Team Building Exercises
From the terrific book: Catch Them Being Good

by Tony Dicicco, Colleen Hacker, Charles Salzberg

Bottoms-Up

Objective: to put yourself fully into the game. Adaptation of tactics to succeed as the situation changes.

          In this progressive exercise, in order to improve and ultimately win, you must imitate successful people, then try to reproduce that success. But the ultimate progression is for the player to initiate, to create a new strategy for success, to stamp her own personality on the game

Equipment: none

Space: open, flat space 10x10 for each team

Numbers: 2 even teams of up to 12 players/team

The Game:

2 people from each team sit face-to-face with their knees bent, in the position they would be in if they were finishing a sit-up. They are connected by holding each other’s wrists. The goal is to lean back and pull at each other with equal force, without ever dropping the grip, in order to raise their bottoms so that they are both off the ground at the exact same time. Their feet must remain flat on the ground at all times. All the players on each team must accomplish this initial task in pairs and only when they do will the team move on to the next level. Cooperation and competition are the key words in this exercise.

          Bottoms-up move on to higher levels. For three people, all connected by their wrists and sitting in the same position as before (knees bent and feet flat on the ground), the goal is still to raise bottoms up at the same time. At this point, however, players will have to adjust because what worked before doesn’t necessarily work now. When all three bottoms are raised, the team moves on to the next level – raising four players’ bottoms off the ground at the same time – and it keeps going until all 12 people are connected and able to lift their bottoms at the exact same time w/o breaking their grip.

          Along the way, teams will have to deal with failure and problem-solving skills. Failure should eventually foster success as the teams figure out which strategies work in each progressive challenge. The coach has to explain how this exercise relates to a game situation (different tactics against different teams for success)

Debriefing:

• How easy was the challenge at the beginning?

• Was there a change as competition progressed?

• What does this exercise teach us?

• Were the strategies you used initially the same ones you used throughout the challenge?

• How did you and your teammates respond when you experienced setbacks and difficulties?

• Did you and your teammates watch the other groups attempting the challenge?

• If so, what did you learn and how did it help?

• How could you do better next time?

• How does the exercise relate to the game of soccer?

  Web Administrator    Ken Gamble