This week's post comes to us from Bob Warming, the Head Men's Coach of Penn State University. Warming ranks third among active NCAA Division I coaches with 441 wins. He has been voted Big 10 Coach of the Year for two out of the last three years.
Coach Warming has traveled the world examining the training methods of the top teams and coaches. The innovative training system he describes below is something that most of us don't use and will certainly help take your team to the next level.
First of all, don't feel bad if you haven't been doing this type training. And...if you are not doing this...don't feel alone! In my experience, very little of this type training is being performed in American soccer training sessions. It's not being taught in our coaching schools and yet it is prevalent throughout top teams in the world. If the academies and first teams at major clubs are doing this type training...shouldn't we be doing this type training in the USA?
I believe that we can add an important component to our youth training in America. I have seen this training develop quicker feet, quicker minds, and a transformation on my own players about thinking, combining and playing in Triangles. I only wish my players had started doing these type exercises when they were younger! And that is the main reason for this article.
Since we began using this methodology as part of our training, we have never been out of first place in the Big 10 Conference for even one week from October 2012 to November 2014. It was an amazing run by our players. Our percentage of completed passes has been over 82%, not typical in college soccer. We have had soccer at Penn State for 105 seasons and a lot of records have been broken during this recent run by our players. We are far from perfect and do have our bad performances. However, I believe the success of the program , in part, is because of this type training.
Ok...so what is this training? Virtually every European soccer club is performing some form of mannequin training in their youth development programs...and even with their first teams. There is a lot of value in the repetition and patterns of combination play and different weight and angles of passes that mannequin training can provide...that is why so many clubs are using them! In fact, its difficult to find a pro training session of any top club on the internet where you don't see mannequins set up on for some portion of training.
In my experience, from observing training sessions across our country, very few clubs in the US Soccer Development Academy are utilizing mannequin training as part of our youth development program. Outside the Academy, its almost non existent. The coaches of the players in the Academies likely did not do mannequin training when they were playing, so they don't have a lot of experience in using them personally. We tend to teach only what we know! Some of the primary reasons we have found that mannequin training has not be prevalent in the US are: lack of exposure to this type training as a player, not being taught in our coaching schools, storage issues of mannequins, cost, portability etc.
I am certainly not saying that mannequin training is the magic bullet for developing players. However, when you examine what first teams and youth teams are doing in top clubs in Europe to develop players and examine what we are doing in our youth development programs... this type training is one prevalent training method that seems to be missing.
The good news for you is that we have developed a completely free coaching education website demonstrates for coaches how to do some of this type training and some small sided games that can be used as a progression from the passing exercises. We will continually update the content on the website to provide more ideas and exercises. www.TheTriangleTrainingMethod.com If you want to incorporate mannequin training, similar to what the top clubs are doing with their players, the free website will provide you with hundreds of training ideas and quality demonstrations.
One of my personal favorite exercises comes from a mannequin exercise that Arsene Wenger does with his first team players in developing concepts of playing between the lines of opponents. There is so much to teach in this exercise...body shape, communication, looking before you receive it, finding a new space to receive the ball, proper footwork, backing up to create space, different weight passes and many more. http://www.thetriangletrainingmethod.com/three-box-progression.html
[wpsharely id="6889"] [/wpsharely]When I first started coaching, I used big traffic cones…yep, I know... I am old as dirt and that was all there was available back then. No little cones existed when I started coaching nearly 40 years ago. When little cones came on the market I thought they wouldn't work because there was no height…as usual, I was wrong.
As you can see in the video the triangles we use take the place of mannequins. We use the flat triangles because the concept that I was so wrong about with the tall traffic cones applies to mannequins. What we need for passing exercises that involve mannequin training was the space that mannequins occupy, not the height. That’s where The Training Triangles come in. What we have found is that the Triangles can be used for a lot more than replacing mannequins. They can also provide great agility and quick feet training in a small space (takes the place of speed ladders)
There is a lot of great work being done by a lot of coaches in the USA, not trying to change any of that! Just think we are missing a training piece that is occurring in Academies in Europe. Hopefully the free website will help you implement some of these training concepts into the first 45 minutes of your teams training.
Happy New Year to you and your family! I hope that 2015 will be a great year of learning and success for you and your team!
Bob Warming
Head Soccer Coach
Penn State University
Please leave your comments or questions about this training method below.
