The culture of work should allow the coach to go beyond conventional actions, avoiding being trapped in habitual mindsets that often lead to passively accepting training principles and their applications. Instead, one must question their own beliefs and remain open-minded to new solutions.
Coaching is not just about teaching a technique or tactic, and for the player, it’s not just about learning—even if what must be learned is complex and its execution requires a high level of mastery. Coaching and training mean using one’s cognitive, emotional, and motor intelligence to teach and learn how to understand and execute what needs to be done in order to achieve performance levels that aim to optimize match performance.
To plan a training program focused on improving athletic performance, it’s essential that the player and coach—and the team as a whole—share the objectives to be achieved through the intended training.
As already explained, in sports, performance refers to the motor behavior produced in response to a task that can be measured, whereas skill refers to the competence required to deliver a performance at a given level.
To improve performance, training must aim to develop within the team the idea of “thinking while moving,” which means always having a guiding idea behind each game action.
This approach can be applied in a basic way for beginners, or in a technically more refined and targeted manner as experience grows.
There is no game action without thought, so learning or training means moving with a mental representation of what one intends to do.
(Source: Alberto Cei, Palla al centro, Bologna: Il Mulino)