Skill breakdown

What is a skill? What are the factors apart of skill breakdown? What is skill breakdown? How important is it? In this article I will share some of my opinions and beliefs.

What is a skill?

I believe a skill is broken down into two areas. 

1. The decision you make. 
2. The execution of the technique. 

In every skill you need to make a decision and then execute your technique. Whether you are writing, typing, throwing a dart, batting in cricket or tackling In any contact sport you need to follow the same process. 

Where a skill can significantly vary is when you are defending, when you are a team mate supporting the attack or when you have the ball, the pattern can differ. To break it down we are going to look at some of the different skills in each of these roles. 

Defending 

You will need to make a decision how you will defend, will I let another player tackle the ball carrier and I man someone else up? Will you tackle? You’re footwork, how you approach the tackle, where you target, will you protect yourself from being fended or from being stepped, will you smother? These are decisions players make within a few seconds. 

Supporting the attack

Where can I best get in position to support the ball carrier? Do I become a passing option? Do I shepherd and protect the ball carrier? Yes shepherding is a skill, you need to make a decision about who you will shepherd, how you do it? Bump, with your arms or your back and bum. 

With the ball

You need to catch the ball, how? Where is it coming from? What do you do when you have it? What technique? What skill will you then choose? 

The relating factors of skill breakdown

Apart of breaking down a skill isn’t just breaking down the technique and the decision, it’s identifying the other skills that assist the desired skill. Many skills can be executed with in a few seconds, open skills are always executed together. Catch, decide and kick (2), Decide, Approach and tackle (2), Decide, Approach and shepherd (2). Skills are never isolated by only one component, for example technique. They always come with a decision and a technique and then other skills come into practice to execute one skill. An example would be, catch, decide and evade, then decide and kick.

What is skill breakdown?

A skill acquisition philosophy of mine is “Skill breakdown is breaking down two components that will execute a skill, technique breakdown is breaking down one of those components which is the technical factor of skill breakdown.” My follow up philosophy to this is “Skill breakdown doesn’t always only require breaking down one skill, at times you need to breakdown the skills that come before the execution of that skill so you can achieve the desired outcome”. This means working on multiple skills are required to execute fundamental skills. 

If you can identify the fundamental skills of the game, then understand how they work, in what situation do you use them and how to execute them, then you will become more advanced the most other coaches in this area of the game. 

Why is skill breakdown important?

If you would like to know more about how to coach skill break down and technique breakdown, read this article. 

Why is skill breakdown important? 

“Skill breakdown is important because it improves a players ability to make instantaneous decisions that assist in the execution of a skill. Skill breakdown will allow for players to improve their individual strengths, such as a players technique and decision making. It will improve a range of different skills when they are broken down with the player, this will lead to faster individual improvement in specific areas.”

Skill breakdown is a very underused coaching method in the AFL game. Not only is it underused, it is also undervalued and has a very small amount of professionals in that are experts in this field. In Soccer this coaching technique is frequently used, especially to train the first touch, as It is the most important element of their game. 

In AFL it’s very similar, essentially you need to be able to catch the ball before you can do anything with it. Yet we train quick hands, ground balls and marking, but coaches don’t really breakdown the technique about how to catch the ball. It’s repetition of executing the same technique, yet players still fumble and don’t have dramatic improvement. At the AFL level this has a large emphasis, I remember in my time at Essendon football club Dan Jordan an Essendon line coach, always practiced how to mark the ball with players and would teach the technique which made a massive difference to some players. 

There are many coaches that do try and coach skill breakdown, which haven’t educated themselves about teaching technique and breaking down specific skills. This can servilely Impact a players development in a negative way, as you are then training their brain to adapt to a skill incorrectly. 

My point is that skill breakdown is very undervalued as a coaching method at football training. The coaches the do coach it, are sometimes not experienced enough to coach it. Part of this is because there is not much education to learn about skill breakdown. Therefore coaches that don’t coach skill breakdown or the ones that do coach it and get it wrong are culprits due to the limited amount of research and educational opportunities for it. 

Finally to summarise this article follow this as a guide. 

1. “A skill has two components, a decision and a technique combined together to execute a skill itself.”
2. “Other skills will support the execution of a skill, such as evading an opponent to create time for the ball carrier toexecute a kick to a player in space.“
3. “Skill breakdown is breaking down the two components that execute a skill, in some cases you may need to look at the supporting skills that assist with execution of the desired skill.” Such as evade and then the kick. 
4. “Skill breakdown is important because it develops a players technique and also their ability to make instantaneous decisions. Which will improve a players performance.”

Advanced Certificate Coaching Fundamental AFL Skills

Analysing the performance of skills is a very important attribute for a coach to be able to improve his or her players, many great coaches are able to identify what the players strengths and weaknesses are quickly, so that the coach is able to maximise the players full potential. 

Many coaches at elite levels have a process with the way they identify a player’s strengths and weaknesses, but not many coaches choose to write down what their process is. This means that a coach could change their method every time they are analysing a player’s skill because they do not have a routine and process. 

This shows the importance of having a routine behind analysing the performance of skills of a player, a consistent routine will allow you to maximise the players full potential. 

Just like kicking in AFL, not every time you will analyse a skill will be the same, but it is important to have a generalised method in regard to how you approach analysing skill.

There are many ways that a coach could Identify player strengths and weaknesses but what is an effective process behind it? After years of education, experience in talent identification and coaching skill with professional footballers Austin Stubbs, (director of coaching and development at AFLHP coaching) uses some of these principles as his approach to analysing a player’s skill performance as his routine.

1. Look at the outcome of the skill, was the decision correct?
2. Watch the player perform the same skill multiple times.
3. Watching different parts of the technique on each attempt of the skill. 
4. Change the angle you watch the technique from. 

Below are a range of different methods you can use.

• Look at the outcome, was the skill performed successfully? Was the decision correct?

• Video the players technique from different angles in slow motion. 
  • This will allow the coach to identify strengths and weaknesses easier when analysing the performance of a skill. 
  • Doing this will allow the coach to have footage of when the player first performed the skill as reflection later once the player has improved.

• Write down what the player does really well. 
  • Ensure to let the player know what their strengths are, so they know that it is not needed to be changed. 

• Create a step by step process that focuses on what the player needs to adjust.
  • Not what the player does well as they could possibly over think what they are doing, you want to leave their strengths alone, but let them know they are doing well in that area so that they know it is not needed to be changed. 

• Write down what needs to be adjusted. 
  • If there is multiple causes of the problem identify which part needs to be addressed first. 
  • Make it clear.

• Find a copy of the desired technique and compare it with the current technique.
  • This will help coaches understand what needs to be addressed and changed immediately. 

• Set short term goals for the player.
  • Set short term goals for the player, this will motivate the player so they can see their progress as they are improving. 

• Provide an example. 
  • All players will improve immediately in one part of the skill after receiving feedback, most players are visual and kinaesthetic learners so that means by providing an example on the spot will help them visualise what the desired technique looks like. When you give feedback and provide an example it is very effective because the player is suddenly educated in two different ways, with information and an image. 

Its easier to identify errors than strengths. if you educate yourself in skill development coaching, you will gain a broadened knowledge of different skill variations but the way you coach them correctly will allow you to be a very effective coach. The other part of analysing the performance of a skill of a player is coaching the skill itself, so the player can improve executing the skill in different environments once they know their strengths and weaknesses.