Principles of effective session design

However, by challenging ourselves as coaches to shift the session design from a coach-centric view to a player-centric model, FIFA Technical Expert Simon Jennings believes football educators can consciously create better learning opportunities for players.

Based on insights from his long-term experience in elite player and coach development environments, his session design tool serves as a planning resource that does not aim to replace established styles or tactical interventions. Instead, it helps to focus and sharpen the coach’s objectives, observations, delivery and reflective practices.

Because coaches have so many responsibilities and demands on their time, a common pitfall can occur during the preparation phase whereby the design process becomes highly mechanical, with coaches routinely evaluating their upcoming practices using three standard criteria:

• Organisation: Is the grid set up correctly? Are the cones placed accurately?

• Fluidity: Does the activity transition smoothly from one sequence to the next without delays?

• Technical delivery: Is the mechanical execution of the activity correct?

While these operational elements are necessary for a safe and organised training environment, they do not guarantee that the correct developmental opportunities are occurring. A session can be flawlessly organised and visually impressive while completely failing to stimulate cognitive growth, decision-making or long-term behavioural changes in the players. Recognising this disconnect in elite environments prompted Jennings to develop a structured session design template.

The core philosophical shift this framework requires is a change in design perspective: coaches must view the training session through the player’s eyes rather than the coach’s.

When evaluating a session from the sideline, a coach might see an orderly, uninterrupted sequence of passes. However, from the player’s perspective, that same drill might feel repetitive, unchallenging, or detached from actual match play. Seeing and feeling what the players experience allows a coach to plan specific interventions that directly meet individual learner needs. This empathetic approach is the foundational “non-negotiable” when building the training template.

When planning a session, it is vital to set parameters for how the session objective can be achieved, create challenges for players to increase difficulty, and create rewards for achieving the objectives. When designing the session, you must consider how to develop the skill, how to progress the player’s ability to execute the skill under pressure, and ultimately how this transfers to the player being able to execute the skill in multiple, realistic game scenarios.

A major challenge when coaching in elite environments is information overload during live training. When a coach tries to watch every movement on the pitch simultaneously, their feedback can become generic and less impactful. The design tool helps you focus your attention, shifting your coaching style from looking through binoculars to zooming in with a microscope.

Before designing the session, the coach must be clear about what learning they want to create. One key non-negotiable is the playing principles that apply to the session and will transfer to how you want them to play in a game. That can be linked to the coaching curriculum, so it is not about changing what we coach; it is about how we create the scenarios for that exact learning to take place. This means defining:

• Rules: How will the session operate, and what will the structure be?

• Constraints: What constraints will be introduced, and how will they help shape the problem that you want the players to solve? Do the constraints encourage the behaviours you want to develop in the players?

• Incentives: How will you reward the behaviours you want to see? How will you encourage the players to find solutions?

The four lenses help us to look at the practice through the eyes of the player rather than simply through the eyes of the coach. They allow us to ask whether there are enough repetitions in the session and whether players get enough opportunities to solve problems. We can also ask whether the session design is realistic and whether the training scenarios are linked to the game or can transfer to it. It encourages coaches to consider how players’ decision-making develops as the session progresses, and whether there are enough repetitions to allow for wrong decisions and enough opportunities to change or develop them. 

The coach must be discerning when asking whether the session helped players develop the skill, action, or decision; could they do it under increased constraints or pressure, and ultimately, are they able to execute it in real game scenarios? 

When we build a session, it starts with the skill itself (as realistic to the game as possible), often with high repetitions before progressing to scenarios where the skill can be performed. This phase has fewer repetitions but starts to increase the player’s decision-making as they are exposed to different problems. Then you move to the game scenario, where repetitions reduce even further, but decision-making and behaviours come more into focus. In this process, the coach can shift from “what do I want to create?” to “Can I create enough exposure and opportunities for the behaviour that I am looking for?” It allows you to think about whether the session creates enough repetitions, problems, and decision-making, and whether it resembles the game.

The key is that you are looking through the lenses in each of the above phases of the session, but you are dialling them up and down. So, in skill development, the repetitions are high; in progression they might drop a bit, but the decision-making and problems increase. Then, when you give the game back to the player, there is a lot more going on and as coaches, we can step back and observe the behaviours that we have been working on and really see if they are happening in the game.

Sessions should also align with the team’s game principles and factor in the four moments of the game: In possession, transition to defend, out of possession and transition to attack. The principles should always be the starting point when designing a session, and Jennings emphasises that if something is not in the team’s principles, it should not be in the session.

By tracking the session in this way, the coach can honestly assess if the learning they wanted to take place in the first two parts of the session actually transferred into the game. In this way, the design tool shifts the approach from practice design to learning design, focusing less on what practice to do and more on what practice will create the learning the players need.

• Evaluation: Helps to measure achievement of your target through session design

• Reflection: Supports your reflection on the session

• Identify what went well: Highlights strengths and weaknesses, clearly identifying exactly what worked well and what needs adjusting.

• Player progress: Links directly to player outcomes, focusing on the players’ progress in the targeted skill or behaviour, not just about how smoothly the session ran.

• Future planning: Informs future planning. Knowing whether you hit your objective allows you to move on, revisit the skill, or adapt your approach in the next session.

To maximise the value of this design philosophy within an elite development framework, coaches and technical directors should adopt the following actionable steps:

• Establish clear non-negotiables: Define 2-3 core developmental goals for every session that cannot be compromised for the sake of drill fluidity.

• Assess the plan against learner needs: Before delivering a session, review it through the player’s perspective to ensure it offers sufficient cognitive challenge.

• Align observation with planning: Write down exactly what player behaviours to observe with a "microscopic" focus during each segment of the training day.

• Utilise for structured reflection: Use the design template post-session to cross-reference whether the players achieved the planned behavioural outcomes.

True developmental progress in elite football relies on intentional, player-centred design. By shifting focus away from superficial metrics like absolute drill fluidity and steering it more towards targeted player learning opportunities, coaches can maximise their impact on the pitch. The session design tool provides the structure necessary to maintain this focus, ensuring that every training block drives measurable player development and learning.