Blog

COACHS CORNER: Scoring goals isn’t always the goal

Goal scoring is fun, of course. Fun to do, fun to watch. And even though
most clubs don’t keep score at the recreational level, the truth is that
the players often know exactly how many goals each team has when the final
whistle blows. However, many of these kids rarely get the opportunity to
feel the rush and glory of scoring an individual goal during their young
careers. It is important for coaches (and parents!) to make other aspects
of the game just as exciting as finding the back of the net: READ MORE

Soccer is Evolving: How do you Handle Change?

The modern game is changing and every head coach, assistant coach, player and parent needs to take notice. How are all these integral elements and branches of the game embracing the new challenges and performing tasks and meeting demands to keep the game moving forward?

The global game of soccer has seen massive changes in how the game is presented to consumers. When satellites were able to broadcast
International games across the world in the early 1980’s right into homes, the convenience to watch the beautiful game created changes. I had a 12 foot span dish in my yard and was able to scan the world and receive live feeds of soccer games, enabling me to conveniently observe and learn so many vital nuances of the Worlds game. Rush forward to today, and in a relatively short span, technology allows us all to watch this spectacular display of World Soccer Skills from an 18 inch dish or a cable service. One step ahead of that is the ability to stream games and content from the Internet into a laptop, iPad, tablet or even a smart phone, making mobile watching a reality. Every game watched is a building block to understanding the complexities of the game and is an educational tool not to be missed.

Your day to day life has changed for the better with all the Mobile Apps
that are available to make your life easier. Soccer is no different. Now
Soccer Apps are there at your fingertips to enhance your education and sort available information into manageable and accessible files.

The new norm in schools is to have all the student’s course and year of
curriculum in a iPad or Tablet. Books and paper are no longer being used. If this is the new educational norm why wouldn’t we want our soccer players to have the preferred dissemination of soccer Techniques and Practice Plans in their hands so they can learn from the ‘Neck Up’ and be better prepared and organized going into practice.

Looking for good practice sessions and solid content from the internet can be daunting and so time consuming. You will find you do not have enough time to view, review, catalogue and select age and gender specific content that shows appropriate progressions and meaningful coaching points with refined curriculum. Video is cumbersome and is so ‘Old School’.

If you had the time to invest in researching the techniques you need to
have each player develop at each age group, how many videos on the internet would you have to screen? How many hours would that require?

Would you be acquiring another video series that players and coaches would embrace and utilize? Then you need to pair up the necessary tactical information to activities to reinforce the techniques you want players to learn. How many hours are you willing to spend, or more to the point, do you have time in your schedule to devote to that type of exhausting endeavor? Now you need to assemble this so players and coaches can view them in the proper sequence and use them in their sessions. How will you accomplish that? Then of course the question is, can you monitor whether players and coaches are using the materials you devoted hours to researching, gathering and distributing to them.

This is a full time commitment to training content development that is a
complicated platform.

“There are solutions available for handing this process that can save you hundreds of hours. I work with just such a company. MOTI Sports does it all for you… or as much as you want” and keeps it simple.

Having the ability to have Techniques and Training Sessions in a gaming
platform where you can use a mobile device, smart phone or tablet to zoom and pinch the screen activity. This format allows frame by frame viewing of 3D Images and activities to enhance the experience and engagement of the user. Visual information with voice over coaching points shortens the learning curve for both players and coaches. Having Technical Skill Elements in Motion Capture where you can zoom, pinch, rotate to any view and perspective, viewing from above is really close to virtual reality. From below, you can see all the Plyometrics of foot prints and ball movement, try that with video.

The MOTI App has analytics that give feedback to players, parents and Club DOC’, and Administrators allowing tracking of how much time each player has spent logged on to a Technique or Practice plan, This can be a validated true reflection of how prepared the player is for practice and game performance. The concept of doing soccer practice at home can now be a reality and monitored. Spending 15 to 30 daily minutes in a home basement, the garage, in a yard or a bedroom can be reviewed and used to determine the true interest and dedication to improvement each player has. Paper practice sessions are obsolete, now replaced by hand held or pocketed devices. Technology and the game of soccer are blended and ready to show you Animated 3D sessions. Pleasing and clear depictions of the beautiful game illustrate the progressions and beneficial curriculum, presented in gender specific dynamic Practice Plans. By the way, the MOTI Sports Practice Plans are really just templates and can be fully adjustable and can be easily customized and modified with new drawings, video and other media.

