VULNERABILITY.

Sport always involves winning and losing. At its purest, it is a fight of two people, teams, or individuals against their own boundaries. When talking about sports, words like self-confidence, courage, fear of failure, etc. often appear in conversations. In recent years, vulnerability have also been included in the discussions. In her book Dare to lead – Dr Brenè Brown describes the vulnerability as follows: emotion that we experience during times of uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure. According to her vulnerability is not winning or losing. Its having the courage to show up when you can’t control the outcome. Vulnerability is surrender to the situation and if you try to avoid it, or you begin to avoid uncomfortable feelings, then you also stop growing. In this way you will deny yourself the opportunity to find your potential. So in the end, vulnerability is not a weakness, in fact, it is the opposite. It shows inner strength and integrity. It is courage and being brave.

The coach’s most important tool is his or her own identity, which makes it very personal and vulnerable. Coach has to face, and be able to deal, a lot of different kind of expectations from players, parents, club or media. However, even the best coach does not always succeed in everything. There are a lot of things in sports that we can’t fully control, like an opponent or the result. However, mistakes, losses and get fired from coaching job are part of the learning process. When you do your best and still fail, it is the best gift you can get.Without mistakes we don’t know what we could do better, and if we never make mistakes we haven’t tried enough. This is why it is important that players will see you as you truly are. Especially in difficult moments, when everything didn’t go like you wanted, and as a coach you show your feelings its sign of courage. It makes you give up your role as a coach and look like a human being. And this creates trust and a deeper connection between you and your players.

As a coach, we often talk to players that they should leave their comfort zone to evolve. What this means for the coach? First you need to accept yourself as you are and understand that no one is perfect. After that, you have to go out there. Do your best and also accept all the feelings related to vulnerability such as disappointment, shame and anxiety. These emotions tell you that you care (if you didn’t care, why would it worry you). It’s also telling about your courage to face these feelings. Live fully in every moment and face the result as it is. Be proud of yourself and remember everyone wants to be courageous but no on wants to be vulnerable.

You can learn more about this topic by listening to the Flying Coach podcast by renowned famous American coaches Steve Kerr (Golden State Warriors, NBA) and Pete Carroll (Seatle Seahawks, NFL), where Brenè Brown visited. She joins the conversation when the program is remaining 29min.

”vulnerability is not weakness it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

”You cannot unlock potential if you cannot unlock people.”

”I don’t know any people who get the skill before being vulnerable first”

”Is it more important for you to be knower or learner?” 

Brenè Brown

Watch more from Brenè Brown TED talk from: The price of Vulnerability

See also. Brenè Brown TED talks from: The power of Vulnerability

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STRUCTURE OF A SINGLE FLOORBALL TRAINING SESSION.

Training should always focus on a game development. Training develops player’s ability to play or cooperation between players. According to the Finnish Basketball Association, each coach should focus on four things when planning / analyzing his or her own training sessions:

  1. ACTIVITY: How many repetitions? What is the intensity level?
  2. COACH PRESENCE: Giving feedback, correcting mistakes, demanding level etc.
  3. LOGIC: Does the exercise proceed logically? Is there a clear idea from the exercises?
  4. LEARNING: What do players learn from a single exercise or throughout an training session?

Before you can start planning your training sessions, you need to know what things you want to happen in your game. For example, in an offensive game in offense zone, training can focus on developing cooperation between players like the three-player rotation in the corner:

Example of offense game in offense Zone.

Once you know what you want to see in the game, the next step is to find the right exercises and create logical training session. Example in offense game in offense zone it could look like this:

More examples of the structure of a single training session can be found on the Complex Floorbal Blog:

A complex training session for kids – Perttu Kytöhonka

https://complexfloorball.blogs.com/my-blog/2018/06/a-complex-training-session-for-kids.html?fbclid=IwAR3wiTo0f0ChfhhnyA5s2raKOkdqdZZnRPJwnhTZR253VNTT9m8q9Cnkdg4

Yksittäisen harjoituksen anatomia – Mikael de Anna

https://complexfloorball.blogs.com/my-blog/2017/10/yksittäisen-harjoituksen-anatomia.html?fbclid=IwAR3fewjsse9JKQRzprOsrTk58-sLDp3OWkzrqXY09U5C7P_bKsiHsrs8bPw

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SPEED AND AGILITY TRAINING.

COACH CHECKLIST FOR SPEED AND AGILITY TRAINING:

  1. Make sure you know which aspect of speed you want to practice (e.g. Multidirectional, Acceleration or Max speed).
  2. Only practice when players are recovered and always demand maximum effort.
  3. Pay attention to the duration of the repetitions, the recovery time and the number of repetitions.
  4. Remember what kind of speed is required in Floorball, but don’t forget the maximum speed training (increasing the reserve).
  5. Vary your stimulus, use different competitions and also pay attention to running technique and mobility training.

Speed and movement in a Floorball consist of several different factors, as you can see below:

Universal components of agility. (Adapted from Young, James and Montgomery 2002, Sheppard and Young 2006 and Piisk 2008.)

