"If we all agree, then someone isn't thinking" Gen. Patton.

In all honesty I suggest you make up your own games, UAE’s and challenges, better still come up with an entirely unique coaching methodology. However if you wish to give this system a go…

As stated elsewhere on the site if you use the challenges and the colour grades as an end in themselves you will be entering a cul-de-sac. It is the in-game application that matters not what grade they are. Like all tools, the more you use the 7SC the more versatile they become. 

A test is something you take once and pass or fail. A challenge is something you keep coming back to until you succeed.

Introducing the 7SC

Introduce the Small Sided Games by their names.

Introduce the UAE constraints for each skill in the game environment.

Introduce the skill Challenges.

Once the players understand the concept the trick is to stop them from charging through the challenge levels. This requires the coach to consistently demand evidence of the skills being used in the games before allowing the player to attempt a new challenge.

Once both players and coaches have got the structure clear it has to be shared with parents. For most players their parents will, and should, have a bigger impact on them than their coach.

Using the 7SC on match day is the biggest challenge for all parties, but often it all gets a bit Zen; by concentrating on the 7SC in games and forgetting about winning, performances improve which affects results. It also changes the mood after a loss, as players can still assess their personal goals separate from the score. Using the 7skills Clicker App makes this not just possible but probable.

Benefits I have experienced

Players

  • The younger players seem to love achieving challenges. They especially love getting a new colour wrist band.

  • It takes one success for players to start saying "What's next?" rather than "I have finished".

  • Players start to use their grade as way of balancing teams in free play.

  • You see players actively alter their targets when playing against less experienced opponents

  • Players have an awareness and confidence in a team mates skill level.

  • Players have less unrealistic expectations of themselves or others.

  • Players develop pride in their grade with less arrogance of their achievements. They know everyone else will get there too.

  • Players of all grades use the same format for challenges allowing less experienced players to pick up clues from watching more experienced ones performances

  • Players can drop 'down' a level in order to practice or isolate a particular element of a skill.

  • Players of higher grades can assess the challenge performance of lower, no one is more strict or fair than young players.

  • Players have targets, activities and mini games to play during non-pitch time.

Parents

  • Parents feel that there is a clear and impartial route of progress for their child to follow.

  • Parental 'advice' from the side lines becomes specific and useful.

  • Parents feel they know what is going on and how to have a conversation about it.

  • Parents start asking informed questions about their own and other children's place in a team.

  • Parent / coach conversations become more specific, target oriented and purposeful.

  • Parents love seeing their children get recognition for improving.

Coaches

  • Coaches can focus on the application of skills in the game not on the acquisition of skills in training.

  • Coaches have incredible conversations on how a player is seeing and choosing the moment to apply a skill in a game with players as young as 9.

  • Feedback is specific, targeted and player centred. No more Al Pacino style half time rants at 10 year olds!

  • Coaches can keep a detailed and player specific record of individual targets and progress with nothing but a marker pen and the wrist bands.

  • Coaches can set up one activity and have a wide range of abilities getting value in the same space.

  • Coaches can use the wrist bands to help provide challenge, support and peer groupings.

  • Coaches do far less session planning and far more coaching.

  • Coaches can concentrate on players in games, knowing that those players sitting out right now all have something that they know how to do that will challenge them and that they feel is of value to spend time doing.

  • Coaches can get player to watch players in a meaningful way as they all have an intimate understanding of the targets.