This topic contains 27 replies, has 15 voices, and was last updated by 
-
Posts
-
Out of all the activities provided by 3Four3, I’m curious as to what activities you use the most and why (specifying age group and if the team plays small sided soccer games or not)?
Here is a run down of what I have done, regardless of age group or playing small sided or full sided soccer games:
Every session, we do 4v0 and 4v1 rondo’s for warm ups. I have not deviated from this into more complex rondo games as we are still learning proper movement off the ball as well as receiving and passing. This activity is a technically challenging one that I can foresee years using.
I have used the Set Tactical Training (STT) and Choreographed Pressure (CP) quite a bit in the beginning of the season. As the season progresses, we get through these activities quicker and add pressure (phase play) and will give numbers up to the unit of players that we are favoring in the activity (building up from the back or choreographed pressure to win the ball in the attacking half of the field).
Then we’ll often get into working on attacking patterns (shadow play with full 11v0), then finally a scrimmage, playing what appears to be a phase game with an emphasis on attacking patterns or building patterns, depending what side of the ball that is being coached. Do not have enough numbers for a full sided two team scrimmage.
Admittedly, I have used the S pattern only once when we were in a gym. The losing the man activity, we address in the STT and attacking patterns with false checks away or to the ball or on turns. The teams I’ve coached have had good success in games playing possession soccer. There is much room for improvement and I’m curious if the activities I’m using are in par with what my fellow 3Four3 coaches are doing. Are there 3Four3 activities I should revisit and use more frequently, and why?
I coach an adult women’s team. Because of field space issues here in San Francisco, we only get to practice once a week for an hour on half a field. Our numbers can vary significantly from practice to practice, but we’ll always do 3v1 (or 4v1) and if we have enough, the double rondo. The upcoming season we’ll probably start doing 4v2+1. I’d like to do more with choreographed attacking patterns, but it’s hard with the limited amount of time we have each week and variable attendance (and to a certain extent interest level, if we only have an hour, people want to be active and playing as opposed to going through slower moving topics).
When I did JV boys this past fall (at a small private school, so minimal skill level and interest from the kids), we would always do rondos for the first 20 minutes. Beginning of the season we started with 4v0 and slowly progressed to 4v1. We would also do double rondos almost every day (or every other day). I found the S pattern was a good warm up whenever we were focusing on a shooting topic. Have the last person receiving across his body, and instead of dribbling to the back of the line, take a quick shot on goal, and then head back. We also used the 5v5+5 keep away exercise. Again do to space issues, we would only get a quarter of a field to practice on it so our activities were limited. Because of this, we would spend 10-15 minutes before games working on short goal kick scenarios and attacking patterns as that was the only time we would ever have enough space to work on these.
I didn’t really like the S-drill and used something else that I found and posted here about many months ago. (Also posted here).
The team really took to it and improved greatly. Also, it basically taught the same things but much easier to execute.
There are many many many things you can add to this dirll including “shoulder peek, receiving across your body, passing across the body, losing your man (taking space before receiving a pass), keep the ball rolling (not bouncing), etc….
The 4-v-0 and 4-v-1 Rondos were good. We used those at the beginning of the season and focused more on team shape and attacking patterns later in the season.
The youtube drill linked above was done every day was a warmup. By the end of the season they looked remarkable. At the beginning of the season they also looked remarkably BAD! It made me realize that most kids that are in U16 (and probably above) never are trained in the basics on how to pass and receive a ball properly.
I have had problems with some of the rondos as the boys have not enjoyed doing them, especially 4v0. When my backs turned they will mess about and then tell me its boring so I have had to adapt it.
One thing I will say about the 4v0 rondo game is that it is incredibly useful decievingly simple looking. I made the mistake of trying 4v1 with a group of U10 boys (mixed ages). The primary issue was the grass was overgrown making it difficult to pass the ball effectively while keeping it on the ground. The grass killed the pass and often tee’d the ball up making it too easy for the ball to be knocked up in the air. Adding a defender in the middle was too much considering the condition of the field and the age/skill level of the boys.
Given another chance I would have kept it 4v0 and made sure I did it every training session for at least 15 minutes, to establish an expected routine. For me, the kids that young that don’t enjoy it, haven’t developed a taste for the activity. They’re often not that good at it because there is a ton of technical detail to cover which includes one of the most fundamental skills that often is not coached, movement off the ball and anticipating the pass after the pass. To me, if a 4v0 game can be introduced to players that are U8 (for us that 4v4 small sided soccer with no goal keepers), even if it is not done or expected in games, you are imprinting the skill sets at a very early age that can continue to be refined as the players mature.
For the teams I’ve coached that are more advanced, I have always used a rondo game for warm up, often it was 7v2. I have since changed it to 4v0 to 4v1 progression. With the 4v1 I ask the defender to go 50% and be passive and we ramp it up to full on pressure as we find our touch and get warm. Even with the older more advanced players there is a tendency of the players to not get after the activity and being too casual. So a watchful eye is necessary regardless of the age group.
