Lesson 9 · Designing the session, part one
Designing a training session: aims, safety, warm-up and cool-down
A tennis coach and a netball coach are each given sixty minutes and the same instruction: improve repeated-effort capacity. One is working with a single athlete, the other with eighteen. Almost every decision that follows differs, and none of the differences are about the physiology. They are about the number of bodies, the shared clock and the shared space.
Two coaches have sixty minutes and the same session goal: improve the ability to repeat high-intensity efforts with short recovery. One coaches a single junior tennis player. The other coaches a squad of eighteen netballers of mixed fitness.
The physiology they are training is identical. Write down three things about the session that must nevertheless be designed differently, and beside each one write why the difference exists. Then answer a harder question: which of your three is a difference in safety rather than a difference in convenience?
- Write a goal-specific session aim that is narrow enough to plan against and measurable enough to evaluate.
- Identify the health and safety considerations a session plan must address, and explain what duty of care requires of a coach.
- Justify the structure and content of a warm-up and a cool-down, and say what each is and is not evidenced to do.
- Compare each of these three aspects between an individual sport and a group sport, and explain the reason for every difference.
- Recognise when a difference between the two settings is genuinely about the sport rather than about the number of athletes.
- Training session — a single bounded block of training, the smallest planning unit a coach controls.
- Session aim — the one outcome the session exists to produce, stated so that it can be checked afterwards.
- Goal specific — the syllabus's own wording for an aim tied to a defined performance goal rather than to an activity.
- Individual sport — one in which performance is produced by a single athlete, such as tennis singles, swimming or athletics.
- Group sport — one in which performance is produced by a squad acting together, such as netball, rugby league or football.
- Duty of care — the legal and professional obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to participants.
- Risk assessment — the process of identifying hazards, judging their likelihood and consequence, and controlling them before the session runs.
- General warm-up — low-intensity whole-body activity that raises body and muscle temperature and heart rate.
- Specific warm-up — movements that rehearse the actions and speeds the session itself will demand.
- Dynamic stretching — controlled movement through the range required by the sport, performed as part of a warm-up.
- Static stretching — holding a lengthened position, better suited to a cool-down or a separate flexibility session.
- Cool-down — a graded reduction in intensity after the main work, maintaining circulation while the body returns towards rest.
The syllabus lists the overview or aim of the session as goal specific, and that phrase is doing real work. A session aim is not a description of what the athletes will do. It is a statement of what the session is meant to change, expressed so that you can tell afterwards whether it worked.
Compare three attempts at the same session. "Do some fitness work" is an activity, not an aim, and nothing can be planned or judged against it. "Improve fitness" names a direction but no target, so any session at all would satisfy it. "Improve the ability to repeat five-second maximal efforts with fifteen seconds of recovery, measured as the drop-off across ten repetitions" is goal specific: it fixes the quality being trained, the work-to-rest structure that will train it, and the measure that will show whether it improved.
A goal-specific aim then decides everything downstream. It sets the work-to-rest ratio, the total volume, which of the training methods from Lessons 3 to 5 is appropriate, where in the session the hard work sits, and what the coach watches for. This is why the aim is written first and not last, and why a session with two competing aims usually achieves neither.
| Decision | Individual sport, one tennis player | Group sport, eighteen netballers |
|---|---|---|
| Whose goal is it | The athlete's own goal, drawn from their own testing data and their own competition calendar | A squad goal, chosen because it serves the team's playing style, with individual needs met inside it |
| How narrow it can be | Very narrow. One athlete, one weakness, the whole hour directed at it | Broader by necessity, because eighteen athletes do not share one weakness. The aim must be worth doing for most of the squad |
| How individual need is handled | By rewriting the session, since the session and the athlete are the same unit | By differentiating inside a common structure: same drill, different distances, loads, repetitions or roles |
| How it is evaluated | Against that athlete's own previous results, so small changes are meaningful | Against squad-level measures plus a sample of individuals, because a squad average can hide both the athlete who improved most and the one who did not train |
An aim you cannot evaluate is not an aim. If you cannot say what evidence at the end of the session would show it succeeded, the session has no aim yet, only an activity.
