Creating a Water Polo Practice Plan, Part 2

Previously, we looked at creating a daily water polo practice plan using backward planning based on identifying a tactical goal for the practice. In this post we will look at the other two parts of overall planning by creating a mid-term (operational) and seasonal (strategic) plan. Refer to Creating a Water Polo Practice, Part 1 for guidelines and terminology.

Your weekly plan should take into account your total available pool time, dryland time assigned to the week, and games scheduled. Let's look at three common situations: Hell-week, pre-league weeks, and league weeks. Create tactical goals that will build throughout the weeks and can be supported by your pool schedule and player experience. Sessions can be broken down into conditioning, water polo skills, dryland, weightlifting, scrimmaging, and any smaller combination of these parts.

Hell-Week 1: Usually 5-6 days of practice with 1-2 sessions each day.

1. morning: weightlifting, evening: conditioning
2. dryland, conditioning
3. conditioning, water polo individual skills
4. weightlifting, conditioning/individual skills
5. conditioning, group skills
6. group skills, center-based offense

H-week 2

1. weightlifting, conditioning
2. individual skills, zone-aware offense
3. conditioning, press defense
4. group skills, zone defense
5. counterattack, scrimmage/6-on-5

Now lets look at a non-league week. This will usually consist of 5 practice days and 2-3 morning sessions. It can also include a non-league game or Friday/Saturday tournament.

1. conditioning, set offense
2. counterattack, zone defense
3. conditioning, 6-on-5/5-on-6
4. game warm-up, zone-break offense, after-goal situations
5. Game/Tournament

League weeks usually are the last month of the season and are broken up with two games separated by practices days. This creates a challenge to build a consistent plan but also allows coaches to make adjustments after games to build on skills for the next game. A sample week includes:

1. conditioning, defensive schemes
2. league game
3. counterattack, offensive schemes
4. league game
5. individual and group skills, after-goal situations

The end of the week is a good time to reinforce fundamental skills. Players are tired and more focused on the weekend. Drilling individual and group skills depends less on tactical thinking and more on mechanics and a limited number of actions. If your players are broken-down from the week their performance in team skills and scrimmages will probably be poor and inefficient, frustrating both players and coaches. Know their limits and plan recovery days that allow for mental recovery.