Pre Season Training III

Short Prea-Seasons

If you are coaching a school, college or tournament team you are likely faced with a very short time (one to two weeks) to prepare your team for the season. Below are some thoughts on how to get the most out of this time.

Player Evaluation

You need to learn the skill/technical, tactical and physical capabilities of your players within the first or second day of practice. You can run the practices and drills you find at soccerpracticebooks.com. The important consideration is that you collect information about your players. If you don't know the players by name yet, give them numbered shirts and have a list with their name next to the number. Across the top of the list, write the areas you want to assess. Keep it fairly brief because you will not have time to evaluate each player against 30 criteria. An example might be:

ball control
1v1
shooting
passing
tackling
speed
endurance
tactics
attitude
leadership

Then get someone else to organize and run the drills so that you can stand back and write down a number between 1 (poor) and 10 (outstanding) under each criteria for each player. Stand in a location where you can observe all players in all drills. You may wish to get a second person to rate players to compare.

Choose System of Play

At the end of day 1 or day 2, go over the player evaluation results and develop a system of play and game strategy based on:

1. the player talent available
2. any information you have about the competition
3. your team's competitiveness in the league

If you need help with this, visit Systems of Play.

Develop Deficient Areas

Based on the player abilities and your chosen system, clearly identify the areas you need to work on most before the season starts. That could be a combination of technical, tactical, fitness or mental areas. Select appropriate drills and sequence them into practice sessions. A useful tip here is to focus the practices on skill and tactical development with many scrimmages and have the players do aerobic training on their own on alternating days, such as a 5km run. After the season starts, practices can be comprehensive again without the need for separate fitness training. Have an exhibition game if possible to see how the team is progressing and decide if you need to make changes to your program.

Schedule

Your two week pre-season schedule could look like this:

Day 1: Player evaluation
Day 2: Player evaluation
Day 3: Team practice
Day 4: Individual fitness training
Day 5: Practice
Day 6: Individual fitness
Day 7: Practice
Day 8: Exhibition Game
Day 9: Practice
Day 10: Fitness
Day 11: Practice
Day 12: Exhibition Game
Day 13: Practice
Day 14: Pre-Season Meeting

If at all possible, scout the opposition during this time (their exhibition games, practices or tournaments) to confirm your overall strategy

If you only have a week, have the exhibition game on day 6.

Good Luck

Soccer Coaching - Overview

Soccer coaching is probably the most complex coaching assignment in all of sports. Soccer coaching involves an understanding of soccer specific skills, soccer specific fitness training, and soccer specific nutrition.

But that's not all. In coaching soccer , a coach also needs psychological skills to deal with all aspects of individual and team mental preparations. Soccer coaching involves a tremendous amount of data analysis and problem solving during games and practices. Soccer coaching requires visionary, strategic and tactical thinking skills.

And all of the above requirements change with age groups and gender being coached.

It is impossible for a novice or experienced soccer coach to develop all the knowledge and skills from scratch. That is why there are soccer coaching schools and seminars.

Not all aspiring or established soccer coaches can afford time or money for that training.

Our site, soccerpracticebooks.com has been developed to provide you with key resources to become a better soccer coach!

Defending Throw-Ins

The question is whether to have a defender mark in front or behind the attacker on a throw-in.

The principle of defending is to mark goalside of the attacker, i.e. between the attacker and the goal you're defending. This is true for throw-ins as well.

If the pass or throw are short, a defender can decide on whether to step around the attacker to intercept, slide-tackle or stay goalside (let attacker receive ball and then delay-jockey-tackle). If the pass/throw is long, then the defender has the closest distance to the ball.

The goal of the attacker is to move into space past the defender, so why give it to them by standing in front of them??

You may want to consider sandwiching the attacker closest to your goal by having a defender behind and in front.

Soccer Fitness Basics

Soccer fitness training is extremely complex compared to other sports. If you consider the basic energy systems, aerobic - anaerobic, most sports have a dominant requirement of one of these. Proper soccer fitness needs both. At high levels, soccer players run between 10 - 15 km a game, needing a strong aerobic base. Someone once said that soccer players are serial sprinters. For quick speed bursts, the anaerobic system needs to be developed.

But that's not all for soccer fitness specifics. There are many elements of the game that require pure strength. One on one body contact requires upper body strength - hence a recent soccer fitness training trend towards the weight room. But not just for upper body. Jumping requirements necessitate leg strength to maximize vertical leaping ability.

