Tag Archives for " skill "

0 Encouraging Improvisation and Creativity

By Sean Pearson Area Size: 36 x 42 Yards Teams: 15 mins Players: 6 v 6 Objectives To understand when and where to improvise and be creative For players to feel encouraged to try different ways of attacking to increase confidence Set-Up Three zones of equal area divide the field into 3 sections. There is an overload of 3v1 in

1 Stats Don't Win Games

As an American I'm drawn to statistics to evaluate players and teams. The mainstream American sports of Baseball and Football are often viewed through the stats of the players.  They are evaluated and ranked based on batting averages, yards per carry, quarterback rating and earned run averages. Soccer enthusiasts used to decry the use of

6 Juggling - Developmentally Important or Just a Nice Trick

Our club recently established a set of benchmarks for how many times the players should be able to juggle at a given age. Here are those targets:

U8 - 10 with feet only - 10 with thighs only - 4 with head only
U9 - 20 with feet only - 20 with thighs only - 6 with head only
U10 - 10 with feet only - 10 with thighs only - 12 with head only
U11 - 80 with feet only - 80 with thighs only - 24 with head only
U12 - 100+ with feet only - 100+ with thighs only - 50+ with head only

Unfortunately, most of our players in the club are below these standards so we'll be working to improve that this year.

When you talk about juggling with coaches you usually

4 Failure, Success and the Birth of Creativity

We develop through failure…it’s how we learn.

For players to truly develop their skills or talent to their fullest potential, we need to keep them engaged in the process. Adversity, challenges and failures can be tremendous learning opportunities that motivate and engage players that train in an environment designed to teach them to adapt and overcome. Or, if not utilized correctly, failures and challenges can be stumbling blocks of discouragement that hinder a player’s progression towards their goals. It’s all about the way we view failure, and the path we take to persevere through challenging times. This all comes to fruition in the teaching and learning strategies we as coaches implement with our players.

In our programs, we try and attack this within each repetition, each drill, in every session.

2 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