Quick check: Which of these is the best example of a goal-specific session aim?
Health and safety is the sub-point students most often answer as a list of obvious precautions. It earns more marks when it is answered as a process: identify the hazards, judge each one, control it, and check the control is still there on the day. A coach carries a duty of care, which is the obligation to take reasonable steps against foreseeable harm, and the word doing the work there is foreseeable. A hazard nobody could have anticipated is bad luck; a hazard on a surface the coach walked across without looking is a breach.
| Category | Typical hazard | Control | What changes with a squad |
|---|---|---|---|
| Environment | Heat, humidity, storms, poor light, hard or wet surfaces | Check conditions before the session, plan fluid breaks, have a shaded or indoor alternative, modify or cancel | Eighteen athletes generate more heat and need more fluid stations; one athlete can simply move indoors |
| Facilities and equipment | Damaged surfaces, unsecured goals, worn resistance bands, cluttered run-off areas | Walk and inspect the space before athletes arrive, remove or repair, mark exclusion zones | Space per athlete falls sharply, so collision risk and run-off distance become the dominant hazards |
| The athlete | Existing injury, illness, incomplete rehabilitation, fatigue carried from a previous session | Screening and ongoing monitoring, as in Lessons 1 and 2, plus a check-in before the session begins | Eighteen histories to hold rather than one, so a written record and delegated assistants become necessary rather than optional |
| The activity | Intensity beyond current capacity, poor technique under load, unsupervised progression, contact drills | Progress load gradually, coach technique before adding speed or weight, keep the coach positioned where the risk is | A coach can watch one athlete continuously and a squad only intermittently, so drill design must be safe when unobserved |
| Emergency readiness | No first aid access, no plan for a serious injury, no way to contact help | First aid kit and a trained responder present, an emergency plan, contact details, clear access for an ambulance | The plan must survive one coach being fully occupied with an injured athlete while sixteen others are still training |
That last row is the one that separates a good answer from a generic one. In an individual session, the coach attending to an injured athlete has no competing responsibility. In a group session, the moment the coach kneels down beside an injured player, the remaining squad is unsupervised — so a group session plan is not safe unless it says what those athletes do next.
Safety is a planning decision, not a warning
Telling athletes to be careful is not a control. A control changes the situation: the surface is inspected and the broken section is coned off, the contact drill is replaced with a non-contact version while a player completes rehabilitation, fluid breaks are scheduled rather than offered. If an answer's safety measures are all instructions to the athletes, it has not yet described a control.
True or false: A group session plan should state what the rest of the squad does if the coach has to attend to an injured athlete, because the coach's duty of care to the other athletes does not pause while they treat one.
A warm-up has two halves and they do different jobs. The general warm-up is low-intensity whole-body work that raises muscle and core temperature, heart rate and blood flow to working muscle. Warmer muscle contracts and relaxes faster and is more compliant, nerve conduction speeds up, and oxygen is released more readily to the tissue. The specific warm-up then rehearses the actual movements of the session at progressively increasing speed, so that the athlete arrives at the first hard repetition already moving well.
Two precise points are worth having. First, a warm-up prepares the athlete both physically and mentally: it is where attention narrows onto the session, which matters for the psychological strategies in Lesson 12. Second, prolonged static stretching immediately before explosive work can briefly reduce force and power output, which is why dynamic movement through the required range belongs in the warm-up and long static holds belong in the cool-down or in a separate flexibility session, as in Lesson 5.
Be careful about the injury claim. A well-designed warm-up that includes sport-specific movement and neuromuscular work is associated with lower injury rates in several sports, and that is a defensible statement. "Warming up prevents injury" is not, because it promises more than the evidence supports and ignores the other determinants of injury covered in Lessons 20 and 21.
