Good For A Laugh
Jan 31
Enjoy!
Archive for January, 2009
Learn How to Apply Video Analysis to Canoe and Kayak Slalom
Jan 19
A date for your diaries: You may be interested to note that a special webinar event will take place next week, a short presentation by Julia Wells from the English Institute of Sport on how she applies video analysis to the sports that she works with in her role as one of the most experienced Performance Analysts at the EIS. If this interests you, following the link below will allow you to register for the event and you’ll receive notification about how to take part.
The EIS is the government funded support provider to elite sport in the UK and although Julia won’t be giving out any secrets that might give a competitive advantage to rival nations, I have seen her present before and her depiction of the roles of a professional analyst and how Dartfish is applied in challenging conditions are very interesting.
Please note that times are GMT which is 1 hour behind Central Europe and 5 hours ahead of EST.
Raising The Bar - Tip 2
Jan 13
The last thing any management team want to happen is every time the Video is brought out to be played the team switch off. It is important to keep things fresh and one way to do this is create motivational movies.
You don’t have to become Stephen Spielberg or anything – in a lot of cases putting some clips of good team and individual play together and setting it to music will act as a great motivator for your team.
I have seen some counties go to great length in producing Motivational Movies before every big game. There is no doubt that the work is well rewarded as some of the movies are fantastic, however even putting these movies together on an ‘amateurish’ basis will break up the sometimes repetitive nature of video analysis sessions.
I can share this movie I made while away with the DCU team on a training camp in Portugal. It is certainly not possible to make a movie like this every week but you will get the idea. As the season progresses – setting clips, which make a point, to music can reinforce the message more clearly.
Raising The Bar - Tip 1
Jan 12
As teams gear up for 2009 I often get asked about how to raise the bar in video analysis. As with all other aspects of coaching it is important to keep things fresh so you maintain player’s attention and focus. Video Analysis is no different, so over the next few days here are my 5 tips to keep things fresh and raise the bar.
Individuality
Most teams will start analysing team aspects of play i.e. Kickouts, Wides, Scores, Turnovers etc… These aspects will always be analysed but if you want to get more out of your analysis I think you should get more individual. This involves attributing your team stats to individual players or units of the team.
For Example:
Here might be a sample of your Fouls Conceded and the Particular Zone they happen in.
Foul Zone Our Attacking 1/3 Midfield 1/3 Scoreable 1/3
Fouls 5 7 8
This certainly paints a good picture of where and how often you are committing fouls, but you need more detail. Although the team must ultimately take responsibility for all fouls, you may have a weakness with one individual that needs to be addressed. Let’s imagine that we broke the scoreable fouls down by the player that committed them. It might look something like this;
Player Player 2 Player 3 Player 4 Player 5 Player 8
Fouls 4 1 1 1 1
This information will add greatly to your overall picture of the team’s performance. Once this statistic is known it is then within your power to address the problem. That might be to change the player or upon reflection with the video it might be a technique flaw that can be easily worked on in training.
The point of individuality is to have more accurate information on your individual players rather than just the team as a whole. Every aspect of play can be broken down and attributed to the individual players – not just to have a go at them – but to really focus on their strengths and weaknesses.
Moneyball
Jan 05
Maybe I should have done this before Christmas so you could all put in on your shopping list.
Better late than never…
I was speaking to somebody recently about analysing Gaelic Football matches, what to look for, performance indicators etc… When I was reminded of this book - Moneyball
Basically the book details, through the eyes of the general manager of the Oakland A’s how really understanding what matters can change the perspective and attitudes of an entire sport.
A maths genius called Bill James is the source of most of this knowledge. James wanted to win the Fantasy Baseball League but couldn’t despite spending endless hours studying the stats. So (with a lot of time on his hands) he went away and started to look again at the game of baseball. He really wanted to find out if the things that everyone said mattered actually mattered. As it turns out they didn’t and a revolution was born.
Don’t worry if you know nothing about baseball it’s a much broader story than that. Will be ideal for all you stats lovers out there!!!