Youth
Soccer Drills - Keys to a Productive
Practice
By
Jeff Cozzier
The
main difference between youth
soccer drills and adult soccer
drills is that you need to allow
kids to be kids. What I mean by
that is that kids love playing
games so to keep them involved
we need to properly structure
our practices. As a rule, in practices
you should focus on playing games.
You can either run the games by
keeping time or keeping score.
Remember
that you need to always praise
the attitude, effort; the hustle
and of course the improvement.
The key is to measure each player
against his or her own past performance
and personal improvement. There
are always going to be kids that
are more or less athletically
inclined in any group. The best
kids should not be held back by
the others, but at the same time
the kids that are struggling still
need to be motivated and praised
for their efforts. Now in case
anyone thinks that that means
that I tolerate slackers, I don't,
they need to be putting forth
the effort.
I'm
a big fan of teaching proper technique
by setting up playing situations
and games that simulate play.
By setting up a number of these
and keeping your players active
you can make sure that everyone
gets a maximum number of "touches"
in the ball. If you're looking
for a "magic number "
of touches for every practice,
common practice is to for 100
"touches" per player
per practice.
Good
games must be easy & quick
to set up and should be simple
to explain and manage. If you
have to explain it more than a
couple of times break it down
into multiple games / drills.
The goal is to keep everyone active
and participating. You must make
sure that everyone is having fun.
Avoid
general scrimmaging for more than
10 minutes per hour. In general
scrimmages players don't get enough
touches on the ball, the weaker
players tend to get the fewest
touches and bad habits can be
reinforced because players tend
to do the same things they have
always done. If you scrimmage,
do so without a goalkeeper
Adopt
this philosophy: "Keep it
simple, keep them active, keep
it fun & at least 100 touches
per player per practice".
For
additional soccers training tips
check out http://www.OptimalSoccerFitness.com
Editors
note: I would recomend
more than 100 touches per practice,
which is different then what this
soccer author has to say. I would
shoot more in the neighborhood
of 400 touches per practice, which
will give your players an adequate
enough number of repititions to
work on their ball control. Otherwise,
the advice in this article is
good.