Beyond the syllabus · the RAMP model. Some coaching courses structure the warm-up with the RAMP framework: Raise temperature and heart rate, Activate and Mobilise the muscles and joints the session will use, then Potentiate with progressively faster sport-specific work. It is a useful memory aid and it maps neatly onto the general and specific halves above, but it is a coaching model rather than syllabus content. You will still be examined on the general and specific warm-up, its physiological purposes, and how it differs between individual and group sports. No question can require the RAMP acronym, so use it only if it helps you organise an answer.
Odd one out. Three of these belong in the specific part of a warm-up for a netball session. Which one does not?
A cool-down is a graded reduction in intensity, usually five to ten minutes of light aerobic activity followed by static stretching. Its clearest physiological justification is circulatory. During hard exercise the muscle pump in the legs helps return blood to the heart; stopping suddenly removes that pump while the blood vessels are still dilated, so blood pools in the legs and venous return, and with it blood pressure, can drop abruptly. Continuing to move gently keeps the pump working while the cardiovascular system returns towards rest. It also maintains blood flow that supports the clearance of metabolic by-products, and it provides a natural place for the psychological transition out of training and for the coach's feedback.
Now the claim to be careful with. The traditional statement that a cool-down clears lactate and therefore prevents next-day muscle soreness is overstated. Light activity does speed the clearance of blood lactate, but blood lactate largely returns to baseline within about an hour regardless, and delayed onset muscle soreness arises principally from mechanical damage in eccentric work, not from lactate. A careful answer says what is well supported — the circulatory argument, the gradual return towards rest, the psychological and coaching value — and states the soreness claim as limited rather than repeating it as fact.
| Individual sport | Group sport | Why the difference exists | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Content of the warm-up | Built around one athlete's movement history, previous injuries and the specific session ahead | A common core all athletes complete, plus individual additions for those returning from injury | One athlete's needs can define the whole warm-up; eighteen cannot, so the plan needs a shared base with room for exceptions |
| Time taken | Short, because there is no organisational overhead | Longer, because instructions, equipment and movement of a squad all take time | Organisational time is a real cost of group training and has to be planned for, not discovered |
| Supervision | Continuous, so technique can be corrected immediately | Intermittent, so the warm-up must be simple enough to be performed correctly unwatched | One coach cannot watch eighteen athletes at once, which constrains what a group warm-up may contain |
| Cool-down | Individual, and easily extended into a flexibility or rehabilitation block | Collective, and often the only reliable moment for whole-squad feedback and next-session information | In group sport the cool-down carries a communication function that has no individual equivalent |
Every difference between an individual and a group session traces back to one of three things: eighteen sets of needs instead of one, one coach's attention divided rather than whole, and a shared clock and shared space. Name the cause, not just the difference.
Fill the gaps. The part of the warm-up that rehearses the movements of the session at increasing speed is the warm-up. The obligation to take reasonable steps against foreseeable harm is called duty of . The clearest physiological justification for a cool-down is that continuing gentle movement maintains while the cardiovascular system settles towards rest.
The verb in this dot point is compare, and a comparison has a shape that a list does not. It needs a stated basis — the aspect being compared — then the position of each setting on it, then the reason for the difference, and it should acknowledge similarity where similarity is real. Two paragraphs, one on each sport, is not a comparison; it is two descriptions next to each other and it is marked as such.
Similarity matters more than students expect. The physiological requirements do not change with squad size: the same energy system needs the same work-to-rest structure whether one athlete or eighteen are doing it. The session aim must be goal specific in both. Every hazard category applies to both. What changes is how each is delivered. An answer that treats individual and group sport as opposites is wrong about the physiology and loses the marks available for recognising what is shared.
One more caution. Not every difference between two named sports is a difference between individual and group sport. A tennis session and a netball session differ because tennis is played on a small court with a racquet and netball is played on a larger court with restricted footwork — those are sport-specific differences. The differences this dot point asks about are the ones that would still exist if you compared singles tennis with doubles tennis, or an individual swim programme with a squad swim programme. Test any difference you write by asking whether it survives that swap.
