How to organize your soccer practices
People have been downloading my FREE REPORT on “How to Organize Your Soccer Practices” and the feedback I have been receiving has been very good.
The FREE REPORT is available by submitting your name and email address up there on the right hand side of the blog. Your privacy is important to us, we run a very professional business here and we would never compromise your trust in us.
Go ahead, subscribe to the email list and I will immediately send you the FREE REPORT. If you find it of use, please let me know and feel free to share it with your coaching colleagues.
I am working on a number of other coaching reports and manuals and if you have any specific topics you would like me to cover, please leave a comment and I will do my best to help you.
Let’s Talk Soccer!
This entry was posted
on 
Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 4:23 pm and is filed under 
Coaching Club Soccer, Coaching High School Soccer, Coaching Kids Soccer, Coaching Youth Soccer, How To...., Soccer Drills, Soccer Player Management, Soccer Practice Tips, Soccer Practice Topics.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can 
leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Paul,as promised I will give you a little feedback on your report and you can do with it as you wish,even disregard it if you like!
Mostly good and reinforcing the basics,warm up,technique etc,but I found it a bit long personally.
I appreciate its probably designed for North America so you have to tell the reader about the coaches you have picked up tips from,Sammy Lee,I’m a Liverpool fan and from the area so I know of him,but I appreciate that a lot of people dont.
I would abridge a lot of the wording to go with coaches Bio’s just to save on space and stop people being bored before they read it! lol. Seriously that could be shortened a little.
Secondly,you mention players doing LAPS of the pitch.
I’m sure you are aware that that’s not even done by pro’s these days!
I personally,with young players mostly,mark out an area eg 30×30 yds and as they are arriving supply them with a ball each and they go into the area and get lots of touches of the ball while waiting for the rest of the group.The EPL teams recommend 1000 touches of the ball before a game starts.To be honest I do it with older players as well,but they could just go into the area and jog and do dynamic stretches to begin with without the ball anyway.
That apart well done for putting time and effort in to the document,its very easy for us to criticise but you’ve taken the bull by the horns,so well done.
By the way we can all take a little out of every coach we see and I like the simple suggestion of Roy Hodgson’s to carry a ball around a session to quickly demonstrate coaching points.
Cheers
John
_________________________
15th April 1989, Justice for the 96! They’ll Never Walk Alone!
Thanks for the feedback John, I really appreciate it. I included the coach Bios because, yes, many people would not know these coaches. By the way, I am from Blackburn, I moved to California in 1996.
I only have the players do one lap at the beginning of the practice and one lap at the end to signify practice has started and then finished. I hated laps as a player, so I would never include them as a prrominant part of a practice.
If you don’t mind, I will post your feedback on my blog.
I like the recommendation of 1000 touches of the ball. My college team played the 8 time conference champions and they certainly concentrated on that before the game. They beat us 5-0 and as Kenny Dalglish famously said, “We were luck to get 0!”
Thanks again for taking the time to read the report and I will take on board your valuable feedback.
Cheers
_________________________
Paul
http://www.soccercoachingblog.com
Hi Paul, Thanks for the free download. I am quite an experienced coach so a lot of the stuff was quite familiar to me BUT, I have to say it is ALL good advice.
Whilst I am also not a fan of laps, I like the idea that you use it to signify the start and end of practice (I stopped calling it ‘training’ ages ago!).
Other tips I especially like are the handshakes. They do this at the start and end of all kids Rugby practices I have seen here and I also now do this as a matter of course. It is a mark of mutual respect, I feel and is a useful but simple life skill and whilst children are often embarrased at first, they get used to it by the third week !
Another tip to include would be ‘ Catch them doing something right / well’. As a coach, it’s easy to criticise - but this is not what coaching is - it is about inspiring them to do better. So, use of name followed by a positive comment works wonders ” Jenny / Jimmy, good low shot, well done” gives them a boost and also lets others know what you are looking for without picking someone up doing it wrong all the time.
Well done for putting this on the net and for sharing experience and observations. With more of this type of sharing, everyone benefits, coaches, parents and most of all the players.
Regards
Steve - Brighton, UK
Thanks for the feedback Steve. I appreciate your input. Thanks for the tip regarding “Catch them doing something right.” I will be releasing my new coaching system called “The SoccerDOC Way” in a feww days and I will make sure I incorporate that important point. Keep visiting the blog so that you can be one of the first to get a copy. Cheers!