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For Jayne Ludlow, there are clear parallels between how she learnt as a player and how she tries to convey information as a coach.
By John Portch
âThe more Iâve understood as a coach the more I go back to how I was coached at Arsenal,â she tells the Leaders Performance Institute. Ludlowâs 13-year stay in north London coincided with the most successful period in the clubâs history. Between 2000 and 2013, she lifted 26 major trophies, made 356 appearances, and left as the clubâs record goal scorer having found the net on 211 occasions.
A different era, but Ludlow, who immediately embarked on her coaching career, has increasingly used those times as a reference point in her work.
âI always say of my time at Arsenal that we were never coached.â she continues. âIâd say: âwe donât do shape, we donât do structure, although we do drills that repeat every now and again. Thereâs principles in it, such as we canât touch the ball more than twice etc.â It was guided discovery coaching, as youâd term it now.â
Ludlow joins the Leaders Performance Institute on Zoom a few weeks after leaving her post at the Football Association of Wales. She served as Head Coach of the senior womenâs team between 2014 and 2021 and also took the reins of the under-17 and under-19 teams. She is currently serving as a technical leadership consultant with Fifa and has found a slot in her diary to discuss approaches to coaching the next generation of player.
She says: âPeople say as coaches weâre not teachers but I disagree with that. I say we have a coaching skillset that brings out the best ability of an individual, and we have a way of working to do that, but we teach as well. Every time my national team players came in Iâd teach them a game plan.â
We also broached the topic of coaching the next generation with Martin Diggle, Head Coach of Development at the academy of English Premier League Champions Liverpool, and Dr Scott Drawer, the Director of Sport at Millfield School in Somerset. We also checked in with Dave Slemen of Elite Performance Partners [EPP], a search, selection and advisory firm working across elite sport.
Changing the narrative of talent development
Diggle speaks of using technology as a learning tool. âSome players thrive on the ability to see themselves play, others not so much,â he says. âIt needs to consider how the individual player is going to respond best whilst considering their stage in the development process.â
âHowever,â he continues, âI still believe that the basics are the most important. What I mean is players need to âlearn by doingâ supported by coaches on the grass where they have access to good feedback. This is something we should never lose sight of.
âMy view is that in order to learn to play the game, you need to play the game â a lot. That sounds simple, but maybe playing hasnât been given the same attention as training or designing another new coaching practice. Â Most coaching has not been wrapped around the game â itâs wrapped around training. Most academic research across sport has also been conducted within training environments, isolated from the part the game plays within the development process.
âI believe that a huge amount of focus for coaches, and therefore players, has been taken away from the game, with marginal gains from performance environments filtering into youth development. When I hand experienced coaches a blank piece of paper to write down what they think are the most significant or contributing factors to developing young players, most people write âthe gameâ. But there is potential misalignment between that recognition and the time individual coaches spend studying, making sense of, and thinking about how they design the optimum games programme for young players. I think weâve got to change the narrative.
âAs coaches we need to be open-minded, respect new ideas and see the value of looking outside of our sport for transferable learning but I think you’ve got to be careful. Whilst some concepts are transferable, we all  need help in making sense of how we transfer concepts into everyday practice.
Diggleâs stance is grounded in science. âI took a lot of time going back to study and understand the science of child development from first principles,â says Dr Drawer, who previously worked at the Sky Performance Hub with the Tour de France-winning Team Sky, and has been at Millfield since 2018. âIf anything, my big take home from that is, I donât think young people are learning differently in any sense. Itâs just the environment around us has changed tremendously and also our understanding of learning and development and what that looks like.â
Despite the growth of neuroscience in sport, and the knowledge that a personâs brain keeps developing well into their early 20s, Drawer is not convinced that such disciplines are dramatically changing the way we educate and develop young people in a practical yet. âThe tech environment and our understanding about learning and development has changed, but I don’t think that changes the reality of what we are doing to support how people may learn just yet.â
âI think there is a danger that people are after the next new thing,â says Diggle, âand I think that we get a little bit confused about what âinnovationâ means. In my opinion, seeking out and wanting to understand new things is really important, but youâve also got to be skilled at distilling all of that information and making sense of the bits you should add within your context, the things that are genuinely going to add value because, typically, when you add something new, you take something away. The question I always ask is: âwhat you put in, is that of greater value than what you’re going to take away?ââ
He says that too often coaches and teams can jump from one idea to the next unless they are operating from a base of strong principles in youth development. âI think you’ve got to be really skilled at making sense of the amount of stuff thatâs at the fingertips of both the players and coaches and recognising what matters most.â
âIf itâs not linked to the bigger picture itâs highly unlikely to be effective,â says Slemen of the coaching environments he has witnessed. âItâs OK to occasionally go explore new ideas in order to keep motivation high and keep people interested â you want people to better themselves â but it can be a risk.
âTime is a finite resource â if you could do everything you would,â he adds. âWhat do you prioritise? If you havenât got the basics that make up 90% of your work you can forget the remaining 10%. Unfortunately, thatâs not always interesting, doing those basics every day, but thatâs the reality.
