How to use constraints in your coaching session

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Former FA youth coach developer, Ben Bartlett, outlines how a constraints-led approach to practice design can aid player development.


The production of playbooks – which often include pages of sessions and describe particular plays that players should run in games – can be guilty of seeking to oversimplify the complex nature of coaching football to human beings.
Complex activities require complex, multi-faceted programmes of learning that embrace variety such as risk and safety, unopposed and opposed practice and telling and discovery coaching approaches.

In previous articles on The Boot Room, an alternative approach to practice design and supporting players to play the game was proposed. Coaches were encouraged to consider how a constraints-led approach to coaching football could be combined with a flexible structure for practice sessions and games programmes. The purpose of the discussion was to help enable coaches to design varied, responsive football activity to support the perceived individual needs of players and coaches.

The considered approach to practice design functioned at three different levels. Let's take a closer look.


1. Principles of practice design

Practice to be inclusive of 'The Four Ds', see below:

2. Four ingredients coaches can experiment with – and combine

  • Pitch type: select from big, small, narrow or wide.
  • Player distribution: how we distribute the players to link to the systems or strategies we choose to deploy.
  • Parameters: determine the pitch markings that can be used to guide or limit the movements that the players can make.
  • Player constraints: decide how we intend to challenge players’ actions and decisions using the 3 Rs: restrict, reward and relate (see image below for definitions).

3. Examples of games

The tables below provides some examples of how the principles and ingredients can be combined.

The three levels of thinking afforded by this 'lighter-footprint' approach, can support coaches to work from more abstract principles to build their own ideas. Similarly, there's also the option to use some example 'practice recipes' when time or experience are limited.

In addition to the above, we'd encourage you to consider:

This article was first published in The Boot Room magazine in September 2017.


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