The
lifeblood of any sport system is talent identification. Once the talent is
identified and directed then the task is to develop that talent. A key aspect
of that development process is how the sport skill is learned and acquired. Nobody
in recent years has done a better job at this than Barcelona Football Club.
These three books will give some great insights into talent development and
some of the reason why a system used at Barca works and can be duplicated,
The Little
Book of Talent – 52 Tips For Improving Your Skills by Dan Coyle – I am a big
fan of Dan Coyle’s writing. I think he has done a great job of taking much of
the current thinking on skill acquisition and teaching and putting in a format
that the layman can understand. This little book is full of stimulating ideas
and thoughts in that regard. My only criticism is that I would like it to have
the big book of talent. There is so much there that it almost demands more
detail. This will stimulate your thinking and motivate you to search for more,
it is well worth reading.
Barca: The
Making of the Greatest Team in the World by Graham Hunter – Terrific insights into the evolution
of their system. The majority of their players are home grown developed at
their La Masia training school. Their coaches are also developed and learn
through the same system as the players. The emphasis is on creating
“Automatismos” – habits that are so ingrained they become second nature. I
thought an interesting point was that if a player starts at age ten in La Masia
and debuts with the first team at age twenty he will have accumulated 2,300
training sessions! This computes out to 3,070 hours. The emphasis is first on
technique (not drills), then tactics and at age fifteen to sixteen is there an
increased emphasis on the physical - stamina and power. I also thought it was
interesting that they were taught how to lose! They learned how to handle
defeat with dignity.
Attention
and Motor Skill Learning by Gabriele Wulf Book – This one will get you
thinking. This is the science behid the other two books. For those of you who are still using detailed internal verbal cues
and instructions you may won’t to reconsider. My take home point from this book
is to focus on external cues that trigger implicit learning. Wulf’s concepts certainly
are in concert with all the current thinking on learning and cognitive
neuroscience. This is a must have for any coaches library.
