Soccer Training Drills, The Key is in Touches Per Session

Soccer training drills are the single most important part of improving your teams ability. To be more specific repetition contained in the drills carried out in a specific session help player overall confidence on the ball.

Although fairly common sense not all soccer coaches get the message. Take, for instance, a child's development in any area. How do they improve any aspect of their motor skills?

Soccer Drills

The answer is simply by continually repeating the process of a certain movement over a period of time. Learning to play soccer is no different. Young players learn and develop their skills by repeatedly carrying out specific drills that enforce the learning of that skill. Only by doing this will a coach see an improvement in his players.

Soccer Training Drills, The Key is in Touches Per Session

So how do we accelerate the learning process and allow player to develop their soccer skills at an earlier age?

The secret to this is to accelerate the training sessions by including soccer practice drills that involve more kicks per drill. OK so more touches on the ball per drill = more touches on the ball per session which in turn means accelerated training sessions

To ensure that your players can accelerate their development there are five steps that you can take to help young players on their way.

1. Carry out Warm Up Drills using the ball at all times. This will introduce the ball early into sessions and allow players to get a feel for the ball going into the main session.

2. Be Prepared. - The preparation of a training session can make or break the whole soccer practice. Get the training ground early and set up for your drills before the player arrive. This reduces wasted time and allows more time for on the ball training.

3. Choose Drills Carefully - Accentuate the Skill Factor. Choose drills that concentrate on individual skills. Make sure there is a ball for each player concentrating on the skills you want them to practice and repeat, repeat and repeat again.

4. Play In the Box - Use tighter areas for drill which encourage closer control. By keeping the box smaller this is proven to increase the number of touches on the ball and develop speed of touch.

5. Keep it Short - Reduce the number of players per drill to max 1 v 1 for starters. As confidence and ability improves you can add more players but keeping it to minimum ensures that everyone is involved and again there are more touches on the ball.

So there we have five easy steps to improve your player skill and accelerate their soccer development. More touches per session have been proven to dramatically increase a players' ability. Some well prepared coaches have experienced 5 times more touches per player per session compared with traditional training methods.

Soccer Training Drills, The Key is in Touches Per Session