Hi Paul,
My goto activities are for sure the 4v0, 4v1, and 3v1 rondos. The offensive pressure choreography, play out the back, and attack patterns 1 and 2 pretty much dominated our curriculum.
Background: Started last March with mix of u10/11 boys. Continued through November with mostly same players at U12. We play 8v8 and I currently have 9 players.
For me, the 4v0 is great because, even though it was used every session, it is never really the same drill. I can adapt it based on what I see in our performances on weekends. One session may focus more on getting to the cones, another session with focus on receiving across the body, weight of the passes, etc. Then…once you get that rythm going..that one-two, one-two, one-two it is a really exciting to see and hear. My difficulty was trying to really watch the activities with 3 squares (12 players) and trying to see everything. So I would progress to a 4v1, perhaps sooner than I should of, just so I can better manage the activity with 2 squares (I have no assistants). The other benefit of this rondo is that i can group players according to their skill sets so that more advanced players are in one square. Then I can set different objectives in the two/three groups (more passes, smaller grid size, etc.) One last comment about the rondo. Some of my players ‘enjoyed’ being in the middle as they were trying to win the ball. I am not sure if you experienced this too. What I tried to emphasize was that being in the middle should be, well, humiliating. I think some of the boys came to the conclusion that they may not be as technically sound as their peers and perhaps preferred to be in the middle since they viewed themselves as better defenders maybe. That really bothers me and said alot about thte ambitions of the player.
Like you, I also focused on the STT and CP quite a bit. I had to adapt it to an 8v8 so I played a 3-3-1 using a single CB and CM as pivots. I toyed with the idea of using a 2-3-2 so that two CBs were used and thus they learn to communicate when there is a back four at 11v11. With using 2 FBs and 2 wingers I think I had a better chance of keeping possession. So I trained the FB to combo with his winger and overlap. Too much pressure, cut it back and go the other way…attack if we have numbers. Give them the framework to make the decisions, present the options, then go. so far it is working great. Then, i started working on the second attack pattern so my #9 can be more involved in the training (I have to work with my front four and back 4 together) so i introduced losing your man while working more on the second pattern. The second pattern consisted of the FB playing a ball to the winger. The winger would focus on losing his man, getting to the space, and checking his shoulders. Does he a) turn and go forward and hit his #9 or b) play a quick one-two to his overlapping FB? While this happens the #9 is losing his man while the ball is being played to the #7/#11. I’ll instruct him based on the scenarios and play accordingly. We practice this 8v0 and then put very little pressure to better simulate game speed. Then we carry that into a scrimmage with another team on the club. At this point, we fail to execute between patterns consistently in match play and until we can better coordinate our spacing, timing, and decsion making I have not seen a good reason to go to the third pattern yet.
It would be good to know if Gary and Brian had a specific reason why the midfield pressure activity was not covered in the Seattle clinic. I am not sure if this activity represents the ‘core’ framework; however, i have done the drill multiple times in training and really find it valuable. When we get more comfortable on the ball and hold it for longer periods of time, especially in our oppenents half, I can see where this activity can simulate match play quite well and I believe helps the player identify those spaces to play the ball into the final third. Same going the other way when we play compact in our half and try to win the ball back…very good drill.
Hi Michael,
It wasn’t covered in the field clinic because of limited time really. We’ve given a lot of thought in trying to reduce our training methodology to a solid core.
But with limited time, if we’re going to introduce a framework that will offer a club of coaches (all of which are at different levels & circumstances) the most helpful and useful impact, we had to do some trimming.
And since the club was interested in the fundamentals of how behind our “possession soccer” … midfield pressure got the axe. 🙂
p.s. That activity can also be quite a bit more challenging to execute than the others, so don’t really want to frustrate coaches out of the gate. (super happy you’re getting lots of value from it)
We are running 4 v 0, 4 v 1, and into 3 v 1 every practice. One thing that I have found with these is that you can’t let these drag out. This is full speed in 1 minute bursts. If we drag longer through these they will slow down and not give max effort. If they know the time frame, my U11’s push hard through them.
We then move on to S -Drill and then a modified Double Rondo.
Those are the every practice elements at this point. Though we are progressing into choreography now as well.
We did rondos at every practice with my U10 team last year. We started with 4v0. The activity lacked intensity, and we were constantly pushing the boys for more energy. We stuck with it, and didn’t progress beyond 4v0 for a good part of the year because the quality of execution wasn’t there. I tried turning it into a competition, but even that didn’t help much. Finally, I created a game where after receiving the ball across the body 15 times the person with the ball could take a shot on goal. I ran it as a competition between two teams, and put a goalie into the goal. Suddenly I had intensity. The quality shot way up, and they wanted to keep playing. If they missed the shot I had the team start over again until someone scored. The next practice I started raised the target to take a shot until we were ready to progress to 4v1. I ran 4v1 as a competition with the person in the middle coming from the other team (which dramatically improved the intensity). As with most development some kids got it faster than others, and depending on the teams I formed and who was in the middle the quality ranged from pretty impressive to sloppy. That said – there was definitely growth over the season and by the end of the season some of them were asking if we could do rondos.
