• Health and safety considerations
• Providing an overview of the session to athletes (goal-specific)
• Warm up and cool down
• Skill instruction and practice
• Conditioning
• Evaluation

Health and Safety Considerations

• The well-being of athletes should be of the highest concern.
• Individual injuries can be prevented through:
  • Proper warm-up, stretching and cool down sessions
  • Gradual increase in intensity of training
  • Protective gear and equipments
  • Proper recovery phase
• Authorities should perform regular maintenance of playing fields and indoor courts and arenas to remove hazardous and harmful substances.

Providing an Overview of the Session to Athletes

• Athletes need to be clear on the goals and targets they need to achieve.
• Overview sessions are brief but detailed and specific.
• When athletes are given an overview session, they are aware of their trainer/coach’s thoughts for that particular session and what performance indicators they are going to track.

Warm Up and Cool Down

• Warm-up sessions are conducted to give athletes a minor head start for major training reps that follow throughout the routine.
• Includes activities that involve light body movements (burpees, jogging) but can raise and increase body temperature and stimulate the cardiorespiratory system.
• A cool down session follows a warm up session as a window for recovery.
• Cool down sessions last for 10-15 minutes.
• The goal on complementary warm up and cool down sessions is to minimise stiffness, soreness and disperse lactic acid.

Skill Instruction and Practice

• Should be on-point, specific and detailed where necessary.
• Should include demo sessions for better comprehension, following a practice session.
• Usually, complex skills are broken down into small parts for easier demonstration and understanding by learners.
• Learners should not be overwhelmed with too much information to process within a short period of learning.

Conditioning

• Preparing the body to fit into the mould of a sport.
• Requirements and fitness measures differ from sport to sport.
• Mostly carried out during the pre-season training phase.
• Sports that run for longer seasons require athletes to be reconditioned.
• Time and intensity of training routine is vital since any wrong decision could risk the athlete being injured.

Evaluation

• Should take place at the end of training sessions.
• The feedback should be two ways where both the athletes and the coach can evaluate each other and ask questions.
• Evaluation of one training session can give insights on aspects that can be improved in the next training sessions.