For a coach, no matter how many soccer training tips he gets, there’s always room for more. This is because he constantly strives to prepare interesting soccer practice sessions for his team so that they look forward to each session.
Depending on how many soccer training sessions are possible each week, the coach must fit in skills activities, drills, games and fitness routines into his sessions. Here are some tips that will ensure that training sessions progress as planned:
- The first and foremost tool you need as a coach is a proper plan. It is not enough to just think about what you intend doing. It is necessary to write it all down, in terms of what you aim to do during the session and how you plan to go about it.
Write down the details of the soccer drills you plan to use for skill development, the soccer conditioning drills you want to use, what you would like specific players to work on, etc. It is good to maintain a record of your practice sessions date wise, so that you can refer back to it whenever you need to.
- Try to include fitness improvement as part of the practice session in the form of games. You do not have to run individual sessions for conditioning and soccer skills. The game itself keeps your players moving so it is better to introduce many variations to a game or drill so that the fitness and conditioning happen as your players enjoy the game.
- When you include warm up exercises, make sure you use the ball and have your players perform drills that develop their speed and agility. Just a few minutes of this can benefit them immensely when they play a real game.
- If you train a huge group of players, it will be effective if you include circuit training. Divide your players into small groups and allot an exercise to each group. After they perform it for a specific time, and rest for a time specified by you, they can move to the next exercise. Your players will find this fun and you can have them repeat the entire sequence of exercises a couple of times depending on their age and fitness level.
Apart from following the above soccer training tips, let your practice sessions be easy to arrange without wasting precious time just setting up. Even during soccer tryouts, all the drills must be fun and motivational.