RFYS Online Education Programme

Due to the lockdown, it’s getting harder for everyone to stay motivated and continue learning new skills. This is especially true for young footballers and to address this need, RFYS has been enabling online education for its young athletes and their coaches. The webinar series is covering a range of topics across football training & tactics, nutrition, mental conditioning, and much more. More importantly, these sessions are delivered by a team of the top experts from RFYC, RF Hospitals, RF HPC, ISL Clubs to name a few. Each of these sessions aims to help footballers develop their training and non-training skills, from the comforts of their home.

Here’s a summary of some of the recent sessions done:

1) How To Plan A Training Session:

Conducted by Sandeep Alhan, Head Coach, U-18, and Aiswaryan Pillai, Asst. Coach, U-15 youth teams respectively at Odisha FC, this webinar detailed out how training is an essential part of any sport and is integral to an athlete’s daily routine. The speakers talked about how the most important aspect of training is educating athletes about the correlation between performance and having a healthy mind and body.

They elaborated on various benefits from training such as -

Physical benefits and how:

Training sessions increase overall muscle tone
Facilitate good blood circulation
Improve strength and flexibility

Physiological benefits and how:

Training sessions help speeding up an athlete’s recovery time
Making them less prone to injury

Psychological benefits and how it improves the mental health of athletes by aiding their concentration.

The experts also pointed out that for these benefits to reflect, training sessions need to be done effectively - they should have a pre-identified objective and structure. The experts then proceeded to list down and detail out the following essentials for planning any training session:

1) Training Objective (Why) - What is the training session for? Is it for mental health, agility, strength, recovery, or stamina?

2) The Players (Who) - Who are the participants and how many will be involved at a given point of time?

3) Training Methodology (What/ Which) - Is it individualistic or does it focus on team-building? What is the flow of the events during the training?

4) Phase and Time (When) - To help athletes take care of their dietary requirements before or after the training.

5) Venue (Where) - To inculcate punctuality and planning in athletes.

6) Review - What are the metrics to measure the impact of the training program on athletes?

2) Principles of Attack and Defense:

Curated and conducted by Sandeep Alhan, Head Coach, U-18, and Kirti Kashyap, Head Coach, U-13 at Odisha FC, this webinar deep-dived into the tactical systems in football and their significance. The experts showcased how these are one of the most important aspects of football and form the foundation of a team’s overall objectives and strategies. They explained how every match’s success depends on the successful adherence to these principles.

Here’s a brief overview of the principles:

Attack: The five attacking principles are penetration (depth), width, support, mobility, and creativity (goal). Penetration refers to getting inside and behind the opposition’s defensive formation. Support refers to the ability of the midfield to provide an option to another player for ball possession. It can be forward, sideways, or backward, depending on where the player is. Width is the ability of an offense to use the entire width of the field to spread out a defense and enable penetration. Mobility is the offense’s movement range and flexibility, and it mandates that one’s positions and on-field movement should never be predictable or repetitive. Creativity is the offense’s attacking freedom. These principles are critical, and not following them makes an offense easy to oppose.

Defense: The five defensive principles are pressure (delay/tackle), cover (depth), balance, compactness, and control and restraint. Delay is the defense’s ability to slow down an offense to disrupt the pace and/or numerical advantage of the opposition’s attack. Depth is a defense’s placement on the field - to counter the opposition’s hold on the ball and counter their positions. Balance refers to a defense’s numerical strength all over the field, not just the defensive line. Compactness refers to the defense’s focus, which is critical to avoid simple mistakes that can give opponents easy opportunities. Control and restraint are intangible aspects that an entire team must possess to maintain defensive shape under constant pressure.

3) Getting an edge over your competition:

Curated and conducted by Saksham Kakkar, U-13 coach at the Reliance Foundation Young Champs Academy, this webinar underlined why talent alone cannot help one succeed in different situations, and the hunger to improve oneself is key to achieving long-term success. Saksham went on to talk about how possessing talent gets you noticed but being committed, competitive, and co-operative helps you achieve success. The webinar demonstrated these points with the help of examples of the humble origins of many internationally renowned footballers and how they managed to rise above their team members due to their character and resolve. The webinar also dispelled many myths about football which keeps young players from realizing their true potential and also addressed the importance of quality-training over quantity-training. To conclude the webinar, Saksham came up with a list of dos and don’ts for players to develop their competitive nature and achieve new levels of success.

In case of queries or if you have any suggestions for webinar topics, please feel free to connect with us on Instagram/Facebook or email us at info@rfyouthsports.com.