Examples: Show Them — But Show Them the Right Person

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You've got three sources of examples. Professional video. Good players in your group. And you.

All three work. That's not a cop-out — I've had all three land properly, and I've had all three die.

What decides it isn't the quality of the example. It's who's watching.

The player who loves the game

Some of your players live in it. They watch the games, they know the names, they've got a favourite and an argument about why he's better than yours.

For them, pro clips are the strongest thing you own. Not because the technique is better — a lot of what you want them to do is perfectly demonstrable by you in a car park — but because they want to be that person. You're not just showing them a movement, you're showing them a movement performed by someone they've decided matters.

That's borrowed authority, and you should use it. It costs you nothing and it lands harder than anything you can do yourself.

The player who isn't in that world yet

Then there's the eight-year-old who plays on Tuesdays and has no idea who anyone is.

Show that kid a clip of a Champions League midfielder receiving on the half-turn and you've shown them a stranger in a shirt they don't recognise doing something they can't contextualise. The clip is technically perfect and completely wasted.

What they need is far simpler: to see the thing being done. By anyone. A skill video off social media. Another kid. You.

There's no emulation happening here and you don't need any. They're not trying to become the person in the video. They just need a picture of what it's supposed to look like, because they've never seen one.

Match the source to the person and both of those players get something. Use the same clip for both and you've served one of them.

You are always a good option

Whatever the group, the coach demonstrating is never a bad call.

You're there. It's live. You can do it three times, do it slightly wrong on purpose, stop halfway and ask what happens next. A video can't be interrogated. You can.

And there's something in a coach being willing to try it in front of them, particularly if it doesn't come off first time. It puts you on the same side of the thing you're asking them to do.

Use the format they already use

Young players like screens. That's not a problem to solve, it's a channel you've been handed.

Social media is full of five and ten second clips that do exactly what you need. Short, specific, no build-up, no analysis. You don't need a coaching platform subscription. You need one clip that shows one thing clearly.

Five seconds of the right thing beats two minutes of a very good thing.

One warning about using a teammate

Players in your own group make excellent examples. Someone doing it well, in front of everyone, on the same grass, in the same conditions — that's about as concrete as it gets.

But be careful who you keep choosing.

I've written before about what I found when I recorded myself coaching: two players got their names said more than the rest of the squad combined. The best one, and the one having the hardest night.

Demonstrations have exactly the same gravity. You reach for the player you know can do it, because you want the demonstration to work, and the same kid ends up modelling everything for two seasons while the rest of the group watch.

So use teammates — and keep a mental list of who's demonstrated lately. Sometimes it's worth choosing a player who'll do it imperfectly, because what the group sees then is someone like them having a go, which is a more useful picture than perfection.

The point

There's no best example. There's only the right example for this player, today.

Ask yourself who's watching before you decide what to show them.

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