Welcome to part 2 of our developing leadership series!
In part one we looked at the first steps of developing leadership – getting players to take charge and give instructions during the warm up. In this post we’ll look at the next stage – getting players to be in charge of decision making during a drill.
In the last post, we talked about macro pace – that is, the pace of learning across multiple sessions. In this post we’re still mindful of the pace of learning, and we’ll look at a drill that builds on the previous one, adding a new layer of leadership that will be the right level of challenge.
The Drill: Call the Wall
Call The Wall is a drill that I love, and would often use as a staple for building strong, dynamic walls. In Call the Wall, players are required to form a three wall which will defend a series of attacks by the jammer.
The key to Call The Wall is that the attacks will be given as a sequence, for example, inside, middle, inside.
The wall will know where the jammer is going to hit, and will move fluidly to block at each point.
This predictability is deliberate – the object is to perform the movements with high intensity to practice the mechanics of blocking in a wall at pace.
So where does the leadership come in?
In Call The Wall the coach will call the sequence to begin with, but once the skaters are familiar with the drill, the coach will designate players to be the caller. We want everyone to have time being the caller so we’re growing leadership throughout the team, and we want everyone to have enough time to observe and guide the drill. This may happen over a number of sessions.
Whoever is calling the wall should be paying attention to where the jammer is getting thru, and adjusting the drill to fit.
Here is an example coach-player interaction:
Coach: Slinky, where’s the jammer getting thru most of the time with you guys?
Caller: We’re having a bit of trouble with the duck on the outside
Coach: What are you going to do about it?
Caller: Move faster and lower on the outside
Coach: Ok, tell them that!
Caller: Ok, guys lets keep it tight and low on the outside!
In this interaction the coach is checking that the caller is observing the strengths and weaknesses of the wall, and making good decisions about how to adapt.
The predictable nature of the drill allows them to do this in a space that is not too chaotic, and allows us to preserve that sustainable pace of growing leadership.
Call the wall is freely available to use on LessonStack, so just drag and drop it onto your stack if you have an account 🙂
Happy Coaching!
Rex T x