FFA Building Blocks Methodology

The FFA Building Blocks Methodology is the framework that provides practical guidelines for coaches working at all levels of youth development in order to help them in answering questions such as:

What are the mental and physical characteristics of players in the various development stages?

What type of practices are best suited for specific age groups and why?

How long should a session go for and how often should I train?

How do I plan and design my sessions?

What are points of interest when I coach my team during matches?

Skills Acquisition Phase

In the Skill Acquisition Phase the coach must focus on providing a solid foundation of game-related technical skills

If the player does not gain this skill foundation during this phase it will be very difficult to make it up later

No amount of fitness or competitive spirit will ever compensate for deficiencies in functional game skills

Children this age are usually:

highly motivated and enthusiastic

competitive, like challenges and want to show they’re the best

well balanced and coordinated

adaptive to learning motor skills

still self-centered, they start to learn how to work together

sensitive to criticism and failure (praise is important)

physically and mentally ready for a more structured approach to training

As mentioned above, in the period before entering the growth spurt that goes hand in hand with puberty, children are well balanced and coordinated. This makes them very adaptive to developing motor skills (techniques) especially since this is one of the brain’s key development periods. Some children, in particular girls, will be going through the growth spurt during this period so the coach must take this into consideration as they will be experiencing major physical and emotional changes during such time.

Motor development experts call this phase of ‘turbo charged’ technical development: the ‘Golden Age of motor learning’. In no other development phase in life will motor learning happen faster than here. As a logical consequence of the above, it makes sense that we optimise this period to lay a sustainable technical foundation to develop more confident and technically proficient players.