Two truths and a lie. One of these statements about session design is false. Find it.
Activities · plan and defend a session
Each of these is a real thing coaches write on a session plan. Rewrite each as a goal-specific aim, and beside it name the one measure you would use to judge it.
As written: "Endurance session."
As written: "Work on the athletes' weaknesses."
As written: "Game-day preparation, keep it light."
As written: "Same session as last week but harder."
Match each term to its meaning.
- Duty of care
- General warm-up
- Specific warm-up
- Goal specific
- The obligation to take reasonable steps to prevent foreseeable harm to participants
- Low-intensity whole-body activity that raises muscle temperature, heart rate and blood flow
- Rehearsal of the session's own movements at progressively increasing speed
- Tied to a defined performance outcome that can be measured afterwards
You have sixty minutes and one aim: improve the ability to repeat six-second maximal efforts with twenty-four seconds of recovery, measured as the drop-off across twelve repetitions. Plan the first thirty minutes twice, once for a single 17-year-old sprint kayaker and once for a squad of eighteen mixed-ability rugby league players.
| Row | What to write |
|---|---|
| Safety | Two hazards you would control, the control for each, and which of the two settings makes each hazard worse |
| Warm-up | What the general and specific halves contain, and how long each takes in each setting |
| Organisation | How the athletes are grouped and rotated, and what the coach is doing during the work intervals |
| Differentiation | How a player who is markedly fitter, and one returning from a hamstring injury, are accommodated without rewriting the session |
Then finish with the hard part: name one aspect that is genuinely identical in both settings, and explain why squad size does not change it.
Lock it in. In one sentence, explain why the difference between an individual and a group warm-up is caused by the coach's divided attention rather than by any difference in the physiology of the two athletes.
Compare the health, safety and session-design considerations for an individual sport and a group sport.
Compare requires similarities and differences on the same criteria. Designing one session and then designing another is not a comparison.
Plan: set the criteria, run both contexts against each one, then say what the comparison reveals.
The two contexts will be compared against three criteria: the safety risks that must be managed, how the session aim is set, and how warm-up and instruction are organised.
In both cases the same underlying requirements apply. The environment, equipment and surface must be checked before the session, emergency procedures and first aid access must be established, and the session must open with a warm-up raising temperature and rehearsing the movement patterns to follow and close with a cool-down. In both, the aim must be specific enough to determine what the session contains, and the session must end with reflection or evaluation.
The risks differ in kind. In an individual sport the dominant risks are overuse and overload, because the athlete repeats a narrow movement pattern at high volume, so screening, load monitoring and technique are the safety priorities. In a group sport collision, contact and unpredictable movement dominate, so the priorities are protective equipment, rule enforcement and managing player density in drills. The aim differs correspondingly: an individual session can be built around one athlete's measured weakness, whereas a group session must serve athletes at different levels and positions simultaneously, so the aim is usually set at team level with differentiated activities beneath it.
Instruction differs in delivery rather than content. The individual athlete receives continuous, individually calibrated feedback, so correction is immediate and specific. In a group session the coach cannot observe every athlete continuously, so instruction relies on demonstration, small-group stations and peer feedback, and the warm-up must additionally serve as an organisational device that gets a large number of athletes active and supervised quickly.
The comparison shows that the physiological requirements of a session are essentially common, while the organisational and risk-management requirements are what actually differ — so a coach moving between the two contexts must redesign the delivery and supervision of a session far more than its physiological structure.