âThe flipside of that is how do you keep people stimulated and motivated? It might be doing the basics, but it might be doing them in a way that people can still feel like theyâre developing and learning. There is a balance to get there.â
Slemen also echoes Diggleâs views on innovation. âIt is important to understand that innovation is not technology – innovation is more of a mindset in how you work. People put them together too often.â
Unwrapping the decisions that people make
Ludlowâs approach to guided discovery includes checking her playersâ understanding each step of the way. âItâs my skillset and the bit I enjoy,â she says. âI could give the defensive unit a âdefending wide areasâ clip and pose the question: âshould we have forced them away?â Then weâd get an answer from them such as âso-and-so fullback needs to force them backâ; but then itâs a case of asking âwhatâs the reason for that?â Then your next question. Itâs the building blocks. Throughout camp, Iâd be checking thought processes so that if we know the fullback is going to make that decision, whatâs the centre-back doing because of that decision? Whatâs the forward doing? Whatâs the goalkeeper doing?
âItâs the constructivist approach in the sense that youâve got a little bit of information but now you need to check whereâs that come from. Why has that thought process appeared? Where has it come from? And is it built on the right things? The bits Iâve found that cause you a problem when you try and get results is when you havenât checked it. The kid might have come up with the right answer. Itâs a bit like coming up with multiple choice questions. My kid could guess and I have no idea if she understands the right thought process.â Then, by the time the match approaches, âIâd hand it over to them.â
She freely admits that her Wales teams were often technically inferior to the opponents they faced, which meant game plans had be executed to the smallest detail. âItâs about acknowledging the players you have in your environment and understanding you can get them to understand the majority of a game plan in a short space of time.â
For Ludlow, learning and confidence also went hand in hand. âItâs balancing all the things that come into it. itâs not only how they learn, itâs their confidence levels. How can we use the learning environment to build that because confidence levels with females is always an issue and how do we build confidence as a group as we get closer to the game?â
âThe really skilled coaches,â says Diggle, âpeople who are really good at what they do, when each day brings its own set of circumstances, youâve got to unwrap the decisions that theyâre making and the
choices that theyâre choosing to make and what sits behind it. Thatâs why I believe that the people are as important as the information itself.â Does this paragraph work? This was more to do with coach development.
Skilled coaches also know when to empower their athletes. âThe concept of player empowerment has been used  widely for the a number of years,â he adds. âWhat that actually means in practical terms alongside other coaching methods when working with a group of under-14s, under-16s, under-18s â thatâs where the real art and sophistication of coaching comes in. Player empowerment can look very different, and can quickly become confused if people are not skilled enough to make sense of that.â
There is a balance to be struck, just as there is providing young athletes with support services. Diggle believes that less can be more when it comes to young athletes. âPeople always ask how can we develop  leadership capabilities in young people, then we surround them with more staff than weâve ever surrounded them with before â and all of those staff have the right intentions and want to help â but, if youâre not careful, it can be counter-intuitive.â
Then there is the âprofessionalisation of youth sport,â as Drawer terms it, which has seen expectations rise around child athletes, particularly from their families. âI think the future in this space is us trying to push that to the side and just remember why people engage in sport,â he says. âThereâs a real bigger purpose around what people try to do that because they love it, they connect with their social and peer groups, they happen to have a bit of talent, and they keep getting better at it. We often put too much pressure on them at that age to be successful.â
That said, coaches are increasingly aware of their ethical and moral responsibilities. âThe reality is that a lot of these young players wonât have careers in football, the evidence tells us that. So our responsibility is to ensure that we develop players on and off the pitch and develop skills that transfer to their wider lives,â says Diggle. âI think the most talented, experienced coaches have always understood this and maybe didnât get the recognition they deserve.
The importance of time
How can a coach developer be sure that coaches are developing the right skills? Diggle says: âThe best people seek out feedback. I still think there is a lack of that across the coaching fraternity and itâs hypocritical because thatâs what we expect of the players day in, day out.â
âThe best leaders, athletes and coaches are always trying to get better,â says Slemen. âIt should be a development and coaching environment. That doesnât mean that youâre not laser-focused on winning in the moment when it matters and youâre facing the consequences of that, but people tend to separate them. An athlete or coach should be looking to develop every minute â until they need to focus on winning.â
âI donât believe coaching is about a single event,â says Diggle. âI believe coaching is about a series of linked events. Learning is a story. Itâs on and off the pitch. The better the coach, the more you, as the coach developer, have to immerse yourself in their world, to see the subtleties of how they work, in order to offer meaningful feedback. The very best coaches understand this, and therefore will not seek you out if they don’t think that you’re going to offer anything of meaning or are prepared to take the time to respect their work.
âThings take time,â he adds as we begin to wrap things up. âWe shouldnât underestimate some of the simple approaches that were adopted years ago and still are, in many ways, the most innovative approaches to learning and development for players and coaches.â
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