Soccer Practice – Secrets Revealed
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010
There’s a simple method for explaining soccer practice; no rules to follow. You can experiment, create your own drills and games, and innovate, and so on. Along with this, remain alert of every small thing happening around you to identify such practices that can be changed to match your schedule. These are some tips that can be helpful in conducting a fruitful soccer training calendar.
Make flexible plans. It’s very much expected that a few plans may not turn out to be successful. It could be due to untimely rains, you being unwell, or the kids not showing up. All these are possible blockers and so make adequate arrangements to take care of them.
It’s best to keep in stock a number of soccer practice games ready. In case some of them don’t generate desired results, just remove them and move on to next. Flow with the training and you will get to know what is working best for the kids.
Make the kids warm up before every session. The kids should be made to utilize the soccer ball as an extension to their standard drills to warm up. Introduce some nice exercises such as an interesting game called Fetch. It’s a game wherein the coach begins with throwing the ball to the player and gets it in return by the player using one or both the feet.
Along with this, the kids can also be made to roll the ball using their feet, kick it backward and forward among the feet. Players use many such soccer drills to warm themselves up.
Every player needs to have soccer ball for himself. And when that is the case, design several individual activities that they can do using the ball. The kids should be made to practice shooting, hitting the ball to the wall, and dribbling and all that. You should see that no lines are involved and the movement remains as free as possible.
In soccer coaching, once the individual activities are finished, group activities should get the attention. Passing and receiving the ball are good drills to practice. In group activities, it’s imperative for the kids to show some team spirit. Generally, while transitioning into group from individual, the players take time to get familiar with idea of team play. You should be the mentor here for the team. Emphasize the need to support each other in order to win matches.
At the same time, lead the weak players to develop the feeling of team spirit. These are activities that drive the spirit to play as a team.
Allow the kids to play in teams, the game of soccer not including a goalkeeper. Tell them to shoot at the goals without any inhibitions. Also, instruct them to first attack and then defend. This lets them experiment on their own and play their natural style.
This is an effortless way of managing a soccer practice. Just let go of your creativity and design methods that teach kids soccer in a natural way. There is no correct or incorrect drill as such. The only thing to remember is to be flexible. Enroll for our youth soccer coaching community where you will find tons of resources on youth soccer and coaching.
Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Soccer practice.
