Jun 172010
 

Coaching soccer drills

Before you get on with coaching soccer drills to kids, let me share with you some teaching ideas that are sure to help you, whether you agree or not. Let’s say that the soccer practice has one broad goal for both the coach and the player and it is to have fun while participating in the practice sessions.

Herein, you must remain careful otherwise you’ll not be able to follow the fun part. Consequently, identify such objectives that are particularly important for you as a coach and also equally important for the team. Some examples are; focus on player’s individual soccer skills, promote the importance of their physical fitness, and help them grow into mature, professional, and sporting soccer players.

Since you are the coach, you only are responsible for setting high standards of sportsmanship for players. Support them in developing a sporting attitude, a feeling of team spirit, and an attitude of fair play. There are several objectives important in teaching soccer that can be incorporated in your list along with these.

The theory of winning is one concept that I’d like to stress upon when it comes to coaching youth soccer. When you coach your kids, you must instill an open concept of winning in their minds. Teach them that as long as their performance is out of ordinary on the field, they are winners, no matter what the final result.

Soccer Coaching

This will take away the pressure off the kids and they’ll focus more on playing their best game rather than just winning it.

Coaching soccer drills requires you to give clear and precise instructions to your team so that they get the desired results. Before coaching, you need to teach your players about some explicit do’s and don’ts in soccer. The variation between coaching and teaching is prominent because coaching deals with a bunch of players who already play soccer pretty well.

In the process of coaching drills, it is nice to first impart 5 to 6 demonstrations about a drill to the kids and then let them practice it themselves. It is because kids have a tendency to learn quickly by watching than by listening. If you try to explain everything as a lecture, they may not get it. Relatively, they imitate perfectly.

So, as a general rule, demonstrate the skills yourself whenever possible.

Finally, but still very important is your ability to keep the kids engaged in important activities. This becomes even more important when the weather is windy, wet, or cold. It’s a fact that all kids love to play in the rain. Hence, instead of simply cancelling the session, it makes more sense to have them play soccer games or something like that.

Just make sure that in a situation like this, your kids have an extra layer of clothing and proper footwear.

Now, it is time to add these tips to your training program and make the most of them. You will be surprised by the results.

To access more similar tips on coaching soccer drills, enroll for our youth soccer coaching community that has tons of useful tips and tricks on youth soccer coaching.

 

Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Coaching soccer drills.

 

Jun 082010
 

Coaching high school soccer

In coaching high school soccer, it’s a fact that similar to confidence; self-control too is a choice players need to make. In soccer coaching, self-control strategies are based on the relationship between thoughts and emotions. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts our performance.

You can aid your players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control with the 12 step strategy that I’m going to share with you. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance for them.

Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. The 12 step strategy is explained in the following paragraphs.

1. Awareness: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. Help your players evaluate the reasons how, where and when they lost control on the ground in their past.

2. Understanding: Make the players realize why their thinking changed and how it caused them to lose their emotional balance.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Give them time to recollect situations when they did lose control and when they did not. Let them gauge the difference in their attitudes, emotions, and behavior.

4. Problem: When it comes to coaching high school soccer, try to point out the real problem. For example: Is it the guilt of letting the whole team down because of their performance?

5. Belief: The players should manage to raise their expectations from them including self-control as one of the behaviors. Give confidence to players to change themselves.

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement has the potential to accelerate a change in behavior. Being a coach, you need to appreciate the good changes in the players to ensure that these remain forever.

7. Goals: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. Help the players understand the connection between thoughts, feelings, and actions.

8. Techniques: Put together different behavioral action items to uphold the confidence level. For example: If a certain situation happens, this is the course that players must follow.

9. Plan: In football coaching, teach the players to pursue their goals in a planned and systematic way.

10. Progress: Teach them how to be patent. Let them know that improvement always comes in a series of ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Help the players in accepting the setbacks, as these will continue to happen. Thus, utilize these to learn new things for improvement.

12. Remembrance: Finally another important point is making the players understand the importance of the reason for they are trying to change. The players must always know that why and what are they doing. What will their future be like, if they don’t change.

We all agree that a perfect performance state for a soccer player is that of a relaxed promptness. This simply means use of full energy without stress.

You must not make any mistake about it. You must include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and train the players on how to control the thought process so that they can keep themselves stress-free.

There is lots of good information available in the form of articles, newsletters, and videos on youth soccer coaching community to help you learn new coaching techniques; hurry subscriptions are open.

 

Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Practice Drills.

 

Jun 062010
 

Coaching soccer drills

Before you get on with coaching soccer drills to kids, let me share with you some teaching ideas that are sure to help you, whether you agree or not. Let’s say that the soccer practice has one broad goal for both the coach and the player and it is to have fun while participating in the practice sessions.

Herein, you must remain careful otherwise you’ll not be able to follow the fun part. Consequently, identify such objectives that are particularly important for you as a coach and also equally important for the team. Some examples are; focus on player’s individual soccer skills, promote the importance of their physical fitness, and help them grow into mature, professional, and sporting soccer players.

Since you are the coach, you only are responsible for setting high standards of sportsmanship for players. Support them in developing a sporting attitude, a feeling of team spirit, and an attitude of fair play. There are several objectives important in teaching soccer that can be incorporated in your list along with these.

The theory of winning is one concept that I’d like to stress upon when it comes to coaching youth soccer. When you coach your kids, you must instill an open concept of winning in their minds. Teach them that as long as their performance is out of ordinary on the field, they are winners, no matter what the final result.