The two contexts will be compared against the safety risks to be managed, how the session aim is set, and how warm-up and instruction are organised. In both, the same underlying requirements apply: environment, equipment and surface must be checked beforehand, emergency procedures and first aid access established, the session opened with a warm-up raising temperature and rehearsing the movement patterns to follow and closed with a cool-down, the aim made specific enough to determine the session's content, and time allowed for reflection or evaluation. The risks differ in kind, however. In an individual sport the dominant risks are overuse and overload, because the athlete repeats a narrow movement pattern at high volume, so screening, load monitoring and technique are the safety priorities; in a group sport collision, contact and unpredictable movement dominate, so protective equipment, rule enforcement and managing player density in drills take priority. The aim differs correspondingly: an individual session can be built around one athlete's measured weakness, whereas a group session must serve athletes of different levels and positions at once, so the aim is set at team level with differentiated activities beneath it. Instruction differs in delivery rather than content, since the individual athlete receives continuous individually calibrated feedback while a group coach cannot observe everyone continuously and must rely on demonstration, small-group stations and peer feedback, with the warm-up additionally serving to get a large number of athletes active and supervised quickly. The comparison therefore shows that the physiological requirements of a session are essentially common while the organisational and risk-management requirements genuinely differ — so a coach moving between contexts redesigns delivery and supervision far more than physiological structure.
Explain why the warm-up and cool-down must be matched to the specific demands of the session that follows.
Explain asks for the mechanism. The word “matched” is the key: a generic warm-up is not simply less good, and the answer must say why.
Plan: name the principle, build linked pairs showing what a mismatched warm-up fails to prepare, then answer directly.
A warm-up prepares the specific tissues, movement patterns and energy systems the session will load. Preparation is therefore specific in the same way training is specific, so a warm-up that raises general temperature without rehearsing the actual demand leaves the tissue that will be loaded hardest least prepared.
Raising the temperature of the muscles that will work increases their extensibility and the rate of enzyme activity within them, so a warm-up loading the wrong muscle groups leaves the working tissue cold and stiffer, which is precisely the condition in which rapid loading causes strain.
Rehearsing the movement pattern at increasing speed activates the motor pathways the session will use, so coordination and reaction time improve for that pattern specifically, which means an athlete about to perform explosive change of direction gains little from a warm-up consisting only of steady jogging.
Progressively raising intensity toward the session's working intensity primes the energy system that will predominate, so a session beginning with high-intensity intervals requires a warm-up that has already reached near that intensity briefly, which reduces the early oxygen deficit and the disproportionate strain of the first repetition.
The cool-down is matched for the reverse reason: its length and intensity should reflect how far the session displaced homeostasis, so a high-intensity or long session requires a longer gradual return to maintain circulation while by-products clear, whereas a light skills session requires little.
A warm-up prepares the specific tissues, movement patterns and energy systems the session will load, so preparation is specific in the same way training is specific, and a warm-up that raises general temperature without rehearsing the actual demand leaves the tissue that will be loaded hardest least prepared. Raising the temperature of the muscles that will work increases their extensibility and the rate of enzyme activity within them, so a warm-up loading the wrong muscle groups leaves the working tissue cold and stiffer — precisely the condition in which rapid loading causes strain. Rehearsing the movement pattern at increasing speed activates the motor pathways the session will use, improving coordination and reaction time for that pattern specifically, which is why an athlete about to perform explosive change of direction gains little from a warm-up consisting only of steady jogging. Progressively raising intensity toward the session's working intensity primes the predominant energy system, so a session beginning with high-intensity intervals requires a warm-up that has already briefly approached that intensity, reducing the early oxygen deficit and the disproportionate strain of the first repetition. The cool-down is matched for the reverse reason: its length and intensity should reflect how far the session displaced homeostasis, so a long or high-intensity session requires a longer gradual return while a light skills session requires little. Matching is therefore not a refinement but the mechanism by which warm-up and cool-down work at all.
Go back to card 01. Look at your three differences and file each under one of the three causes: many needs rather than one, divided attention, or a shared clock and space. Any difference that will not file under one of the three is probably a sport-specific difference rather than an individual-to-group one — check it with the singles-versus-doubles test. Then answer the question you were asked at the end: which of your three was about safety, and would you now defend that answer differently?