Wow, now that was seriously creative/innovative Bret.
Huge value you just offered everyone here!That is an interesting modification!
How did you set it up with the shot on goal? Was the goal in a certain location? Were all players shooting at the same goal?
Here is some further clarification on the 4v0 shooting game. The rondo squares were set up ~ 25 yards from the goal. Both teams used the same goal to shoot on. There was nothing special about placement beyond choosing an area with good grass equal distance from the goal.
The rule to unlock the goal for shooting was that the team needed to complete 15 consecutive passes that were received across the body. If a player on the team made a mistake (didn’t receive across the body, one touch pass..etc) they had to start back at zero. Once they completed the 15th consecutive pass the player with the ball could dribble towards the goal and take a shot, or could pass the ball to another player so he could take the shot.
Once I saw progress with receiving the ball across the body I layered in the movement to the nearest cone to support the play. At that point I moved to 4v1. In retrospect I should have stayed with the 4v0 game a bit longer to really lock in the ideas, but we had been at the rondos for over 3 months and I was ready to move on. Once we made the switch to 4v1 progress took a step back with the biggest issue being the players getting to the supporting cone. I had to make the rondo box larger for a while so the kids could get use to the pressure.
Thank you Bret. I love the concept and I tried it last night with 20 high school aged players. Set up five 4v0 rondos going to 15 consecutive passes. The goal was set up with a 20 yard shooting line that the player had to shoot before crossing. Although there was variation as to how far the various rondo grids were set up from the scoring line, the players were allowed to dribble up to, not pass the line to shoot. Another detail was the shot had to hit the back of the net before the ground so there was some pace on the shot, not just a pass into goal.
We progressed the activity into a four 4v1 as the numbers were ideal, took your conept of the sole defender aiding their team by hindering the team they were defending against in their completing the 15 consecutive passes. Eventually the defender tires and the 15 passes were completed and we had successful teams getting their shots in. Added a excercise such as pushups or planks for the loosing team(s) as an additional incentive.
Overall, very pleased with the dramatic competitive pickup in the activities. Having that many rondos will be difficult to keep a watchful eye on the technical details of all groups, but I think that can be managed by focusing in on a group or two as a quality check to keep the activity honest.
I can see using this adjustment in other 3Four3 activities such as the 6v6+3 rondo, making those games more competitive as well if/when needed.
This is really good stuff Bret and great feedback Paul. I am going to run this tomorrow with my U11’s. Just picked up a U17 team and they could not handle this yet. What do you think of having the 4 v 0 group that does not complete their 15 passes having to send a defender into the playing area to create a 4 v 1 +1. I was thinking of the next level progression beyond going to goal on a goalie only. It seems that this could build in some field decision making skills. So the way I see it would be a progression of:
4 v 0
4 v 0, 15 passes
4 v 0 + 1, 15 passes
4 v 0 into a 4 v 1 + 1, 15 passes
Then into 4 v 1, 3 v 1, etc
I think Michael your suggestions are good ones and you’ll need to run them and observe their impact on the team. Assuming the U17 team might have quite a variance of abilities/comprehension so there may be players that need to stick to the 4v0 and players that are ready for the 4v1. Adding an additional defender to the hinder the shot of the successful group is a way to advance the realism of the activity so there is some urgency of the shot. From my example, the group that completed their sequence could be casual in getting close to the shooting line and placing their shot. Having a defender come at them adds a pressure element to keep the shooting aspect of the game honest.
If I hear you right, maybe keep the group that needs it, running 4v0 while the more advanced group with a 4v1 with the incentive of shooting on goal. I think that is one way of managing multiple skill levels within a team.
Here are some other suggestions to the 4v0 and 4v1 rondos.
Having a passive defender in the 4v1 helps illustrate the importance of players getting all the way to the cone in support and providing the correct angles of support to the ball. If the defender covers the angle of support sharply and the support player is even a step off from the cone, the ball may played to the support player’s wrong foot having him face the wrong direction as it was the only space to play into because of coverage. The support player receiving the ball now has to deal with pressure coming in and even tighter space to play into and often the ball is lost, all because the supporting player was a step off from fully committing to checking to the near cone.
Another element is passing too early. Sometimes the defender in the middle tires and in catching their breath they may skip pressing a player in anticipation of the pass after and by passing early we put the ball in a higher pressure situation than if we kept the ball. The solution, hold the ball for a few split seconds longer to enourage the defender to press, then pass the ball out harms way.
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.