Soccer fitness training must also address agility and flexibility. There are many stop-start runs, many change of directions, many unnatural twists of the body.
So how to train soccer specific fitness? With limited practice time at youth levels, how to build it in without sacrificing working with the ball and developing ball skills?
The obvious answer is to encourage kids to play as much soccer on their own. That will develop a lot of the fundamental skill and soccer fitness. As a coach, you can use the soccer fitness resources available and cleverly build them into your practice plans so that they do not take away from your skill and tactical development. That is exactly what we have done at soccerpracticebooks.com

In addition, you can take some of the soccer fitness drills and ask your players to do some of the work on their own. A lot of the basic plyometrics can even be done while watching TV or listening to music while outside. You can never do enough.
Ultimately, the motivation of each individual is what is going to make them excel. As coach, you need to balance the team's need for soccer fitness with skill and tactics development. Try our practice plans and you'll get a good idea!!

Find soccer fitness resources at:
soccer fitness training

Soccer Skill Development

The key to developing soccer skills as a young kid is the number of touches you get on the ball. I heard it said long time ago that 4000 ball touches per week are a good number. So let's do the soccer math:

As a kid, we used to play 3 hours a day, 6 days a week. Half of it was 1v1 , 2v2 or 3v3 games with lots of individual action. The other half was full field scrimmages. At an average of 5 touches a minute, this translates into 5400 touches a week or more.

Contrast this with what you see on soccer fields today. First of all, kids tend to only play in organizations, i.e. clubs. If they are fortunate, they practice twice a week for 1.5 hours and play one game. Let's observe practices. The absolute killer to soccer skill development are line drills with many kids sharing one ball. You can tell by kids standing around waiting. Next are long set up times the coach uses between drills. Then you see warm-up runs without a ball and fitness work without a ball followed by full field scrimmage. If the kids are lucky they get 200 touches a practice and maybe 20 in a game. Total is 420 per week and you wonder why kids aren't as skillful as they used to be? As they grow older, it becomes more and more difficult to make up for that lost time.

That is why our practices at www.soccerpracticebooks.com are based on maximizing the number of touches on the ball. The key principles is to work in small groups of 2-4 players for most drills. Warm-ups quite often involve individual ball work. Fitness drills involve a ball as well. Players never wait for their next touch of the ball. We also have designed the entire practice sessions such that a coach can set up cones for all the drills before the practice starts, so that there is no time wasted between drills. We focus on continuous action with the ball. In our typical 90 minute practice session, we estimate a player gets between 700-1000 touches. At two sessions per week and a game this gets you to 1420 to 2020 touches a week or five times what you see around the parks.

We believe we are close as possible to delivering the skill development of earlier generations. Try our practices - you won't regret it.

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Soccer Drills - How To Coach

1. Be prepared before the practice starts. Have all the equipment you need ready and set up your practice grids before the team arrives.
2. Stand in a position where all players can hear you and explain the objective of the drill and key coaching points very briefly.
3. Have volunteers demonstrate the drill and make corrections until they get it right. Demonstrate yourself only if necessary.
4. Ask players for anything they might not have understood and clarify.
5. Stand outside of the drill area, not in the middle.
6. Observe players and see if they can solve any issues by themselves.
7. If you need to correct, stop the drill, very briefly explain/demonstrate what went wrong and how to correct it.
8. Praise players for correcting it.
9. Observe again.
10. If the group is successful and there is time left, increase the complexity to keep players challenged. For example, ask to execute drill at a higher speed or to a higher level of perfection, or both.
11. For a 15-20 minute drill, the coach must not take more than 3 minutes with explanations and demonstrations. A lot of coaches take the large part of drill time and don't give the players a chance.
12. The coach shouldn't be sweating and be tired, the players must be.

Pre Season Training II

Plan each of the two phases within a weekly schedule. General guidelines to consider:

Skills/Techniques

In the general phase you want to assess the abilities of your players as individuals and as a team. You can have tryouts for spots on the team as well as for positions within the team. In the specific phase you want to develop, refine the techniques and teach players to use them in combination. For example, after they have perfected dribbling skills and shooting skills, you want them to perfect a precise, powerful shot after a successful dribble.

Tactics/Strategies

In the general preparation, you want to assess your players and decide the style, system of play and position for each player, including a depth chart (i.e. who is best for a position, 2nd in line , 3rd). You want to consider whatever knowledge you have about your opponents and the relative strength of your team in addition to your personnel when you design your team's style and system. In the specific preparation, you want to train your team's system, both in units (goalie, defense, midfield, attack) as well as in various combinations (defenders and midfielders, midfielders and forwards, goalie and defenders) leading to the full team functioning well together.

