How much time to spend on each activity?

[AlfredoParticipant]

Gary,

In planning out our sessions how much time would you suggest to spend on each activity during a session? As an example, our sessions are 1 hour and 45 minutes long and we have 2 – 3 per week. Do you work all your stuff every day of training or just a couple topics per day spread out over the week? Any guidance or suggestions on this would be helpful.

Here is an example of what I’m thinking for a session. Am I way off on the amount of time to dedicate to each?

Warm up – 4 v 1 rondo – 10 minutes

Building from the back – 15 minutes

Pressure – 10 minutes

Attacking – 20 minutes

Rest of the time would be stuff I feel we need to work on like 1v1, combination play, speed and/or controlling balls out of the air.

Thanks!

 

[GaryKeymaster]

Hi Alfredo,

So here’s what a typical session breakdown for us could look like:

• Warmup (10 mins)
• Technical phase (20 mins)
• Tactical (30 mins)
• Play (30 mins)

Technical phase of course are where the Rondos go. (+ other possible tech activities from time to time like you mention)

For the tactical, I suggest you focus on just one topic in a session (especially if you’re just starting out).

What age and level is your team? I think I can offer a more specific recommendation knowing that.

 

p.s. The times you see there are flexible, and can expand/contract depending on what the team needs. That’s the art of coaching.

[Ryan RichParticipant]

just to clarify a few aspects:

Tactical:

– this is the choreography part, so essentially the patterns both offensively and defensively?

– in that 30 minutes do you build up to full pressure with defenders? I coach U9 and U11 by the way.

Play:

– how do you handle this part in terms of teams, 7v7, 8v8 due to numbers?

– how often do you step in at this point?

 

[AlfredoParticipant]

Thanks Gary those details help quite a bit. Here’s a little background on my team. We are a U11 girls competitive team and play 8 v 8 but moving to 11 v 11 next August. The team make up is upper silver, almost gold (5 A Players, 7 B Players and a C player).

We have  solid possession against the weaker teams (like 70% plus control of the ball and we win those games). Against the stronger teams it goes down to like 50% because they pressure a lot better and are much more organized than the weaker teams. A big problem is that we have a really hard time transitioning from the back into the attack, penetrating and scoring against those stronger teams.Even against the weaker teams I feel like we should be scoring more.

We started in August training quite a bit on building out of the back with the PDF you posted then added a few sessions of pressure choreography around October. We haven’t trained at all on attacking patterns but with the advice of Andres Deza (the Deanza Force girls U14 possession coach) we had just started on 2 v 1 and 3 v 2 training to help with the attacking.

 

 

 

[GaryKeymaster]

Tactical:

– this is the choreography part, so essentially the patterns both offensively and defensively?

Yes

– in that 30 minutes do you build up to full pressure with defenders? I coach U9 and U11 by the way.

Depends on how well the players are doing. You must judge how far along they are with the material, and what it is they can handle.

For instance in working the back 5, I say don’t be too worried about doing zero pressure for a very long time. The point is to burn the execution of the patterns (with quality) into the player’s heads first. This doesn’t happen in 1 session, or 2, or 20.

Sure … at some point experiment by throwing in 1 defender, and see how they do. And see how you do managing it.
Sure … at some point in the future throw in 2, and see how they do.

It’s all a judgement call on your part.

We build up pressure, but a ton of time is with zero pressure.

Play:

– how do you handle this part in terms of teams, 7v7, 8v8 due to numbers?

Yes, but “play” doesn’t always mean “a scrimmage”.
It can be a structured “possession game” as well.

– how often do you step in at this point?

Depends.
But usually interruptions happen when the intensity we want isn’t there.

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