Managing uneven player readiness

If you’ve had a break from coaching, you will no doubt now be planning and preparing in your mind, and you can’t wait to get back on the field.

Your players will be preparing, too. I’m glad my playing days are gone, so I don’t need to pound the streets or pump iron in pre-season!

I was probably in the fitter half of the returnees. Through either a lack of organisation or motivation, others would arrive back in no fit state to last the first blasts of conditioning.

One group would happily race around and, at least, finish the session; the others dropped out.

While players are better prepared these days, the very uneven nature of player readiness means planning an inclusive session can be challenging.

Do you have a two-tier system aiming to bring the strugglers up to speed in a fitness-remedial group?

This improves retention and engagement, as players recognise they have a soft landing. But it hardly promotes team cohesiveness.

Another method I’ve seen work is an exercise-number system. Players choose or are allocated numbers indicating how many exercises they will do – so, if your number is eight, that’s how many press-ups you do at a station.

This keeps players involved, and you can ’reward’ them by upgrading them in the next session.

As you move into the skills part of the session, you’ll want to keep everyone equally involved. Again, consider flipping the session so you can do more of the technical parts at the start.

Since players may have forgotten some of their techniques, simple exercises with opportunities for better players to shine might work.

For example, you can have a passing channel where the first pass is simple, and the second is under more pressure. The players can choose which channel to play in.

Check out the pre-season links on the site for more ideas.