Examples of different kind of speed and speed strenght trainings.

Examples from agility trainings

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START WITH WHY.

Why do we do what we do? What motivates and inspires us? Everything we do should have a purpose. In coaching it is to grow an independent and internally motivated athlete. At times, however, our athletes or environments require us to inspire and motivate them. According famous author Simon Sinek, who has written several books of leadership, in these situations communication should happen from inside out. This means that everything starts from a question WHY? It gives us the reason why we do what we do. It motivates others to take action and it explains our purpose and reason why we exist (e.g. Tesla – accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy or Apple – Think Different). According to Sinek people dont buy what you do, they buy why you do it. That`s why its very impactful way to communicate with others and inspire them to act. Knowing your why is not the only way to be successful, but it is the only way to maintain a lasting success. That`s why the question which we should keep asking is: Why did we start doing what we are doing in the first place?

In his book Start With Why, Sinek describes communication from inside out with Golden Circle. The main questions are WHY, HOW and WHAT. ”Why” describes what is your main purpose. What motivates you and what do you believe in (e.g from Apple – we challenge the status quo). After that, ”How” tells what are the specific actions which to take to achieve it. It also describes how we do things and how it separates us from the others. According to Sinek, for Apple, it could go like: We challenge the status quo by making our products beautifully designed simple to use and user-friendly. When we have the answers ready for the first two questions then it is easy to identify what is our ”What”. Those are our actions (We make great computers) which we take in order to achieve our main purpose.

The Golden Circle

1. WHY – The purpose: What you believe? What is your cause?

2. HOW -The process: Specific actions to taken realize your WHY.

3. WHAT -The result: What you do? Result of why.

When working with people, communicating is an extremely important skill for a coach. It is a way of influencing another person and creating trust. That’s why it is helpful to know the individual players, their personality, motivation and a reason why they are part of the team. This allows the coach to approach the player from an individual perspective and help him to achieve his own goals. When coaching a team (a group of several individuals), the coach’s job is to build a story to which the team members commit. Behind this story is the core idea of why the team exists and what it wants you to achieve. When the story is clear (especially for the coach), it makes it easier for everyone to act and helps you find the right direction even in difficult situations.

Simon Sinek`s TED talks presentation: How great leaders inspire action

It is important for a coach to create a deeper meaning for his actions and for his players/team. When players feel that they are part of a bigger entity (history, club identity, bigger story) it increases their attachment. Maybe then our stories looks something like this:

Source: Sinek, S. 2009. Start with why – how great leaders inspire everyone to take action. Penguin business.

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VIDEO PLAYBOOK.

Some examples of what a team’s Video Playbook could look like.

Australian National Team, Asia-Oceania World Champioship qualification. Jeju Island, South Korea 2018.

Tapanilan Erä, Finnish Floorball league. Season 2015-15.

Finland Men U19-National Team, 2015 Helsingborg.

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GEQ. (Group environment questionary)

In team sports, you need a team to succeed. Often, players on successful teams describe their team as “we had a good team spirit,” “we’re like family,” or “we trusted each other”. All of these describe in their own way the social relationships between players and their commitment to the team. In the coaching literature, this phenomenon is called cohesion, which is a social and changing dynamic process. It reflects the bond between the members of the group, the commitment to the group and its goals. It is influenced by the environment, personal, leadership and team factors.

According to Carron, Widmeyer and Brawley (1985), who have studied cohesion a lot, it can be divided into social and task cohesion. Social cohesion is often associated with human attraction. It reflects two main dimensions: the sense of belonging to a group and the relationships between members within the group. Task cohesion, on the other hand, reflects member`s interest in the group’s goal, which requires a joint effort by the group. Such as winning a championship. Often these two can be considered to be related. When a team is doing well, the relationships between the players are also doing well and while the team is doing well there is usually also higher chance to be more successful in the field.

Cohesion can be measured in two different ways: Using questionnaires and sociograms. Carron and colleagues`(1998) developed The Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ), which measures the task and social aspects of an player’s perceptions and attraction to the group. Questionnaire contains 18 items and has four scales: Individual Attraction to Group-Task; Individual Attraction to Group-Social; Group Integration-Task; and Group Integration’s Social. In the questionnaire, the player answers eighteen questions, after which the total score for each of the four scales can be calculated. The higher the score on each sub-scale, the more players reflect that dimension. There are no right or wrong answers to the survey and it gives the best result when it is repeated regularly, allowing example the coach to follow the development of the team’s cohesion.

Group Environment Questionnaire (GEQ):

Later Eys, Loughead, Bray, and Carron (2009) have created a version of GEQ that is better suited to youth sports.

References: Carron A, Brawley L and Widmeyer N, (1998), Measurement of Cohesion in Sport and Exercise, Advances in Sport and Exercise Psychology Measurement, Pages 213-226.

Eyes, M, Loughead T, Bray S, Carron A. Development of a Cohesion Questionnaire for Youth: The Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire, Journal of Sport and Exercise Psycholog, Pages 390-408.

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