Tag Archives for " Practice "

Adding Creativity to Diamond Drills

As I've written in previous posts, I enjoy incorporating diamond drills into my sessions because they provide all of the principles of attacking in a dynamic format that keeps the players moving and engaged. In one post on 'Diamond Passing' I shared some progressions on the diamond passing drills that I've used in the past. Over the last two months I've introduce these to my players during a number of practices. They've done a great job with them and I can change the pattern on the fly just by saying, "Layoff-and-Go", "Overlap" or "Play the Forward". I've also seen the movements from these exercises occur in scrimmages and games so the players have made the transition between practice and practical application.

During the winter my club participates in Futsal since the Midwest winter makes it tough to stay outdoor year-round. For those not familiar with

Continue reading

Possession Games

With only two practices per week with my teams I've found that it works best to focus on a technical topic (Running with the Ball, Dribbling, Control, Shooting) during our first practice of the week and then Passing and Possession progressing to a small-sided game during the second session. We also do one shooting exercise toward the end of practice just to keep a focus on that before the weekend.

I'm always looking for variations on possessions games to focus on different aspects of possession and to keep the practice fresh. I was reminded of one recently when I was looking through one of our best selling books, 'Players' Roles and Responsibilities in Systems of Play'. By creating target areas in each corner

Continue reading

Keeping Technical Passing Exercises Fresh

Teaching players the technical skills of the game is the most important job of a coach who is working with young players. Finding new and creative ways to help the players groove passing technique is one of the more challenging things to do. The players need hundreds of repetitions of the correct technique before their muscles can repeat the motion accurately. There's only so long that two players can stand across from each other and pass the ball back and forth before they'll grow bored and loose focus. But if you move too quickly into competitive passing and possession games, which are fun and engaging, then the players won't use the correct technique and they'll end up repeating poor passes. Remember, practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes permanent.

So new ways to present the same technical challenge becomes the objective. One of the variations I've used is from a session that I found in our, 'Training Sessions of Europe's Top Teams'. It's a session that Jan Prujin of Ajax F.C.

Continue reading

Receiving Balls Out of the Air

I was reviewing the sessions I've run in the first two months of the season and noticed that I hadn't run a session on dealing with balls in the air.

This is a topic that I usually do once or twice a month with my girls teams because they seem to have more difficulty in this area than my boys teams do. I'm not sure why this is the case. In talking to other coaches, some have suggested that girls don't play as many throwing and catching games as boys do. Whatever the reason, I've used this session with a number of teams over the years.

Juggling
I begin with a juggling warm-up. It begins with free juggling and progresses to include some form of limitation depending on the level of the players.

Progressions

  • One juggle and catch - for players having trouble with the technique of juggling
  • Progressive Juggling - One and catch, two and catch, three and catch, etc.
  • Right Foot, Left Foot continuous pattern


Throw, Receive and Dribble Away
The players each have a ball in their hands. They jog around the area, throw the ball slightly

Continue reading

Shooting - Three and Four Line Exercises

One of my favorite books is, 'Training Creative Goalscorers'. The book is by Chelsea FC Academy Coach, Michael Beale. The focus of this book is on training shooting and finishing in functional situations that also involve an activity after shooting like defending the next player or playing a give-and-go with another player. These are the

Continue reading

Shooting Exercises - Wall Ball

During the month of June I highlighted my four favorite 1 v 1 training methods. In July I'll thought I'd go through the progression I use for shooting. The exercises are normally part of a complete session but are shown here on their own to focus on them. The first time I work on shooting

Continue reading

1 v 1 - Round Robin Evaluation

During the month of June I have been highlighting my four favorite 1 v 1 training methods. This final week focuses on 1 v 1 Round Robin Evaluation. The ultimate test of a player's 1 v 1 ability is to play a competitive game against a motivated defender. A number of coaches I know use

