Play Practice: The Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports

Play Practice: The Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports presents a clear alternative to traditional approaches that will revitalize your own teaching and coaching. It replaces mindless games and mechanistic training methods with creative and enjoyable practice that improves students' skills and enhances their tactical understanding. This book focuses on teaching game play first instead of technique and skill--an approach that sets it apart from other games-approach texts. It provides answers to many of the problems that sports educators face, such as motivating reluctant or resistant students. Developed by an internationally known authority on the subject, Play Practice: The Games Approach to Teaching and Coaching Sports provides both the theoretical basis and the practical plans for changing practice from drudgery to an educational experience young people look forward to. Part I introduces the innovative Play Practice approach and explains how it can lead to more effective coaching and teaching. Part II applies Play Practice to a great variety of games and describes specific approaches to improving technical ability and developing game sense. Part III discusses techniques the sports educator can use to make the Play Practice approach most effective. The book's 50 illustrations and 20 photos demonstrate specific approaches to games as well as ideas that can work for multiple games. These features will help you visualize how to apply the Play Practice approach with beginners as well as elite players in sports as diverse as skiing and tennis. This book will challenge your thinking about how sports should be taught, help you reassess your own methods, and provide a new and versatile model you can apply with great success--one practice, one game at a time.