Mental Training

In the general phase, you want to introduce emotional controls for individuals (relaxation, stretching, breathing techniques) and attentional control (concentration - visualization is a candidate). You need to assess your players and see if there are any individuals or circumstantial barriers to team harmony. Schedule one on one conversations with players to get to know them and for them to get to know and trust you. Develop strategies for managing each individual (communication, motivation, etc.) and for the team in total so you can prepare them individually for peak performance. In other words, find out what makes each player "tick" and make them "tick".

In the specific phase, start applying emotional and concentration control as part of pre-practice and pre-game routine for your exhibition games. Towards the end of the specific phase, set team goals for the season and have a team bonding event.

Physical Preparation

In the general phase, build an aerobic base (10 km runs, playing beach soccer in the sand, etc.), develop flexibility where needed (particularly goalkeepers) and introduce concepts of proper athletic nutrition. In the specific phase, complete aerobic training by developing aerobic power (long time at high intensity), start developing leg strength (lunges, weights) and train anaerobically (sprint, interval). Insist on proper nutrition throughout the week. Use measurements of time, distance and weight to chart player progress.

Peaking Index

In the general phase, your work volume should be medium and your intensity should be low. In the specific phase, keep volume at medium, increase intensity to medium with the last two weeks at high.

Considerations

The suggestion would be a practice to game ratio of 3:1. For example, practice on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and play a full field game on Saturday. Do most of the aerobic work on Monday and Wednesday and more of the tactical and skill work (with lower aerobic content) on Friday. Keep this ratio going right through the season.

As you move into the specific phase increase the intensity, i.e. be physically, mentally, technically and tactically more demanding. For example, demand full attention and concentration, execute drills faster and better with more precision. Increase the level of opposition in exhibition games (perhaps play a senior men's team).

Once the season starts, you need to see how your team performs and design practice plans based on game analysis in combination with your overall goals and systems.

Pre Season Training I

Break the pre-season into two major phases:

• General preparation (first 1/3 of available time)
• Specific Preparation (balance)

For each of the phases address the following:

Skills/Techniques

• receiving
• passing
• shooting
• dribbling
• goalkeeping
  test, monitor, evaluate
  

Tactics/Strategies

• style (possession/penetration)
• system of play
• game plan
• game strategies

Mental Training

• develop positive environment
• emotional control by players/team
• attentional control
• strategies
• test, monitor, evaluate

Physical Preparation

• aerobic
• anaerobic
• speed
• strength
• power
• flexibility
• nutrition
• test, monitor, evaluate

Peaking Index

• volume of work (high, med, low)
• intensity (high, med, low)

part II will focus on specifics for each area in each phase

Soccer Kick

The break down of a kick is:

• run up to the ball at a slight angle (never straight at it)


• place the planting foot next to the ball, pointing in the direction of the target


• backswing the shooting leg


• because you approached at an angle, you can now bring the leg down and rotate into the ball generating momentum.


• to get distance, strike the ball at it's lowest point without kicking the grass, keeping the ankle locked.


• follow through with the kicking leg

The practical answer to developing a stronger kick is repetition. Kick the ball hundreds of times a week. It will build strength and teach you what works for your body to get the ball to where you want it to go.
You reached a good skill level when the brain picks a target and the body automatically executes.

Practice Ideas:

1. Line up at the top of the 18 yd box and shoot over top of the cross bar.


2. Buy a rubber or plastic ball and keep kicking at home, in the park, wherever you have a chance.

No easy out, just lots of hard work. The pros didn't get there practicing one hour a week either

Check out these great practice books.

Kids Book
Youth Book
Competitive Book
Indoor Book
Systems & Tactics

Soccer Drills - Individual Training I

Here are some drills one can do by themselves:

Get a ball and pass it off a wall. Change the the pace of the ball, the angle. Play two touch control and one touch. Challenge yourself.

Set up an obstacle course in a yard or park. Dribble through the obstacles, around the obstacles. Use left foot, right foot. Pass the ball from one foot to the other.

Go to a field and shoot at the net. try to hit different areas of the net.

The best is always to:

Play, play, play the game. 1v1 or 2v2.

You and a friend can set up a small field with small goals and just scrimmage. Make up different rules as you go. Take shots on each other on the big goal. Maybe add a brother, sister, friend to make it 2v2 or play mini-tournaments. Just play and have fun. That's how you will learn.

Soccer Practice Books

get all your soccer practice needs at

Soccer Drills and Practice Plans

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