Continue reading

Moves and Fakes

We had a discussion in the office the other day about the difference between fakes and moves. The discussion revolved around how you can use a move that doesn't fake the defender and whether we should be teaching young players moves or how to fake. This is an interesting subject because there's no shortage of

Continue reading

Shooting Under Pressure

I'm always looking for ways to transfer shooting technique into goal scoring in games. I've used multiple games and competitive situations. Some have been more effective than others. I saw a new one last week while doing a combined training session with another coach. Many of you may be familiar with it but I had

Continue reading

Brazilian Transition Games

Brazilians learn the game by playing the game.  In many countries training sessions are focused around drills and exercises that isolate techniques and tactics.  Brazilian coaches spend most of their time creating playing environments with small-sided games that put an emphasis on the specific areas of the game but also train the player ‘globally’. One

Continue reading

Ball or No Ball-THAT is the Question

This thought provoking post about whether or not you always need to have a ball included in every aspect of training is from our friends at Soccer Fit. The folks at Soccer Fit are on the cutting edge of the latest soccer conditioning science so their perspective is worth listening to. Today’s post is by

Continue reading

Adding Movement and Awareness to Basic Passing

Basic passing exercises like the one below are great for focusing on the technical aspects of passing the ball but it's easy to get stuck in a rut of doing the same progressions over and over. I was playing with different ways to add movement as well as force the players to think about where

Continue reading

Circle Drills

There are a number of high level coaches that use a lot of circle drills in their sessions including Barry Gorman (long time coach at Penn State) and David Williams (Manchester United Academy). I've had the opportunity to watch both of them run sessions at our International Coaching Seminar so I've used some of their

Continue reading

The Day Before a Game

There are times that I'll have a practice on a Thursday when the team has a Friday game. This is a session that comes from our Brazilian Academy Journal that I have used. It provides a relaxed environment where the players can have some fun and express themselves. The small-sided games give the players a

Continue reading

Multi-Theme Practice

During this time of year I like to run a few sessions that incorporate competitive games that test the player’s dribbling, passing and shooting. Making the exercises into competitive games increases the motivation of the players and challenges them to perform the skills under pressure. You can use almost any drill or exercises in this

Continue reading

RESEARCH: SOCCER TRAINING DRILLS FOR ENDURANCE TRAINING

This is a post from Scott Moody of the Soccer Fit Academy. I thought you would find it interesting because it follows on from the discussion that was generated by the post where I discussed the preseason running program I used with one of my teams. I was recently forwarded a soccer conditioning research article

Continue reading

How Can You Tell A Good Coach From a Bad One?

In the current issue of the NSCAA Soccer Journal, Editor, Dr. Jay Martin discusses what he sees as the difference between a "Coach" and a "Trainer".  His thought is that a trainer can possibly set up a drill/exercise or even plan a training session, but can't really coach that session.  Whereas the coach can set

Continue reading

Coaching Philosophy

I feel that one of the most important responsibilities of a coach is to constantly evaluate WHAT they choose to teach their players, HOW they go about teaching it and most importantly, WHY they are choosing to focus on those topics. Without this kind of evaluation there is a real danger that we can fall

Continue reading

From Shooting to Finishing

When I work on shooting with my teams I like to create realistic situations that transfer easily into the real game. My favorite resource for these kind of exercises is a book by Chelsea Academy Coach, Michael Beale, called Training Creative Goalscorers. This is the best book or dvd I've seen for exercises that engage

Continue reading

'Fun Day' after Tournament Weekends

I always have a 'Fun Practice' with my teams after a tournament weekend. This break from the normal routine gives the players a chance to play some fun games and just enjoy being with their teammates. 'Fun' is defined differently depending on the age and competitive level of the team. My younger teams (U9 &

Continue reading

Encouraging a Competitive Attitude

Coming out of a long winter of indoor practices and Futsal games, I'm always anxious to play our first outdoor league game of the spring. I was looking forward to it even more than usual this year because it had been more than a month since my U12 girls team had played their last Futsal

Continue reading