For the third weekend in a row your team concedes the same fast breaks. You noticed it each time. Each time you said you would work on it, and each Tuesday the session looked much like the one before.
Most coaches recognise this pattern. It rarely comes from a lack of effort or knowledge. It comes from how the days between two matches are organised.
Three reasons the fix never reaches Tuesday
The diagnosis is made from the bench alone
Conceding fast breaks can mean the transition defence is badly organised. It can also mean that half the team had heavy legs after a midweek match, or that the back court stopped talking after a suspension. From the bench these look the same, and they need different training.
Coaches also tend to see what they expect to see. A study of elite young football players found that coaches' observations of how hard players worked were based partly on what the coach expected them to do (Brink, Kersten and Frencken, 2017).
Too many fixes in one week
After a bad loss the list is long: transition, communication in the 6-0, shooting from the wing, discipline. With two or three sessions a week, a list of five turns into a few minutes on each, which is not enough to change any of them.
The week is planned before the information arrives
If Monday's plan is written from memory on Saturday night, it is built on the most emotional version of the match. Research on coach and player perceptions during congested match periods points to the risk: when the two diverge, the difference can carry over into the content of the following training sessions (Doeven et al., 2017).
Pick one priority for the week and give it the first real block of the first session. Everything else waits a week.
A twenty-minute routine for Sunday or Monday
1. Collect before you decide
Read your own notes from the match first. Then read what the players said about their effort, how they think they played, and anything hurting. If you have no player input at all, ask four or five players directly before you plan anything. The post on what players don't say in the locker room covers how to ask.
2. Separate fatigue from tactics
Put each problem in one of two columns: the team could not do it, or the team could not do it that day. Heavy legs, a congested week, travel and illness belong in the second column. Problems in the second column are mostly solved with load management. More drills will not fix them.
3. Choose one priority
From the first column, pick the one problem that cost the most and that you can actually train in the time you have. Write it down in a sentence a player would understand.
4. Check who cannot train hard
Players who reported pain or very low readiness change what is possible on Tuesday. Plan for the squad you will actually have in the hall.
5. Build the first block around the priority
The priority gets the first block after the warm-up, while players are fresh. If it is transition defence, the block should end in a game situation where transition defence decides who wins.
6. Tell the players why
One sentence at the start of the session is enough. Players train a problem with more focus when they know it came from the match, and even more when it came from what they told you.
Check it on Saturday
The next match is the test. Before the game, remind yourself of the one thing you trained. After it, look for that thing first, in your own notes and in the players' answers. Over a season this becomes a simple record of what you worked on and whether it held. The article on the match cycle describes this loop in more detail.
| Week | Priority | Held on Saturday? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Transition defence after our own shot | Partly, in the first half |
| 2 | Talking in the 6-0 after a suspension | Yes |
| 3 | Finding the left wing in the second half | Not yet |
Where SquadX fits
In SquadX, players check in before and after every match in the player app, and Coach Lucas writes a brief that compares the result with your pre-match focus and points to a priority for the week. Building the session stays your job.
