Filming a training session, not a match

Almost everything written about filming sport is about the match: wide shot, height, analysis on Monday. Applied to training, that model produces two hours of video that nobody reopens. A session calls for the opposite logic: closer, shorter, and immediate feedback.

The one real advantage: the player is still there

A filmed match is watched later, when the situation has gone. In training, the player who has just missed his first touch is ten metres away, in kit, with a ball. Showing the sequence within the minute and then having him redo the movement is the only situation where video produces a correction you can observe the same day.

Everything else follows from this: if the feedback is not immediate, filming a training session has almost no advantage over filming a match.

Film three drills, not the session

The classic mistake is to put the phone down at the side of the pitch and let it run for ninety minutes. You get a huge file, dominated by dead time, instructions and movement, in which the twenty useful seconds cannot be found.

A method that works: choose three moments decided in advance, and film only those.

• A repeated movement: a strike, a throw-in, a serve, a jump shot. This is what video shows best, and often the only way to get a player to accept a flaw when he is convinced he does it differently.
• A small-sided situation, two against two or three against three. Small enough to fit in the frame, rich enough to show a decision.
• A set piece, if you are working on one. This is where positioning gets corrected to the metre, and where video usefully replaces ten minutes of explanation.

Twenty to thirty seconds per sequence is enough. Beyond that, you are filming waiting.

Closer, lower

In a match, height decides everything because you want to read distances between the lines. In a drill, you want to see a foot plant, a shoulder orientation, a reaction time: a phone at head height, ten or fifteen metres away, does better than a five-metre mast. A simple one-metre stand is enough, and it has the decisive advantage of moving from one drill to the next in a few seconds.

Stand three-quarters on rather than face-on or in full profile: it is the angle that shows both what the player does and what he is looking at.

Feedback to the player: fifteen seconds, one instruction

The feedback moment is the one most often missed. Three rules, learned by missing it:

1. One instruction per sequence. A player does not retain three corrections; he applies none. Choose the one that matters, leave the other two.
2. Individually, never in front of the group. A mistake shown to twelve team-mates stops being a technical point and becomes a judgement. The same clip seen by two people works very well.
3. Redo it immediately. The corrected movement must be replayed straight away, otherwise the correction stays an idea. Film it again: the before-and-after comparison is the one moment video proves progress rather than just describing it.

And keep the session moving. If the drill stops while the coach looks for his sequence in the camera roll, the benefit is eaten by the lost time. That is why many coaches give up after three tries. A useful correction is one you find in two taps.

What it does not replace

Training video replaces neither the eye nor the demonstration. It is good on what is repeated and slow to change: a foot plant, a positioning, an orientation. It is weak on what is fast and contextual: real speed, an opponent's pressure, fatigue. Filming a match serves that purpose, and the two uses do not replace each other.

One last point that is not technical: the rules on players' image are the same in training as in a match. A session is a private place, but a clip sent to a young player, or published, falls under the same consents. See what the law requires.