball. This ball is very soft, it is very safe, and the kids had discovered perhaps the most surprising teaching moment of my career.

We have all seen it, the kid who breaks away through three defenders, facing the goalie they drill a perfect strike right into the the keeper's belly button. So this lefty, faster than a jungle cat, broke free and nailed that play volleyball at a good 50 mph right...into the smiling face of a six year old.

For a second I was worried. But the 6 year old was smiling even larger now, he had just made a save vs the best shooter in the gym.

"Finishing can't be taught," this is coaches speak for "I have no idea how to teach it."  Current methods  put kids in situations to replicate the situation, and pare down the decision making process "Low to the far post, high to the near post." We train functionally, with pressure, with loading, conditionally, and still the highest level of skill in players, putting the ball in the net, remains a general mystery.

So the lefty turned the corner again, this time he took something off, but he still pinged it, the little 6 yer old stayed active and went for it, deflecting it away at the last second.

The gym went crazy, this goalie was hot!

Now the lefty comes again, but this time he saw the keeper cutting off the angle, a very soft chip. The six year old, slow to recognize the vector backpedaled late, the ball dropped just over both arms outstretched, no chance to jump the 6 year old picked the ball still smiling...he know it took a great finish to beat him.

In a "Finishing environment" their are two antagonists, the keeper and the attacker. Perfect learning situations involve simple to complex game theory.  It starts out with the very rudimentary "I am just hitting this as hard as I can." 99 percent of our players are in this category.  But to progress you need the problem to progress. In typical systems the keeper is the variable.  Most teams have one keeper who does only a so so job of staying active as players are in close, they are too smart and don't feel like getting hurt with a size five ball from five meters into their stomach.  Certainely they can not keep this up for the hours and hours required for a player to repeat lots of chances.  On top of that keepers at  9-12 years old they are not keeper sufficient enough to require anything but a mediocre finish to guarantee that the ball goes into the net. 

So at the wheelhouse of learning U7-U13, We don't have situations real enough to reward high level finishing.

This is where the ball came in.  It made every keeper great. Even a six year old stays active at the final finishing moment.  This requires the shooter to present a better solution in order to solve the finishing problem, not just any shot will suffice, it has to be finished, and with this ball, that is what the kids do they chip, tuck, slide, power, roof, drag, back heel, rainbow, to get the ball into the net.  They are becoming finishers.

Kids are smart...here is a good example of them teaching us.  I could easily have commanded that a regular or futsal ball was used that day in the gym. They wanted to use that ball to learn something more!  They knew before I did, though they could not articulate it, they understood that this ball would teach them finishing.

So my great learning moment was not how the ball helped to create finishers, but how the environment helps come up with the right questions.  Without those questions there are no great answers, no genius, no invention.

Three  lessons:  1) get a ball like this, it's fun and the kids love it. Then collect as many different balls you can and see what is learned from them.  2) let kids pick the ball rules and parameters of the game. They are smarter then we are.. 3) The environment is everything, mess with it, have fun with it, take care of it.