Recovery Session

We've had a lot of games rescheduled this season because of the crazy weather had. We even had snow the first weekend in May that caused the fields to be closed.

My U14 girls play in a local league as well as the Midwest Regional League (MRL) in addition to the occasional tournament. But all of that leads up to the most important tournament of the year, State Cup. The winner of State Cup goes to Regionals to play the 21 State Cup Champions from our Region. The winners of each of the four Regions in the U.S. progress to the USYS National Championship which will be held at the Overland Park Soccer Complex this summer.

I originally arranged our schedule so that the games were spaced nicely with sufficient time for training, rest and recovery but the rained out games have piled up and now we're looking at about 15 games in 27 days. Warm-ups, cool-downs and recovery sessions have now become more important than they usually are.

I've always preferred having practice on Tuesday and Thursday because this gives the players Monday off after a tournament or MRL weekend. This year the U14 girls practice on Monday and Wednesday. We don't have the option of changing this because of scheduling and field availability so the decision is between canceling practice and running a light, recovery session. I've done both in the past but I'm leaning toward the recovery sessions in the future because we can still get some valuable training while doing some active recovery. In recent years it's been shown that players will recover faster by doing a lower volume of exercise while retaining some intensity. To achieve this we put more rest into an exercise but ask the players to go hard when it's their turn.

Here's an example of our recent recovery session.

We begin with a set of dynamic stretches. After that we do a warm-up led by Scott Moody of Soccer F.I.T Academy. Here is a link that shows the progression of the exercises.

I wanted to do some work on finishing so we used this exercise:

It's a basic passing and shouting drill but it's not taxing and provides the players with plenty of time between repetitions. We add intensity by asking the shooter to act as if they are in a game. They need to get the ball out of their feet and shoot as quickly as possible. The group on the opposite side begins as soon as the shooter receives the ball.

After this we play one of the girls favorite games, Soccer Tennis. This isn't a very functional game but they are working on their touch and they really enjoy it. Mental recovery is just as important as physical recovery so games like this serve a real purpose in the session.

We finish by working on some creative free kicks from the middle and wide areas. These could be useful in our upcoming tournaments and State Cup. They also serve to stimulate the girls imagination.

Finally, the girls take a short cool-down jog and perform some static stretching before ending the session.

Please share any ideas you have for recovery sessions in the comments area below.

Have a Great Day!

Tom