<H1 style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"> A big concept in coaching is to divide the athlete’s needs into physical, technical, tactical and mental elements. Physical: this includes general conditioning, general strength, general power, etc. Typically this is something that is developed in the weight room/fitness center. Technical: this deals with the specifics of how to move in the sport. Usually, this is trained by performing closed drills having a coach watch the movement and give feedback. Tactical: this deals with decision making and reacting to situations. This is trained by doing open drills, especially with a coach forcing the player to make smart plays based on the situation. Mental: this has to do with how the athlete performs in mentally challenging situations. My coaching theory course emphasized an off-court approach, involving relaxation exercises, sport psychologists, etc whereas the actual sport coach discussed incorporating mental elements into normal drills, though many situations cannot be simulated and must be learned from actual experience. There are relationships to how these elements relate. Here is a diagram I’ve made to illustrate a progression: physical -> technical -> tactical -> mental. Think of it like a pyramid: the elements on the top are supported by the elements on the bottom. In other words the bottom pieces create more potential for improvement in the upper pieces. A big base (physical) represents potential for power when technique is added above that. Technique in turn gives you more tactical options. Once you’ve learned the tactics, what becomes important is how you execute all this under pressure situations. Here’s an example of how to use this model. Let’s say you want to improve your smash. There are two approaches: top to bottom and bottom to top. What you use depends on what your needs are. Working from the top to bottom closes the gap between performance and potential. Bottom to top creates more potential for performance. Both methods are important. So for the smash, if you want to improve performance now, make sure to train you ability to hit the smash under pressure, and to the best targets, etc. If you have more time and are looking to develop more potential for performance, then make sure you’re strong enough, then use the correct technique, then the right placements, etc. Generally, you will want to stick with the simplest approach that yields the desired result. If you call the above as a “PTTM” approach to evaluating player training, then you can roughly come up with three levels: pre-PTTM, PTTM and post-PTTM. Pre-PTTM refers to a player who doesn’t consider all these elements of the game and how they relate to each other in his training. An example would be a player who has a lot of raw power but is not smart about shot placement, or the player who can play but comes up short against tough opponents. PTTM would be the players using the above system. The advantage of this over pre-PTTM is its completeness – there are no huge holes in skills that are left unchecked. So, if you progress steadily using this, keep going with it. At some point though, you’ll find that some skills are not quite targeted well enough using this approach – then you’ll need to move on to something a bit more sophisticated: post PTTM. Note that there is a difference between the level of sophistication of training and the actual level of skill. Talented players actually require less sophisticated training to reach a certain level of skill than a less-talented player. The less talented you are, the smarter you have to be about your training. I have a figure to help visualize the limitation of using only PTTM as the elements of your training. The magenta circle represents your absolute maximum potential ability. The straight coloured lines represent your actual ability for each of the four elements. The white polygon constructed from the tips of the coloured lines encloses an area -> this area represents your current playing ability. For a low-level athlete, the gap between current performance and total potential is large. Consequently the athlete’s main need is simply to increase his skills in each of the four elements. However, for an athlete whose 4 skills are approaching the limit, the way to achieve the most total improvement isn’t to hammer those same elements directly, but instead to work at those skills which lie between two elements. As an example of this, let’s take the development of smash power. For a weak, beginner badminton player, smash power can be increased by increasing raw strength (work out in the weight room) and improving technique (hit shots on the court). However, at a more advanced level, there is less distinction between technique and strength. The emphasis for the technique training shifts from moving through the correct positions towards generating more force while moving through those correct positions. The emphasis for strength shifts from generating muscular force to generating force in specific sequence and coordination. Therefore, power lies is not simply a physical attribute, nor simply a technical attribute, but instead is a physical-technical attribute. So that my long-winded introduction for this thread. My next post will be about physical-technical training.</H1>
