Eesa’s Case Study…

I started working Eesa in October 2016.

Now, while Eesa had some great individual ball skills, the efficiency and effectiveness of his passing and shooting game were a little off.

At 14, most lads his age were already well established in youth football clubs around the local area – Eesa wasn’t.

By the end of the first session – the issues were clear. While Eesa had tremendous individual ball skills – 2 fundamental parts of his game were lacking…

 

Identifying the Issue’s in Eesa’s Game

First, the accuracy of his passes. While individual skills do help even the best players in the world, being able to accurately find the right pass, with the right speed, at the right time was pivotal to improving Eesa’s game.

Secondly, the accuracy of his shooting. Successful finishers win games – period.

So with a good head on his shoulders and an ambition to develop his game Eesa approached me to help him develop not only the technical aspects of his game but the confidence to be able to walk into any local youth team and excel…

The Objectives…

The objective was clear. I needed to help Eesa combine new technical abilities without negatively impacting the skills he already had. Here’s a quick overview of how this looked;

• Get things back to basics: Firstly we’d need to get back to basics. Strip away all the unnecessary components that aren’t needed so he could follow a simple process. What was that process?
• Split the technique into manageable chunks: Splitting the technique down into manageable chunks would allow Eesa to focus on each individual part one at a time. By placing each part in a logical step he could then see the start and finish points were.
• Realism: This would have to be realistic. This would be achieved by using out-of-box training tools and equipment and by adding slight psychological pressure to pinnacle moments.
• Repetition & Consistency [RAC]: This wasn’t going to be achieved in one week. This was going to take some time through repetition and consistency.
• Continued positive feedback and reinforcement: Finally, like any normal human-being learning a new skill, there would need to be positive and constructive feedback throughout the whole process.

Throughout the first year we kept this same cycle. Slowly but surely he started improving a tiny bit after each training session. There were a few setbacks however….

Frustration Started To Grow

Firstly, Eesa understandably grew a little frustrated at times. In his mind, he wasn’t seeing the ‘fruits of his labour’ as clearly and as quickly as he would’ve liked.

He needed to learn to love the process – the journey he was undertaking, stay patient and dedicated to working hard in training and he would, eventually, see the benefit of being able to strike the ball with more power, accuracy and confidence.

Then, things started to improve.

Not only did the ball start hitting the back of the net far more often, but it did so at much better speed. Both Eesa’s accuracy and power had improved.

His passing improved ten-fold too. The speed, the timing and the overall quality of his passes were far better than where he was just 8 months prior.

I kept progressing the sessions, bit by bit – introducing more and more realism to his training programme and it worked…

Eesa finally got his place in a local 11 a-side youth football team. Objective achieved.

But – what happened next neither of us saw coming….

Not only did Eesa develop the confidence and technical development needed to excel at his local football club but he’s now also regularly getting picked for his school football team too.

And that’s beauty of it really…

…while there are areas of the game I can help improve through various training methods and techniques I have learned over the years, the real surprise comes after putting in the hours, the time and the dedication to their training, many people achieve more than what they set out to achieve in the first place.

So the final question from me is – ’What’s the primary objective in improving YOUR game?’ Give me a call and let me know, and, you never know, a secondary objective might just be round the corner for you as well….

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