2/9 It Isn't Magic: Training With Ralph Akale

One of the best things about being with the Thunder Academy is that there are so many incredible coaches and trainers in the club.  Last Wednesday when I was at the dome talking with Ralph Akale and he mentioned that he would enjoy working with the 13 girls.  He had seen us play a couple of times against the South 12 boys where his son Mukwelle plays so he was familiar with the girls.

I was super excited when he said that he would be able to lead our training today and I was very interested in what he was going to teach the girls as Ralph is one of the premier Technical trainers that I have seen.

Ralph began the session by telling the girls that he cannot teach them anything.  I can only show you what to do.  You must teach yourself in order to learn anything.  Then he talked to the girls about what it takes to achieve their dreams, whether it is on the soccer field or off of it.  "You have to have a plan and you have to be dedicated."  He then asked the girls who their favorite player was and they responded that Cristiano Ronaldo was because he has great moves, he is fast, and he scores lots of goals.  (I doubt there are any other reasons why they like him.)

"How did Ronaldo get so good?" asked Ralph to the girls.  "Because he practiced everything thousands and millions of times.  Nothing that he does is magic.  It is repetition and dedication.  It is important when you are training to not get frustrated. When you get frustrated there becomes a wall between you and your dreams.  You cannot allow that wall to stop you.  You must refocus and continue to work."

Ralph then let the girls in on another secret of his "When you mess up today, I am going to laugh at you because it is funny.  I want you to laugh at yourself when I laugh.  If you laugh at yourself you will not get frustrated.  Laughter is key."

When he finished talking with the girls he taught the girls how to find their comfort zone with the ball.  The comfort zone is the zone where you can have your head up and the ball within reach of your feet.  The girls started working on it without moving the ball, then they moved it with the sole of their foot in a 5 yard space, and ended by dribbling around with their head up.  Ralph watched each of them and caught them every time their head went down he laughed and corrected them.

A couple of the girls became much stiffer with their bodies when they started dribbling so Ralph reenacted how they would look if they were running with out the ball.  Everyone laughed, again, and then he made another good point: "Don't change who you are because you have the ball.  When you have the ball, be yourself, relax and enjoy."

Next he had the girls stand without the ball and had them shift their weight from one foot to the other while moving their arms.  He then began to beat box a rhythm for the girls to move to and they all began to dance.  

It was funny to see a majority of the girls looking around at their teammates asking in their head "Is it cool to do this?  I must look really silly."  The girls who were doing this were stiff, uptight and had no rhythm.  The girls who were into it were loose, relaxed, and moving to the beat.  

Reflecting back on the session I couldn't believe how many girls were in the former category and worried about what the outside world thought about them dancing.  I have no doubt that when I do this with our U10's that they will go crazy dancing and they will not care at all what other people think because they are more concerned with dancing as opposed to thinking about what other people think about their dancing.  It was a good point for me to see so we can work on the confidence and self belief of the girls on a consistent basis with fun and crazy activities like this.

The next step with this was for the girls to begin doing the scissors around the ball while they were dancing to the beat.  It was amazing how much more rhythm the girls learned from the 20 minutes of doing this.  Comparatively speaking against all the other U13 girls teams I have seen, we have some of the most comfortable and creative girls on the ball, but the level that Ralph wanted them to do this at was way beyond what any of them were at.  The rhythm and coordination that Ralph was looking for was a great reminder for me to go back and revisit all of the basics and work to get them to another level.

Ralph then had the girls do this dribbling and the improvement was huge.

The last thing that Ralph worked on was a 4 move dribbling sequence.  

To recap the 80 minute session here is all that Ralph worked on:

Training set up:
-You and the ball
-Moving the ball with the sole of your foot
-Dribbling around with your head up
-Dance without the ball
-Scissors with the ball standing still
-Scissors with the ball moving: 5, 10, 15 times
-Roll, Scissors, Step, Reverse Cryueff-jump back with other foot 

That was it.  Incredibly basic, tons of repetition, focussed, fun and absolutely fantastic.  The training session really reinforced my belief that the top players training sessions are very simple with lots of repetitions.  There is no magic.

We are hoping that Ralph will be able to work with us a couple of more times through the year.