Session Planning & Design

Session Planning

Coaches should follow the APES principle when planning sessions: Active, Purposeful Enjoyable and Safe.

ACTIVE - Players learn by doing so keep coaching short and concise and keep players active with small-sided games/activities that keep everyone involved.

PURPOSEFUL - Have an outcome for each session and focus on 1 or 2 key factors at a time.

ENJOYABLE - Make the majority of the session games based, vary activities and praise effort as well as acheivement.

SAFE - The safety of all participants is of paramount importance and most safe practice comes from thorough planning. Group children according to physical development when introducing contact, be consistent when dealing with poor behaviour and ensure appropriate age-and-stage warm-ups are completed.

SESSION DESIGN

Once each session has a purpose, then design a session around that purpose including Games, Skills and Technique zones. Games should make up the majority of the session (at least 50%) with Skills (max. 30%) and Technique (max. 10%) zones used to breakout and drill into the session purpose.

Skill vs Technique

Technique - this is the way that the body performs an action i.e. how to pass.

Skill - the selection and execution of a technique against a cue i.e. executing a 2-on-1 pass.

As you can see from the graphic, decision making goes down as we move away from games to practice a technique which help focus on purpose but, if we refer back to APES principle, too much is boring so need to balance and return to games.

Games

Important to vary the type of game within each session considering between muckabouts (free play / no coaching), small games (4v4 etc with active coaching using STEP - see Coaching Skills & STEP) and big games (looks like the full game and all coaches active).

ACCIES MINIS TEMPLATE

Our standard template and running for Accies sessions is as follows. This tends to work well for space available, typical size of groups (24-30 players) and aligns to the above design principles.

• Activation Game (10-15 mins) - Fun muckabout/free play game in large groups (See Activation & Warm-ups and use appropriate space)

• Zone Circuit, Groups of 8-10 (30 mins) - 3* different coaching zones for different games with groups moving to new zone every 10 mins. 2 zones with different ‘core’ games and 1 zone to combine a skill activity (7 mins) and a technique (3 mins) activity. 1-2 coaches per zone. Each zone max. 20x20m.

• Rugby (10-15 mins) - Finish with games of rugby using the same zones and groups (TIP - Zones can typically be setup from start and used with minor adjustment during session if well-planned)

*For larger year groups, ideal is to add further zones and extend session to 75-90 minutes to keep zone circuit groups at 8-10.

P1 and P2 sessions should be more focused around different Activation games with this template tending to become more suitable from P3 upwards - though good to plan a progression towards this over P2.

What Next?

Take a look through our handbook for further Coaching Skills and tools to help implement your session plan and refer to our sample sessions. Remember to check back on the Minis Curriculum too!

This handbook draws from multiple sources and reference the Scottish Rugby BLUEPRINT - Click on the below to download the full booklet.

Scottish Rugby BLUEPRINT 2022