Functional Training – Not Teaching to the Test

There is a balance to be struck between training to improve specific aspects of a player’s or a team’s performance and training that is too narrowly focused.  This is what Stephen Covey called the “P / PC Balance”.  That is the balance between an organization’s attention to both production and production capacity.  Give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish.

Logically, the “P” takes on ever increasing priority as the timeline grows shorter.  A soccer equivalent of the situation described here would be a team’s training as they approach a big game.  The focus of that session will naturally be tailored toward preparing to play against that specific opponent on that specific day.  There is nothing troubling in this on its own, but this is not the whole story.  We must factor in the tendency toward increasingly intensive competitions, super leagues, national leagues, college showcases, and countless other tournaments.  With overbooked schedules and every game being a “big” game, when do coaches make time for expanding the players’ production capacity?  It regularly gets ignored in favor of the more immediate needs of the team.  This short term thinking is built into our system.

The result is that we produce players who are battle hardened, but lack creativity.  They can compete, but can they really play?  Let’s examine our results.  Our men’s national team can hang in there with the world’s best teams and we don’t get blown out.  We can even muster a win (often an ugly win) against a great team on our given day, but we cannot carry the play.  Even against small countries with a fraction of our population and a sliver of the resources that we pour into soccer we do not dazzle with quality.  I’m not picking on our National Team.  They’re the best we have.  Our problem is that in their most formative years our players are learning survival skills, and the playing habits that go with them, in order to manage competitive situations that they are unable to resolve with soccer skill.  These players are in over their heads from the very beginning and cope with the demands of the game by adapting technically, physically and mentally to a low-risk style of play.  Whether we realize it or not, and my belief is that we do not, winning is more important to young players than learning to play well.

We must change the structure of our youth soccer competitions.

To compensate for the lack of an ideal learning environment, the great majority of our players are developing skills of survival rather than creative problem solving soccer skills.  This has an enormous and often permanent impact in shaping their habits and even their personalities.

Coaches teach to the test because, under the current structure, they have to win. If they do not win they face a downgrade.  The team will not play in the most competitive division of the league …. they will not be accepted to the most highly prized tournaments …. and therefore will get less exposure in front of college coaches.  Players will leave this team.  And you might be inclined to think that the coach is not good enough, but this could just be a case of a coach who cares about learning.  This coach may be one who is determined to do what is right for the education and development of each player at the risk of losing a few games.

And how will our current system reward the noble efforts of this coach?

1. Players will leave the team.
2. The club or the parents will remove the coach.
3. Or the coach will place a higher priority on winning at the expense of learning and real player development that would properly prepare the players for the future.

This ends up being a choice between targeting a result for the team on a given day vs. developing the quality in the players to produce that result everyday in a variety of circumstances.

The hungrier a man is, the more he wants a fish instead of a fishing lesson.  When the need must be satisfied urgently, the result is what matters.  This is the environment we have created in youth soccer in this country

If we do not change the competitive structure of our youth soccer towards one that prioritizes learning we will simply trudge along as we have for decades.

1. We will continue to squeeze a player into Europe here and there…
2. Our national team will continue to be a difficult opponent because of athleticism, team spirit, and will to win.  With the changes in the qualifying groups within CONCACAF, FIFA has made it a near certainty that the U.S. will qualify for every World Cup.  (To access the American market.)
3. But we will not develop world class players, who can run the show for the world’s best teams, and we will never win the World Cup.

The signs are even more evident on the Women’s side of the game. Look at the progress of so many other nations in relation to that of the U.S.
(Mexico, Canada, Germany, England, France, Italy, Brazil, and of course Japan.)
We are choosing not to acknowledge it for now, but we are losing ground.  The youth are the key to the future.  They are the proverbial canary in the coal mine.
We have to notice our canary struggling at the bottom of the cage.  That’s our first problem.  Our second problem is our pride.  Even in the face of the evidence we allow ourselves to believe that we’re doing a better job than we are.  Whether we’re just failing to see or we’re choosing to ignore the warning signs, the risk is the same.  What if our canary is not just sleepy.  It’s certainly worth a closer inspection.

Real success is not just a matter of time.

We have to change our youth structure from a competitive model to a learning model.  It simply has to happen.  We’ll explore what that model could look like and how to make the transition in a future post.

Mike