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Coaches,
As you know, training does not give the players enough touches on the ball to be of good quality… so what technical activities do you have your players do?
For example, my teams will do this at training sessions:
*Rondo
*Small sided activity – pattern play, pressing, possession, lose your man, etc
*Expanded activity – pattern play, pressing, possession, lose your man, etc
*Scrimmage – 9v9
So we do get tons of touches on the ball throughout the session (especially in Rondo), but I want more stuff the players can do on their own.
Feedback welcome… youtube videos welcomed!
Watch tons of games on TV.
Having a wall to one touch with or practice refining the touch is a great individual skill builder along with juggling but not just juggling- juggling on the move I think is really good as well.
Any host of activities to develop ball skills. Coerver. Individual creations. I am a fan of some stuff I found online from Inter Milan’s Academy- but that’s because I am a eurosnob. If a kid can find one other player, the individual skill that can be refined in a 1v1 game with 4 goals is enormous.
A couple of ideas I’ve tried. All have their merits, but getting the kids to put in the time and work have been a challenge in my environment and for that reason iSoccer is interesting since it tries to solve the motivation problem.
- Ball Mastery. Coerver-type activities or any activity that has a specific purpose.
- Senseball/Netball – I found this after learning of Michel Bruyninckx and Cogitraining (Brain-centered learning) – senseball.com. The idea is to get a bunch of repetitions doing very specific type movements that are a little more geared to passing/receiving using a ball on a string. The senseball was way too expensive so I found a cheaper version, however I do use their videos to learn the details of the movements: http://www.satorsoccer.com/AGORA-Soccer-Ball-Net-Carrier_Trainer-Bag/productinfo/SA%2D6415/
- iSoccer – An interesting take on motivation with the younger generation since it relies on social networking and technology to encourage players to practice at home and get better (improve their iSoccer scores).
I give homework to my players (U14G). Mostly juggling.
At first it was the usual. One third (the keeners) did it. The middle third needed encouraging. The bottom third avoided it.
I turned to the only thing a player respects and that’s playing time. Parents are told up front the expectation.
Currently, if a player can’t juggle the ball x times using x different body parts (left foot, right foot, thigh, etc), they cannot play the first half of the next game. They get tested the practice before the game.
It works.
thanks for the ideas guys! Will be posting the quality of my U12 boys team later this week
With U11 boys I did a simple “juggles or pushups” home workout assignment that worked very well (I picked it up from a friend of mine at a different club)
Idea was simple:
– At each practice players had to do X “juggles + pushups”. If the weekly goal is 20 consecutive juggles, then a player that maxed at 16 did 4 push-ups to complete the set.
– We started out at 12 and increased by 3 every week. I froze the goal for the week whenever our top juggler couldn’t reach it. I would change these parameters based on the level of the team.
– It was all done on an honor system before each practice started. Players would juggle on their own, then tell me their daily max and do their push-ups.
– It sound fairly simple, but it motivated the boys to work on the juggling at home and the entire team got better very quickly.
– I repeated this the following season, but this time I stipulated that you could only alternate right/left (as you know some of the kids will rely on one foot to juggle). Once again, it worked great.
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