The forgotten soccer skill of juggling

If you have read my blog before or have listened to me previously, you know that my opinion of youth soccer players is that they are not technical enough with the ball. I see too many coaches focusing on defensive tactics or working on an offside trap rather that teaching their players technical skills with the ball.

While tactics are important for a team to learn which will help them play better overall as a team, coaches cannot forgo coaching ball skills for their players.

One of the better drills to allow your soccer players to work on is juggling the ball. juggling used to be a staple exercise/training drill that coaches would ask their players to work on. But recently, i have seen a decline in players using this soccer drill.

Juggling a soccer ball can help a player be more comfortable with the ball, it will help them with their 1st touch, and it will help them be able to beat a defender 1v1.

If you are not working with your players on juggling, take my suggestion and start to do it. Have them work with both feet, combination of feet and thighs, make some combo games for them to work on and you will see your players get better soccer skills.

Check out my website at www.soccerandspeedcoach.com and sign up to receive more training ideas for your soccer team.

Have a great day!

Gary

Speed Kills on the Soccer Field

Coaches that have fast teams are usually quite successful. Because speed can cure many ills, coaches tend to gravitate towards wanting faster kids to play for them. If you have speed as a defender, it allows you to do so many things from making a run on the outside to support an offensive push or tracking down an attacking player who has the ball in front of them with space to go to goal.

If players can gain speed through learning proper running mechanics, coaches should be working like crazy to help their players to get faster by encouraging speed training in practices. While some coaches may not know how to teach speed to their players, there are other sources out there that can help you with that. interested coaches and players could check out this resource and learn more about soccer speed training. www.soccerandspeedcoach.com

Since speed is a skill that can be taught and ultimately learned by a player, it makes alot of sense to get a soccer player into a speed and agility program.

When you think about a soccer game, it really consists of many 5-15 yard bursts. These bursts require a soccer player to accelerate either to a ball to win it or to an opposing player. Acceleration speed for soccer players will be addressed in the next post.

Have a great day!

Gary

Soccer players need Active Dynamic Warm Up

Have you ever watched a soccer team start a game and within eight to ten minutes they are down by a goal or two? I see it all the time. It isn't always due to one team being superior to the other team. As a metter of fact, in many cases, these teams that go down early come back and win the game.

If teams would consider getting their soccer players warmed up more properly, this slow start could be avoided.

An active dynamic warm up first starts by getting the player to raise their core body temperature one to two degrees. For every degree that a soccer player can increase their core body temperature, they get one to three percent more power.

Just jogging around the field one time does not warm the core temperature up sufficiently. I see so many teams do just that however beforethey play their game.

Soccer players as well as other athletes, need to first raise their core temperature and then stretch dynamically. Doing this will help a soccer player avoid injury plus allow him or her to be ready to play at a high level as the game commences. Doing a proper active dynamic warm up will help all players and ultimately help the team be more successful.

Stay tuned for the next post as it will be on do youth players really need to be so technical with the ball?

Have a great day everyone!

Gary