Multiple choice · 5 questions
MC 1. The syllabus describes the overview or aim of a training session as goal specific. This means the aim must:
- A. state the outcome the session is meant to produce, in terms that can be measured afterwards
- B. list every drill the session will contain, in order
- C. be set by the athletes rather than by the coach
- D. name the energy system being trained and nothing else
MC 2. A coach inspects the playing surface before a squad session, cones off a damaged section and moves a drill away from an unpadded goal post. These actions are best described as:
- A. a warm-up progression
- B. controls that discharge the coach's duty of care
- C. differentiation of the session aim
- D. an evaluation of the previous session
MC 3. Which statement about the warm-up is most accurate?
- A. long static stretches are the most appropriate final activity before explosive work
- B. a warm-up raises muscle temperature but has no psychological function
- C. the general warm-up raises muscle temperature and blood flow, while the specific warm-up rehearses the session's own movements at increasing speed
- D. a warm-up prevents injury, which is its only established purpose
MC 4. The strongest physiological justification for a cool-down is that continued light activity:
- A. removes all lactate from the blood within two minutes
- B. prevents delayed onset muscle soreness entirely
- C. increases muscle temperature further, which aids recovery
- D. maintains the muscle pump and venous return, so blood does not pool in the legs when exercise stops abruptly
MC 5. A student writes: "Netball training differs from tennis training because netball is played on a larger court with restricted footwork." As an answer to a question comparing session design for individual and group sports, this is:
- A. a complete comparison, because it names both sports and a difference
- B. a sport-specific difference rather than an individual-to-group difference, so it does not answer the question asked
- C. correct only if the student also names the energy system involved
- D. incorrect, because court size has no effect on session design
Short answer · exam style
SA 1. Understand Band 4 Explain the purpose of the general and specific parts of a warm-up, and justify the placement of dynamic rather than long static stretching before a session of explosive work. (4 marks)
SA 2. Apply Band 5 A coach is planning a session for a squad of eighteen. Describe three health and safety considerations they must address, and for each one explain how the control differs from the control that would be used with a single athlete. (6 marks)
SA 3. Evaluate Band 6 Compare the aspects that must be considered when designing a training session for an individual sport and for a group sport. Refer to the session aim, health and safety, and the warm-up and cool-down, and identify at least one aspect that does not differ. (7 marks)
📖 Comprehensive answers (click to reveal)
Multiple choice: 1 → A. 2 → B. 3 → C. 4 → D. 5 → B.
Activity 1, indicative answers: 1 → "Improve the ability to sustain 80 per cent of maximum heart rate for 30 continuous minutes, measured as heart rate drift over the final 10 minutes." The measure is heart rate at a fixed pace. 2 → An aim cannot be goal specific until the weakness is named, so this first requires the assessment data from Lesson 2: "Improve lower-body unilateral strength in the four players whose single-leg testing fell below the squad median, measured by repeat testing in week 6." 3 → "Maintain movement quality and neuromuscular readiness while keeping total load below the level that would compromise Saturday's performance, measured by session load and by athlete-reported readiness." The measure is load, not fatigue. 4 → "Repeat last week's session with total volume increased by roughly 10 per cent at the same intensity, measured by completion at the same technical quality." The principle being reached for is progressive overload from Lesson 6, and the answer should note that "harder" is not a specification: overload must name whether frequency, intensity, time or type is being increased.
Activity 2, indicative answers: The individual plan can direct the whole thirty minutes at one athlete. Safety: water conditions and craft stability for the kayaker, controlled by checking conditions and staying within sight of a safety craft; fatigue-related technique breakdown, controlled by ending the set on quality rather than on a repetition count. Warm-up: about eight minutes, general paddling then progressive build efforts rehearsing the exact six-second effort. Organisation: the coach observes every repetition and can stop the set immediately. Differentiation: not needed, since the session is written for this athlete. The group plan differs on all four. Safety: collision risk in shared space, controlled by lane allocation and staggered starts; and eighteen injury histories, controlled by a written record and a pre-session check-in. Warm-up: about fifteen minutes because instruction and movement of a squad take time, with a common core plus additions for the hamstring case. Organisation: three groups of six rotating, so the coach positions at the highest-risk station and the drill must be safe unobserved. Differentiation: the fitter player works at the same time structure with a longer distance, and the returning player completes the same intervals at a submaximal intensity or in a straight line only. Identical in both: the work-to-rest structure, six seconds of work with twenty-four of recovery, because that ratio is set by the energy system being trained and is not affected by how many athletes are present.
