Do you know about that process?:
This process is basic in sports with opponent/s, which you have to make choices constantly and there are interactions with your rivals and your teammates (if is a team sport too). We are going to define these concepts, just in case you don’t know them and we also remind you that they are taking part of any tactical situation (this is the way they are so relevant):
◉ Perception: Recognize a specific game situation. It is the analysis.
◉ Decision: Interpret correctly which is the best option to solve that game situation. It is the mental solution.
◉ Execution: Carry out what has been decided. It is the motor solution.
Now that we are all on the same page, let’s give value to this process. It is clear that, on the one hand, keeping in mind the parts of the process, can help to the player development, in terms of organize different situations to improve and enrich their learning process, inside of an analytic or global methodology.
The issue is that we never think about this process when there is a mistake during the game. And maybe, going this way, we could find out the main points that our players need to improve because we will know which are the real necessities from our players and our team.
Why?
As we said in the beginning, we know and the game shows, when there is a mistake. However, the question should be: Do we know what makes him/her miss? There is a trap because the same visible mistake can be produced by any of the three parts of the process. Let’s see an example:
Visible mistake: We pass the ball and we lose it.
(Usually, we finish here our analysis. Sometimes we add a little spicy or sour sauce, with a great annoyance and a good dose of frustration.)
The mistake could be in…:
Perception: We haven’t recognize correctly the pass opportunity, maybe we recognize it half second late, perhaps we didn’t see the defender who was ready to help, etc.
Decision: We recognize one pass, maybe a good one, however, between all the options that we have, we just chosen one wrong. Instead of passing under we should passed over, or maybe we needed a different pass angle, etc.
Execution: Perception has been excellent, decision great too, but we execute wrong the technical gesture; maybe it has been to soft, perhaps we passed with our less skilled hand, or just because I didn’t practice enough this type of pass.
Taking it from here, if we were able to recognize the needs of each player during the tactical process, we would automatically be much closer to helping him/her to be better. And yes, this can be complex, you may need to change the way you “look” and change your perspective. However, it will always be better to accept complexity about the game and performance, instead of buy the security of investing thousands of hours working on skills that maybe you feel really comfortable with, but is not what your player or team really need.
In summary:
