I was reading an article on self confidence and the author had an interesting little coaching tale.
He spoke about people needing to be comfortable with themselves and their abilities, but people often cant tap those abilities or importantly don't realise what they're capable of doing, and hence never gain the confidence of being able to or even attempting to reach their potential.
He recalled a story, he was in his college basketball team, he wasn't the best player in the team, in retrospect he thinks that although he thought he was the worst on the team, in reality he was not. But that would change.
One day, the coach tried a new idea what sounded like one of what Piers called in 2007 at the juniors camp an 'experimental' phase. They were having a practice game and the coach said to them "Each of you I am going to assign you another player on the team and you have to play the way you think that they would play," Naturally the game was chaos.
The main character of the story however was assinged to play like the best player in the team. With that task on board he thought, hey fuck it I'm not that good but this is just a practice so I don't care.
Needless to say he shredded that game and the coach told him later, if all he had to do was to tell him to pretend hes the best player on the team, that he will do that every single game. What changed? His skills certainly didn't improve over that session, but his confidence in his own game and HOW he used what he had, had changed.
....
So how does this link back to team dynamics and ideas? I think it was an interesting concept telling your team to play like others on the team. First of all you need to have played a lot with those people and be pretty familiar with their playing styles. So you would need to be a very tight knit team. Secondly, it is also in a way a team building exercise and an individual
So the first thing I imagined, hey what happened if I got asked to play like someone on my team. Phil White maybe? Well for starters I'd have to be an awesome precision point hucker, extremely fit with a sick read on that disc and ball crushing ups, as well as being ruggedly handsome. But then I started to think more about HOW the person plays rather than what skills they have. More about the choices they make, the people they throw to, the times they cut, the times they jump, break, throw, cut and even lead others. I think this was the coach's aim, to get people to really think about their team mates and how they can form stronger as a team.
So obviously you aren't going to be able to copy somones raw physical ability, but thers other things you could really emulate. Can this be applied to improving peoples weaknesses?
No names mentioned but there is two players on friskee, if I was to act like them, I imagine in this exercise a lot of people would become caracitures of eachother to really emphasise their gripes (or appreciation) of certain players.
Two people come to mind that I think could benefit from this.
Player one: "Oh look a perfectly good huck, I have the throw to get within 30cm of my runner. My runner has a huge lead, and on top of that can sky the other guy if it comes down to it. I'd better not take this throw."
Player two: "Oh man looks someones trying to cut deep I KNOW this is a good throw. Breakforce huck? that could be hard FUCK IT. HUUUUUUCK BABY"
"..."
"sorry guys, my bad."
I reckon both players could definetly benefit from this experience.
But could teams actaully benefit from a mess around game like this?
Maybe. But it'd be hard.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Interesting concept.
I'd like to see it done, but more for the player to observe what others see their faults as being. Whether there's an obvious flaw in something they do, or if they are an incredibly predictable player.
Sounds like your glass is half empty, Simon :)
If a players analysis of their team mates game comprises only of a list of faults, that player has a major setback in their ability to improve, as they will struggle to learn by observation.
I think watching positive analytical players highlight the different approaches from different players would be very beneficial for the coach.
i wanna play!
next time i play div 2 i am totally going to swap with someone....i think it could eb a very instructive lesson for both. Cool. Having discusions about how to improve your personal game with people, the notion of taking on the attributes of another player seems like an ideal way of trying to modify some of the more erratic person playing habits, while observing from another what people value in your own on feild performance.
yeah, definetly some of what I was thinking was what wally said, some people. for example I think some people have excellent decision making abilities during the game in terms of not throwing too late/too early to the right players with the right throw (not being lazy and going for a low backhand instead of that lazy hammer etc).
even simply on an awareness level for someone to notice decision making as exemplary behaviour for someone who doesn't think about those things could improve a teams teamwork ability by leaps and bounds.
I also thought it comes down to role models a fair bit, to try and model your play on someone you like.
Certainly an interesting coaching concept. Obviously the players involved need to have a good understanding of the roles and functions of their team mates and of the game itself.
However, it can backfire. Sometimes, when a player decides they are the best of their team it can be terrible for team. They get Hero syndrome, where they have to do EVERYTHING, where nothing can possibly be achieved without them and they lose their trust in the team.
That can all end up with a team 'wrecking ball'
I am shell-shocked enough from a variety of teams in my deep dank frisbee past to fear such players greatly and to always try to avoid such an attitude to my own game.
In the immortal words of Tina Turner, "WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER HERO!"
..but yeah, I'd be sweet to do that with FU
Post a Comment