COACHES' CORNER SKILLS AND CONDITIONING:Coaching experts JIM KITTYand LIAM HENNESSYon how to marry individual and team practice to achieve best results

WHEN TEAM players train the coach organises a warm-up which may lead into some specific skill and practice for the whole team.

It is also now common to use small-sided games to develop sport-specific fitness and this may also be included here. Then towards the end of the session a further fitness training block is often completed.

Finally, the team will warm down and may use any one of the many post-training recovery strategies useful in ensuring a speedy recovery from training.

Throughout this training session the coach may, if he is highly organised and has the support staff, coach players in a game skill that needs improving. By and large, however, this is not common practice as the sessions are largely focused on team training and practice sessions are just that – team-focused.

A recent study, however, tells us that when individual skill coaching is neglected the players’ may not perform to their potential.

A study in Australia compared individual player coaching to team skill conditioned games training. In the “instructional” group individual players were given skill instruction three times each week over the 12-week period of the study. These sessions were blocked, ie the skill was practised for a block of time, say five minutes, and after that another skill was practised. The total time spent in blocked skill practice was 60 minutes.

While this “blocked” approach to skill development may not be as effective as “random” practice for experienced players, when players are in the early stages of developing a skill “blocked” practice is recommended. This group also completed three team training sessions in the week, each lasting 60 minutes.

The “team” group, on the other hand, completed 60 minutes of conditioned skill games three times in the week. They used small-sided games that challenged their acceleration, agility, speed and multi-sprint endurance while training with the ball. They added tactical team training to this as did the instructional group. Thus both groups actually trained for the same duration each week.

The results showed that when team training is the main emphasis , improvements in power, speed, agility and multi-sprint endurance were made but individual skill development did not take place.

In contrast, in the “instructional” group, individual skill improved impressively but game-specific fitness did not improve as much.

So what does all this mean? We have previously stressed the importance of spending a significant period each week practising the skills of the sport, be it rugby, Gaelic football, hurling, soccer, basketball, hockey, volleyball, or whatever.

For those who wish to become the best they can in their chosen sport several hours a week are necessary outside of team practice to hone and develop the individual skills required to perform at the top of the sport.

However, team practice where conditioned games are used are also very important to develop the game-specific fitness needed to play the game effectively. Therefore, training and practice sessions every week should show a balance between team and individual skill development.

These notes are contributed by Dr Liam Hennessy and Jim Kilty of Setanta College, the Institute of Strength and Conditioning Studies – www.setantacollege.com