I have seen firsthand the engagement my Grandkids have with iPads and smart phones. This is their preferred method of entertainment and education. Give these players the 23 Techniques of Passing, Dribbling, Control, Ball movement and the moves that show how to beat and go past players, and we have them engaged and visualizing the intricate details of every key development aspect of Soccer.

Handle change by going to look at MOTIsports.com or give me a call at
612-867-0390

Best of Kicks
Alan Merrick

MOTI Tip: Camera Controls for Drills – Part 3 of 4

Welcome back to the 4-part series on MOTI Soccer app Camera Controls for Drills. In this article the Follow-Player / Follow-Ball and Track-Player / Track-Ball camera modes will be reviewed and
explained. These modes require that a player or ball on the field be chosen as the focus. Once the focus is selected, the app will
take over control of the camera (and it will react to the animation). See the section Tips, at the end of this article, for tips on
selecting players/balls and entering/leaving the camera modes described herein. READ MORE

MOTI Mobile Tip: Camera Controls for Drills – Part 2 of 4

Welcome back to the 4-part series on MOTI Mobile Camera Controls for Drills.  In this article the Pivot-In-Place and Rotate-Around-Location camera modes will be reviewed and explained. Utilizing these modes, a complete view of the field and play is possible.

To recap, the review of the camera modes is divided into 4 different parts.  Topics for the 4 parts are:

  • Overview – Part 1 will introduce basic motion options (finger-gestures and on-screen joysticks) and provide a high-level overview of each of the camera modes.
  • Pivot-In-Place and Rotate-Around-Location (this article)– Part 2 is a detailed overview of two modes that provide a very flexible overview of the drill. As a note, Pivot-In-Place is the default mode when a drill starts.
  • Follow-Player, Follow-Ball, Track-Player and Track-Ball – Part 3 will explore the ‘follow’ and ‘tracking’ options. These modes facilitate focusing on specific player/ball in a complex drill.
  • Top-Down Perspective – Part 4 covers a viewing of the field that will be very familiar with players of some of the most popular real-time strategy games.

Review

The first article introduced the mechanisms available to move the camera (section Motion Controls), the way to access the camera modes (section Camera Modes Menu) and a high-level overview of the camera modes (section Camera Modes).  The content of these sections will be used as a basis of this article.  Read the first article if these concepts are unfamiliar or a refresher is needed. READ MORE

The DOC and Recreational Director Survival Code

Coming Up for Air

“So much to do so little time” is a much-used statement from Directors of Coaching and Recreational Directors this time of year. As we come to the end of May 2018 the preseason and team set ups are all complete, the schedule changes and field conditions have been resolved. It would make sense that the DOC should be coasting along and be in a “Good Mood”. Not so! You can be guaranteed that in every Club there are several teams that are unhappy with their new coach. This puts the DOC in front and center in getting those teams calmed down. Additionally, the DOC is doing some remedial education, tweaking of scheduled practices so they can be present and in the hands of teams. If the DOC is already coaching one or even two teams within the Club, time management becomes a nightmare when practice & league game schedules get even more entrenched in conflict of each other.

While helping design the content and seamless delivery of the MOTI Soccer Training Platform I recalled my experiences as a DOC and was determined to engineer components that help in Club DOC Management. The Practice Plans while complete and ready to use out of the box, are really templates and guides for the DOC to place their personalized preferences into them via drop and drag action from the Media Library. The system gives the Director all options to impart their “Style of Play” throughout Practice Plans and therefore, the Club. By having a digital formatted practice plans that can be loaded and scheduled in the DOC’s downtime in June, then the often hectic and frantic Club Team Management can be done calmly accomplished with professional care and consideration.

The Directors of Recreational programs have appreciated the curriculum development considerations MOTI has on file; they have found it fits into their unique challenges. Recreational Directors are always scouting for and recruiting coaches throughout the community. They are always thankful for the volunteers who come forward. But, then the Rec Director also hit a wall when volunteers stop coming forward and the coaching demand is greater than the supply. Then they have to strong-arm parents, who find themselves shanghaiing unsuspecting parents into being coaches, by sending out the notice “if no volunteer comes forward to coach we will have to abandon the squad”.

In most cases a warm coaching body comes forward, but too late to attend the scheduled Club coach training Murphy’s Law takes over again. Getting these last minute coaches up to speed is paramount on the “tasks and jobs to do”. The MOTI App gives a complete session of training content that has been designed with sound curriculum progressions that are mobile on all smart phones and pads. The Coaches Quick Start video inside the app gives complete instructions to begin using the system. The sessions have all the visual and auditory coaching points for very fast orientation into coaching principles.