Soccer Coaching

This will take away the pressure off the kids and they’ll focus more on playing their best game rather than just winning it.

Coaching soccer drills requires you to give clear and precise instructions to your team so that they get the desired results. Before coaching, you need to teach your players about some explicit do’s and don’ts in soccer. The variation between coaching and teaching is prominent because coaching deals with a bunch of players who already play soccer pretty well.

In the process of coaching drills, it is nice to first impart 5 to 6 demonstrations about a drill to the kids and then let them practice it themselves. It is because kids have a tendency to learn quickly by watching than by listening. If you try to explain everything as a lecture, they may not get it. Relatively, they imitate perfectly.

So, as a general rule, demonstrate the skills yourself whenever possible.

Finally, but still very important is your ability to keep the kids engaged in important activities. This becomes even more important when the weather is windy, wet, or cold. It’s a fact that all kids love to play in the rain. Hence, instead of simply cancelling the session, it makes more sense to have them play soccer games or something like that.

Just make sure that in a situation like this, your kids have an extra layer of clothing and proper footwear.

Now, it is time to add these tips to your training program and make the most of them. You will be surprised by the results.

To access more similar tips on coaching soccer drills, enroll for our youth soccer coaching community that has tons of useful tips and tricks on youth soccer coaching.

 

Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Coaching soccer drills.

 

May 212010
 

Coaching high school soccer

I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in coaching high school soccer. Coaching is an art of communication. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

Majority of coaches in soccer coaching are the players who used to play the game in their younger days. Then also they have to face a number of issues while coaching young players. The reason why many of these issues show up is the coach’s inability to communicate. As a coach, you need to work upon certain communication related problems for effective execution of your responsibilities.

These are described for you one at a time.

Emotions of the coaches take over their minds while they are watching their kids play on field. They tend to become spectators rather than analytical observers. They fail to notice the important points that could better their team’s performance. They therefore lose the opportunity to have an objective conversation aimed at winning the game.

Though the coaches today are complete professionals fully acquainted with the game, they lack communication training. For example; in soccer coaching, many coaches are not aware of the utility of a flip chart or a video. It’s important for the coach to know the game well but if he is unable to communicate his thoughts, the training gets repetitive.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been doing these soccer drills for some time but at different levels. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. For instance; the communication is incomplete when an instruction is given to a player but without his/ her name thus making it difficult for any of them to apply it.

Some guidelines meant for coaches in football coaching include the following:

• All messages from the coach are important for players. So it’s necessary that they are deduced correctly.

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Help them to improve rather than reprimanding them for not playing well.

• All players should get an equal opportunity to sit with you and learn. It has come to light through various studies that coaches spend much more time with their top players (up to seven times more!).

• Don’t wait for the problems to arise to sort them out.

• Reinforce the player’s self esteem by balancing praise with criticism. Tip the balance more towards praise with players in coaching high school  soccer.

Trust me. When you apply these rules to your training sessions, the benefits will be much more that you’ll expect.

There’s not limit to the amount of information that you can lay your hands on. You just have to subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community to get all the latest and relevant information pertaining to the game.

Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Coaching high school soccer.

 

Mar 142010
 

Coach Youth Soccer

Allow me to put a simple question to you. To coach youth soccer, what are the 3 things for the coach to do? Before you answer this question, it is important to know that youth soccer is all about letting the kids have fun. The spotlight should be on making the exercises exciting and enjoyable so that the kids always look forward to them.

So, to teach youth soccer, remember the following rules. These will give you the leverage to turn the young kids into expert players.

Let the kids have fun: As I said, youth soccer is all about having fun with the game. As a coach, you must plan each session well in advance. For instance, make the kids do some warm-up exercises to prepare them for the main drills. Once done, instruct them to go ahead with the advanced drills such as passing the ball, dribbling with it and trapping etc.

As an addition, motivate the players to think out of the box. Motivate the kids to attempt new things and when they make mistakes, which is natural, do not disrupt them. Have a word with them after the session. The support of the parents is also extremely crucial in achieving the fun objective.

Coaching Youth Soccer

To coach youth soccer, it is vital because the players are more at home than on the field. Request the parents to help you in monitoring their diet, motivate the kids, and maintain regularity in trainings.

Get used to the age: Teaching soccer to young is usually between the age of 7 to 14. At this age, it is a challenge to define the drills that actually catch their attention. Therefore, you must spend a considerable time researching on various drills that are appropriate for this age group. And then, make sure that you communicate in a very casual manner and instruct them in simple terms.

It is a good idea to make two or more teams and giving them names. This pumps in a sense of belongingness. It is recommended not to conduct a lot of experimentation also. The sign of a productive session is that there are both new and old drills.

Write the exercises: It always pays to write the exercises on paper along with the results that you are expecting from them. It makes the efforts of the team worthwhile. A written document is always useful in determining the objectives of the team. If anything requires to be changed, you can easily do so in a written documentation.

Also, with everything documented, it is easy to track your goals. It is obvious that some things will not work out as you expected and you can always get back.

It can be assumed that youth soccer coaching is a fun filled and challenging job. With this information at your disposal, you will without doubt be able to do full justice to your job.

Examine these tips immediately. These powerful techniques on coach youth soccer will make you successful and rope in great results. For more such tips on youth soccer, join our youth soccer coaching community where you will find many resources and like-minded individuals from the soccer community.

 

Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Coaching Drills.

 


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