Football Exercises – For Better Skills And Fitness Levels

By Andre Botelho (SoccerDrillsTips.com)

There are plenty of football exercises that help the players improve their soccer fitness levels and also develop their passing skills. Some are even designed to promote teamwork. Here are a few exercises that are effective:

Exercise To Develop Passing Skills

Requirements

You need between eight and twenty players, where they are divided into four or five players per group. Space for a pass must be around five to ten yards. This exercise aims at passing the ball from one player to another, one touch.

How It Is Done

Instruct players to:

• Run once they pass the ball
• Control the ball with the first touch
• Pass one touch at every opportunity

Conduct this exercise as a game. Observe the number of one touch passes that are finished within say, a minute.

Players find this soccer strategy game very invigorating and enjoyable and it leaves them in high spirits.

Exercise For Aerobic Conditioning And Team Building

Requirements

You will need about sixteen players. Make four groups of four players each. You will need two cones placed twenty meters apart and a ball. Plan the sequence in which the groups will run. You can let the groups decide this amongst themselves.

How It Is Done

The first runner from the group sprints from one cone to the other and returns. When he is back to the starting cone, the second runner joins him and both run to the second cone, dribbling the ball. They return to the first cone where runner 3 joins the first runner. Now runner 1 and 3 dribble the ball to the second cone and back. Next, runner 1 and 4 dribble the ball to the second cone and back.

This entire sequence is now repeated by runner 2 with runners 1, 3 and 4; then by runner 3 with runners 1, 2 and 4 and runner 4 with runners 1, 2 and 3. You can turn this into a contest among the groups, with the winner being the group that finishes fastest. Your players will simply enjoy this and it can be used for conditioning as well as to building your team.

Football exercises can relate to both aerobic and anaerobic conditioning. Generally aerobic conditioning is used when the player must develop prolonged fitness levels, while anaerobic conditioning is fun to do with intensive performance for very short durations.

Andre Botelho
SoccerDrillsTips.com