If you are a DOC, a Board Member, or a Coach consider MOTI in the next two months of June and July, wouldn’t it be nice to spend just a few hours setting up the entire program for this Fall season? The MOTI Sports 3D Soccer Training Platform has a complete program at your fingertips, one that engages and helps train all of your players, coaches and their families.

Use the MOTI™ Sports 3D Soccer Training Platform to get rid of some of “the coaching Chaos” that you find yourself in. Embrace 3D Soccer Training Technology that it is here now, by implementing it and accepting it into player and coach development. I keep on hearing “It’s not what technology can do; it’s what you can do with technology”. This technology is “awesome” it is “phenomenal” it is now up to you to show what you can do with technology, that is going to be amazing, save you lots of time and allow some calm breathing!

COACHS CORNER: Respect the Ref

Being a referee is not an easy job. Starting with recreation soccer and through much of the early youth stages, these refs are often also KIDS. They will absolutely make mistakes as they are out there learning to make difficult and definitive calls. No matter how much you want to be relaxed as a coach, it can be frustrating to keep quiet when a ref isn’t blowing their whistle or is blowing it too much, when the calls aren’t going your team’s way. But keep quiet you must. Model this good behavior for your players. When they want to complain, this is a teachable moment about playing through: focusing on the game, working hard and having fun. READ MORE

MOTI Website Tip: Import Players

To import players, go to your team Roster available on the left navigation bar. At the bottom of the Roster click the “Import Players” button on the bottom right and you will see the following

Here you are presented with a choice of either the Sports Engine team management system or the Team Snap system. Select the desired system and click the “Import Players” button on the bottom right.

Note that when you give permission to the MOTI system to access your Sports Engine or Team Snap account, we are connecting in read-only mode.

For Sports Engine, you will see the following:

You need to provide your Sports Engine credentials to proceed and you might see the following screen authorizing the MOTI app:

For Team Snap, you will see the following:

You need to provide your Team Snap credentials to proceed and you might see the following screen authorizing the MOTI app:

After you successfully authenticate the MOTI app to your Sports Engine or Team Snap account, you will see a list of teams from which you can import players.

After you select the desired team, click the “Import Players” button in the lower right corner and your players will be added to the team.

Note that we only add new players to your team that do not already exist on your team. If you add more players in either Sports Engine or Team Snap, you can import players again and only the additional players will be added to the MOTI Roster.

From Player to Coach: Coaching in an Organized Fashion

In the summer of 2017, I was still in college, finishing up my undergrad while also getting experience in my field. I was approached by a coaching director of a local club if I had any interest in coaching a U10 boys soccer team. Growing up, I was passionate and engaged with the game of soccer but never thought to coach the game. I accepted the position and could not wait to share my knowledge with the youth players. Right away, I found a few challenges when it came to the entire process. Like most coaches at the youth level, I was not certified or licensed at a high level, so I was pretty much working off of previous experience from my coaches in the past years. The season went pretty well because the kids had so much passion for the game and were excited, but I know this is not the case for a lot of teams. It’s one thing if you have a team who is motivated on their own, but when it comes to a team that needs a motivating coach, that’s where having a system in place would be extremely valuable.

Now let’s jump about 8 months later. I was doing research for this club I had previously coached at regarding coaching education. I came across a platform called Moti
Sports Inc. I started diving into this company to see exactly how they stood out compared to other programs. This company took the “See-It, Do-It” approach, which is extremely valuable in today’s visual age. A few things jumped out to me right away that would have made my coaching experience much more effective.

Consistency

MOTI Sports allows coaches and clubs to be on the same page by creating 3D graphics centering around drills and skills that are accessible on your laptop, tablet, or mobile
device. This would’ve helped my youth players because if a player was needing help with a specific skill, I would simply tell them to go home and watch that specific video
on the Moti Sports app for extra guidance. I would still be able to teach them in person, but this would be an additional training tool for the kids to visually see how to do the skill. In addition, entire clubs would be able to teach their players the same way and have a more consistent coaching plan throughout the different age levels.

Messaging Board

The Moti Sports app also allows you to communicate with parents about any concerns they may have about the season. When I coached the U10 team, I was emailing parents regarding any updates or weather changes. This was ok, but people get so many emails daily that the email could have easily been lost in the clutter. If I had the Moti Sports messaging system, I would have been able to send a message to all the parents in a separate app, allowing the parents to easily have access to the message, creating a more consistent communication across the board.