Unit 6 Assignment 3. Planning, delivering, and reviewing a performance and fitness coaching session.
Introduction
As part of my job role as a professional coach for a youth kickboxing team, I need to be able to support
the individuals in the team to improve their performance. This part of my coaching role requires me to
be able to show that I can plan and deliver an individual performance and fitness coaching session. Once
the session is completed, I will then need to review the session to improve my coaching practices.
Planning considerations and measures, and how fits within an overall series plan
Explanation of what I planned:
This coaching session has been planned around my athlete's goals. Before this session commenced, the
athlete stated on a lifestyle questionnaire that they would like to improve their fluidity during kickboxing
combinations, more specifically focused on smooth and efficient transitions between kicks and punches.
To ensure that the session planned can improve the fluidity of kickboxing combinations, the session
must be adaptable as the athlete improves over time to ensure that continuous progress can be made.
The way this session has been made adaptable is with the isolated and conditioned practices. One way
that both practices are adaptable is the speed of the kickboxing combinations can be varied depending
on the level and confidence of the athlete. As the athlete learns how to become more fluid during their
combinations, their confidence and ability to throw the combinations quickly will increase. Another way
that both practices are adaptable is the complexity of the combinations can be increased over time
using more advanced kicking and punching techniques within the drills. This will eventually enable the
athlete to have fluid combinations for not only basic techniques, but also advanced techniques.
Additionally, once the athlete has fluidity in their complex combinations, defences can be implemented
into the combinations to add more complexity to the combinations. Helping my athlete to become fluid
with combinations involving advanced techniques and defences will ensure that they can be fluid with
their combinations in a sparring environment. This is because opponents’ counter attacks can disrupt
the flow of combinations so implementing defences further down the line will help my athlete to
maintain fluidity due to being able to deal with counter attacks.
Another way I ensured that the session planned can improve the fluidity of kickboxing combinations is to
use motion analysis from video recordings. This can improve the fluidity of kickboxing combinations as
the motion analysis can portray to my athlete what they are doing well and what they can improve. This
helps me as a coach to set targets/goals for my athlete and keep them motivated to continuously
improve. Comparing footage every 4 weeks will enable me to show my athlete how they have improved
their fluidity over time. This also reassures my athlete that when I give them praise for their
improvement, I am not just saying it to be nice, but they will be able to see their improvement for
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,themselves. Motion analysis will also allow me as a coach to see how efficiently my athlete is throwing
each technique and how efficiently they transition from kicks to punches. This is particularly useful for
myself as this can help me identify my athlete’s weaknesses and help me give appropriate coaching
points to get 100% out of my athlete.
Analysis:
In the lifestyle questionnaire, my athlete stated that they would like more fluidity in their combinations,
especially for the transition between kicks and punches within their first month of training with me and
would like to have this fluidity in their combinations during sparring within 3 months of training. As my
athlete wants to achieve their goals within a brief time, they would be required to train hard for at least
2 sessions per week, but 3 sessions per week would be a more ideal minimum to guarantee their goals
are achieved. On the lifestyle questionnaire, the athlete stated that they exercise 3 to 4 times per week
which is ideal for them to achieve their goals, especially because the athlete is more advanced than a
basic novice when it comes to kickboxing participation. Additionally, the athlete highlighted how they
view exercise as extremely important in achieving their goals, which indicates to me that the athlete will
be willing to work hard during the training sessions to achieve their goals. Furthermore, the athlete
rated their fitness, stamina, flexibility, and strength at a minimum of 7 out of 10 which will be useful
towards improving fluidity in kickboxing combinations. On the other hand, the athlete rated their
coordination as a 5 out of 10, which enabled me to have more focus on improving coordination to help
improve the fluidity of kickboxing combinations.
