It's always the pressure

 It’s the pressure, stupid

In 1992, President George H.W. Bush was coming off one of his best years ever. Riding high in the polls after assembling an international coalition to retake Kuwait from Iraqi invaders, he was expected to cruise to re-election. While the presence of a third-party candidate from the right most likely did the greatest damage (Clinton won a plurality of the vote), there was also a famous phrase from that campaign that resonated “it’s the economy, stupid” because after the war, the U.S. went into a brief recession and that phrase was meant to imply that Clinton was more in touch with the economic needs of citizens than the President. 

I was reminded of that phrase after some of my coaches insisted that they couldn’t adequately coach their inexperienced players without having lines and a full-size goal for their practices. I do empathize with them. When I coached at the HS level, my teams always had access to at least one goal and up to 4 depending on the day and I would work them into my sessions, especially when we were focused on some specific tactical set-ups or as we were preparing for a specific opponent. It does make the transfer to the game easier when the layout is the same as what you would see during the game. This is especially true with our U8 players who haven’t yet taken a kick-off, goal-kick, corner or really any other restarts in our U6 program. Also, regardless of age, every season each team usually has a good number of players who have never played soccer before, so there are some forms that have to be taught so that they are prepared for what they will encounter in the game. I get that, I really do. 

However, around the world, players learn how to play the game without the benefit of a full-sized goal and a lined field. Many of our greatest players emerged from under-resourced areas without any of the benefits of the facilities we have on offer. So is it really the field and the lines and the goals that matter? 

I will contend that the thing that matters more than the field setup is the pressure. During the game, players are going to experience various kinds of pressure. The most obvious is the pressure of the opponent(s). What do you do when an opponent tries to take the ball from you? How do you win the ball from an opponent? 

There is also the pressure of the ball. When a ball rolls to a player slowly and no-one is around, there is no pressure and the ball is relatively easy to control. When it is bouncing and the player and an opponent are both trying to control the ball, then the pressure is high. 

Other pressures include: where you are on the field, the closer you are to scoring a goal, the greater the pressure; time in the game, it may be late and your team is trailing and you are tired so the pressure is higher; the space you have available, less space means more pressure to keep the ball in bounds and less room to operate. 

Each of these different types of pressure can be explored in practice and skills to handle the pressure developed over time and increasing in difficulty as players improve. For example, a coach can work on dribbling skills in a larger space without defenders and then reduce the size of the space to increase the pressure. Adding a defender in a smaller space will also increase the pressure. Providing a direction (goal) will make the pressure very close to game-like. 

Each time we increase pressure or add a different kind, we increase the complexity of the activity and the chance that the player will fail. As a player improves, the chance of failure decreases and they are ready to be exposed to greater challenges (more pressure). Eventually, they begin to exhibit composure, they can show skill under pressure. 

The path to composure is not linear and a lot of factors play into the timeline. For this essay, we are going to focus on a concept from Cognitive Science called Cognitive Load Theory (CLT). We take in information from the world around us through our senses and some (but not all) gets put in what’s called working memory. We have a relatively small working memory. Thinking about how to remember someone’s address or phone number (who does that anymore?) would take up most of our working memory. 

In order to clear up working memory, our brain attempts to encode it in long-term memory (LTM). Most of what you put in working memory is forgotten shortly afterwards (what did you have for dinner last night?). In order for it to be remembered, we have to practice it repeatedly pulling it out of LTM. The diagram below shows the basic idea. 

(Emerald Works, 2022)

It is unlikely you can recall when you first learned how to write, but trust me the process wasn’t easy. Now, consider what would happen if I asked you to write your name with your dominant hand (no problem) and then try to do the same with your non-dominant hand. The greater effort you feel with your non-dominant hand is the cognitive load. Not only does it take more effort, but the product isn’t nearly as good. What has happened is that you practiced writing enough that the movement patterns were learned, you use them regularly and so they can happen without your conscious focus on the actual skill of writing. 

This is what your players live during practices and games. Without time to process that information (encoding) and then practicing it (retrieval), it is most likely that it will be forgotten. So in order to show a player how to execute a dribbling skill, they first need to see someone do it, then practice it and then try to do it under pressure. At first, they will not even be able to do it. Once they can do it without pressure, adding any pressure at all usually results in failure and occasionally success. It may take many weeks before the move becomes comfortable enough to use under a little pressure. 

The choices you make in your exercises can either help their development or hinder it. Putting too much pressure on before they have even learned the rudimentary patterns of movement may make them shut down all-together. Sometimes the pressure is not from the field size or the number of opponents or even how tired they are at the end of a game. The pressure comes from you and their parents trying to tell them what to do while they are trying to focus on what to do. They are not processing or encoding or learning, they are surviving. They are just learning to swim and you throw them in the middle of the lake and expect them to swim to shore. They work really hard (which you applaud), but their swimming strokes are not very good. 

Cognitive Load Theory, Emerald Works Limited (2022) url: https://www.mindtools.com/aqxwcpa/cognitive-load-theory

Adapted from Atkinson, R.C. and Shiffrin, R.M. (1968). 'Human memory: A Proposed System and its Control Processes'. In Spence, K.W. and Spence, J.T. The psychology of learning and motivation, (Volume 2). New York: Academic Press. pp. 89–195.