Soccer training boils down to a single goal: preparing your players to win a real game. Drills, small-sided games, conditioning exercises and scrimmages allow your players lots of touches on the ball and a chance to develop their decision-making skills and creativity.
Types
Coach younger players to perform dribbling and passing drills and challenge them with work on an agility ladder, which resembles a series of squares placed on the ground that they can hopscotch through. Older players can add weight training to build their core strength and running drills to sharpen speed and endurance. Jumping rope and hopping exercises, known as plyometrics, improve explosiveness, important for winning headers in the air.
Time Frame
For serious players and teams, soccer training represents a 12-month project. The off-season presents a golden opportunity to focus on cross-training with another sport, such as swimming, cycling, tennis or basketball, recommends Phil Davies of the United Kingdom-based Sports Fitness Advisor site. Preseason provides the best window to hit the weight room or do lunges, pushups and leg lifts to build strength.
Features
During the season, Davies recommends a schedule of interval training on Mondays and Thursdays, plyometrics and sprinting on Tuesdays, weight training and stretching on Wednesdays and rest on Fridays before a Saturday match. Sunday you can set up flexibility training and a recovery run.
Considerations
Begin each practice with a warmup jog and stretching, followed by a simple, brief talk about the focus for the day's training. Organize your day's activities around a single theme, such as the importance of running into empty space on the field or decision-making on when to pass and when to dribble. Keep goalkeepers and field position players involved by having field players practice shooting and goalkeepers working on correct form in stopping the ball.
Expert Opinion
The more soccer training resembles a real game, the more value it has to players, writes FIFA master coach Detlev Brueggemann in "Soccer Alive: The Game Is the Best Teacher." Brueggemann advocates a focus drills that divide players into two small groups for scrimmages to mimic game play and enhance learning. Spanish soccer teacher Laureano Ruiz advises customizing training for individual players and keeping sight of the importance of tactical and psychological training as well as physical and technical work.
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