2 Secrets About Dribbling A Soccer Ball

By Nigel Reed

Here are 2 "secrets" of dribbling that are seldom taught, so I encourage you to get your players to try them

Brazilians often relate their soccer to music, and have great rhythm when running and dribbling with the ball. The way to achieve this rhythm is to keep your upper body relaxed. This allows you to be flexible and helps you have much better upper body movements for deceiving the opposition. If you maintain a stiff body posture, your movements will be stiff and not really deceptive at all.
A really good tip to get a looser torso while teaching dribbling is to encourage your players to open their hands. By doing this, the upper torso becomes loose and flexible, which in turn will lead to better upper body movement for body fakes. For instance if you try dipping you shoulder one way and then going the other way, the "dip" will be far more effective with a loose upper tors, and therefore far more likely to deceive the defender.

To emphasize the point, make a fist with both hands and clench your fists tight. Now try moving your upper body and you should notice how stiff and awkward it is

Secret #1 for dribbling is to keep your upper torso relaxed and keeping your hands open and floppy

When dribbling it is more effective to be "small". The reason for this is similar to the reason for the first tip. By keeping small and close to the ground with your legs slightly bent, you will have greater mobility and able to twist and turne to deceive the defenders more easily.

To Emphasize the point, stand straight up with rigid legs. Now try and deceive a defender by lunging one way and then going the other direction. Now try it with the legs bent and in a more relaxed fashion. See the difference?

Secret #2 for dribbling is to keep your knees slightly bent and keeping close to the ground
Stand small not tall

A useful drill to help
Here's a drill to help with this and you can incorporate both secrets into this drill
Have your players dribble the ball around and on your command the players must stop the ball "dead" using the knee.

Stopping the ball with the knee automatically achieves two things;

(1) gets the players to lower their bodies by bending their knees, getting their body low to the ground (coiled and ready to accelerate).

(2) forces the shoulder to dip and makes the upper torso turn.

Note this is important to help deceive your opponents when faking to go one way before exploding in the other direction

During the practice alternate knees, try double touches, right, left and continue dribbling, vary pace of the exercise.

Incorporate this little tip in your next warm, its' fun and productive.
the Coerver Coaching Method has over 30 1V1 moves to beat defenders