SA 1 (4 marks): General warm-up [1]: low-intensity whole-body activity that raises muscle and core temperature, heart rate and blood flow to working muscle, so muscle contracts and relaxes faster, nerve conduction speeds up and oxygen is released more readily. Specific warm-up [1]: rehearses the movements the session will demand at progressively increasing speed, so the athlete arrives at the first hard effort already moving well, and it also narrows attention onto the session. Placement of dynamic stretching [1]: dynamic movement takes the joints through the range the sport requires while maintaining the temperature and readiness the warm-up has just built. Why not long static holds [1]: prolonged static stretching immediately before explosive work can briefly reduce force and power output, so long holds belong in the cool-down or in a separate flexibility session rather than immediately before sprinting or jumping.
SA 2 (6 marks): One mark for each consideration and control, one for each explained difference. Environment [2]: heat and hydration, controlled by checking conditions, scheduling fluid breaks and having an alternative venue; with eighteen athletes more heat is generated and more fluid stations and scheduled breaks are needed, where a single athlete can simply be moved indoors. Facilities and space [2]: collision risk, controlled by inspecting the surface, coning damaged sections and allocating lanes or zones with adequate run-off; space per athlete falls sharply with a squad, so collision becomes a dominant hazard that barely exists for one athlete. Emergency readiness [2]: a first aid kit, a trained responder and an emergency plan; in a group the plan must also state what the remaining athletes do while the coach attends to an injured player, because duty of care to the other seventeen does not pause. Credit is equally available for athlete-related considerations, such as holding eighteen injury and illness histories in a written record rather than in memory, or for activity-related ones, such as designing drills that remain safe when the coach cannot watch them.
SA 3 (7 marks): A comparison, not two descriptions: each aspect needs a stated basis, both settings on it, and the reason for the difference. Aim [2]: goal specific in both, but an individual aim can be narrow and drawn from one athlete's own data, while a squad aim must be worth doing for most of the group and is then differentiated inside a common structure, because eighteen athletes do not share one weakness. Health and safety [2]: the same hazard categories apply to both, but with a squad the controls change because space per athlete falls, supervision is intermittent so drills must be safe unobserved, eighteen histories must be recorded rather than remembered, and the emergency plan must cover the squad while the coach treats one athlete. Warm-up and cool-down [2]: both need a general and a specific warm-up and a graded cool-down, but the group version takes longer because organisation costs time, must be simple enough to perform correctly unwatched, uses a common core with individual additions, and the group cool-down carries a communication function with no individual equivalent. What does not differ [1]: the physiological requirement itself. The work-to-rest structure needed to train a given energy system, and the need for the aim to be goal specific, are set by the physiology and by good planning, not by squad size. A response reaching the top band also distinguishes individual-to-group differences from sport-specific ones, for example by noting that a difference which disappears when singles tennis is compared with doubles tennis was never a difference of this kind.
This lesson opens the third inquiry question of the focus area and changes the unit of analysis. Lessons 3 to 8 were about what training does to a body. From here the question is how a coach organises that knowledge into a session, a week and a year, for one athlete or for a squad.
The artefact to keep is the four-column comparison table: aspect, individual, group, reason for the difference. Add rows to it as Lesson 10 completes the sub-points, and star every row where the two settings are the same. Lesson 10 takes the same session from the warm-up through to the coach's evaluation.
Mark lesson as complete
Tick when you've finished the practice and review.