In the warm up, I included penalty box drills because coordination, agility, balance, stability, and speed
are all improved and enhanced by these drills. Exercises that increase speed and agility use more
muscle, which burns more calories. It helps to reduce the risk of injuries caused by quick changes in
direction and speed because they provide drills with a variety of movements which avoids overuse of a
certain muscle group. It can also be used as a ladder for agility. This sports equipment can be used to
create agility circuits that will help you improve your agility and quickness. Additionally, it is adaptable to
people of all ages and fitness levels (Ross, 2020).
In the movement/skill preparation, I added leg swing and chamber drills to prepare the quadriceps,
adductor muscles (inner thigh), abductor muscles (outer thigh), and hamstrings. Hamstrings and
quadriceps work together to keep your legs stable. To kick high, you need to strength and flexibility in
these muscles (Kim, 2014). Leg swings are an excellent stretching activity for lateral and vertical kick
development. Swings are a type of dynamic stretching exercise that most martial artists do to warm up
their lower bodies (Zivanovic, 2020). Additionally, leg swings help you move more freely without
compromising your performance. They provide you the range of motion you need for that joint to move
while also maintaining the tension needed to stabilise it and produce power when you need it. It also
activates the neurological system, preparing it to engage faster in response to turns, jolts, or when you
wish to accelerate. Leg swings prepare you for a better workout and reduce the risk of damage in the
future (Beverly, 2017). Chamber drills are effective because when you lift your leg, you are engaging
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, your thigh's main muscles (hamstrings and quadriceps) as well as your gluteal muscles to line up behind
your kick. That translates to more kicking power. You can kick at any level with a raised knee—high,
middle, or low, when you develop a strong chamber. A low knee is more restricting and predictable from
a strategic standpoint. It is difficult for the opponent to predict where you will kick when you raise your
knee high. A kick's navigation is determined by the chamber. The foot will follow the direction of your
knee. As a result, the better you manage the chamber, the more precise your kick will be (Mierzwa,
2016).
In the isolated practice, I included the side kick to jab and round kick to cross to emphasise the focus on
smooth transitioning between kicks and punches. I kept the first two drills simple with one kick to one
punch to allow my participant to focus on the transition between the first kick to the punch. As the focus
of the kickboxing session was to improve fluidity between kicks and punches in combinations, I initially
added these two drills to prepare my participant for longer combinations. If the first transition from kick
to punch is not developed, it is pointless doing longer combinations as they too will not be effective in
improving fluidity of combinations. Once my participant became familiar with how to transition between
the first kick and a single punch, I could then extend the combinations to make the side kick to jab
combination into a side kick to jab, cross, finishing with a rear leg round kick and to make the round kick
to cross combination into round kick to cross, hook, finishing with a rear leg front kick. The side kick, jab,
cross, round kick combination is effective because the side kick can be used to either close distance to
punch by moving forwards with the side kick or used to create distance by using the side kick to push an
opponent backwards so that there is space to punch. To encourage an opponent to become motionless
and cover up, you would employ the jab and the cross to raise the guard. And by doing so, you will be
able to take a stride forward with your lead leg and establish an angle for the round kick, allowing you
to deliver the kick without an opponent noticing. So the jab and cross (in this case) are a means of
diverting attention away from the kick. As a result, the punches are not required to be placed with full
force, only to make it appear as if you are trying to rack up meaningful points with the punches. This is
similar for the last combination, but by using different techniques, you can hit your opponents from
different angles in case they become familiar with the previous combination.
In the conditioned practice, I would call out combinations that the participant must throw. This adds
more difficulty from the previous drill as the combinations originally were predetermined whereas in
this drill, the combinations were determined by myself. In this drill, my participant had to focus on
maintaining fluidity in their combinations whilst being reactive to my commands. This is effective
because in a sparring situation, you would need to be reactive to your opponents’ openings and exploit
them as soon as you notice them. Although my cues were verbal and in sparring you would need to
react to visual cues, I would hold the focus pads for the techniques I called out meaning that if my
participant threw the wrong technique, they would not land. This made the drill effective as the
participant would still be required to look at how I am holding the focus pads so that they know what
techniques they need to execute.
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