Soccer Drills

Free Soccer Drills – Use Open Field Dribbling to Build a Solid Skill Foundation
By Sarah Daniel

How to Coach a Soccer Team: Simple Passing Drills for Soccer

Soccer skills and coaching tips; learn another passing exercise you can run with your youth soccer team in this free online video guide to coaching a soccer team.

Expert: Glenn Holzer
Contact: www.revolution-sc.org
Bio: Glenn Holzer has been coaching soccer at the youth and college level for more than 20 years and holds a USSF “B” License.

How to Coach a Soccer Team: Basic Passing Drills for Soccer

Soccer skills and coaching tips; learn a good exercise to help your team improve their passing skills in this free online video guide to coaching a soccer team.

Expert: Glenn Holzer
Contact: www.revolution-sc.org
Bio: Glenn Holzer has been coaching soccer at the youth and college level for more than 20 years and holds a USSF “B” License.

How to Increase a Soccer Player’s Speed in Just 7 Days!
By Gary Christopher

For a soccer player to win or faster speed on the football field, seven will be learning these skills to develop blinding speed. Running faster is a skill learned that eleven pays dividends for the coming years. I have taught the following skills for 7 in the last 10 years to help soccer players ever faster on the field. Practice these skills every day and 7 in one week you will be faster than they were a week ago. I hope you enjoy and be able to use for yourself or your team faster.

If we look at how a soccer player runs, there are 7 skills they need to learn in order to get faster. Developing proper running mechanics can increase a player’s speed almost immediately.

As an example, if you look carefully at how a soccer player runs, you will see that changing, perfecting, modifying their mechanics can have a drastic change in their performance. So let’s look at it more closely.

Thirty percent (30%) of a players power comes from their arm drive. Proper arm drive starts with creating quick, powerful movements with your arms. Keeping the arms locked at 90 degrees and have them drive straight back (simulate reaching back for your back (hip) pocket and thrusting if forward to shoulder socket height will create the proper arm drive. One important key to getting faster is this, the faster you move your arms, the faster your feet will go. Increasing stride frequency will increase a soccer players speed.

Relaxing the face, shoulder and hands allows for a soccer player to become faster as well as they are not fighting themselves when they run. The more relaxed the upper body is, the faster a soccer player will run.

In order to accelerate to the ball, a soccer player must create a forward lean where their hips are slightly in front of their feet. A good way to work on this skill is to do a wall drill. A wall drill is where the soccer player stands approximately 2-3 feet away from the wall and places their hands on the wall (shoulder height). Have the soccer player run in this position for up to 5 seconds will simulate how the body should be leaning forward while they are accelerating.

Driving the knee up to near belly button height assures that the soccer player is getting the best possible stride length possible. Proper stride length is one of the keys to increasing speed. Even adding 2-4 inches to a stride length can allow a player to cover an extra 2-3 feet over 10 strides. These 2-3 feet could be the difference in scoring or defending goals.

Having the toes up when you accelerate allows the foot to land on the front part of the foot. This is critical for a player to be explosive and to get faster.

As we just learned having the toe up (dorsi flexing the foot) allows for the soccer player to have their foot strike the ground on the front part of their foot. When a soccer player accelerates, if they land on their heel first (or flat footed for that matter), all of their energy went right into the ground through their heel plus it takes more time to have the foot roll forward and then push off the front part of the foot. Landing on the front part of the foot initially saves a lot of time plus is way more explosive.

When a soccer player runs, they should be running so that the toes, ankles, knees and hips are all in a straight line or linear motion. Gaining proper linear symmetry will enhance any players speed. In other words there will not be any wasted movements from the player, allowing them to run at their greatest potential.

If a player works on these 7 skills every day, in one week they will be a faster, more explosive soccer player!

Have a great day!

The Use of Soccer Passing Drills
By Chuck Weiss

There are lots of soccer passing drills that a soccer coach can use with his or her club. But a coach should be certain that his players have learned all of the different types of passes and have their fundamentals for each down solid before doing extensive drilling as a group.

Many youth soccer programs tend to focus only on the push pass. If a coach sets up group passing drills and all everyone does is use the push pass, then he is seriously limiting his team’s range. Learning the different types of passes is a very useful and effective tool that will give a soccer team a big edge. Even in youth soccer, players should know how to execute a driving pass, a punch pass, high bending passes and bending passes that stay on the ground. Only when his players have mastered at least several of the different types of passes should a coach set up different soccer passing drills that will be used strategically in games.

If you need passing drills to use for your team, you’ll find quite a few different options offered in books and on the Internet. Most that I have found are in the form of diagrams and charts. This is the old-school style and some coaches like to work specifically with these types of diagrams. Personally I believe that video is far superior as a learning tool, as soccer is such a visual game. However, not all video passing drill programs are created equal. You need to find a high quality video program. A set of diagrams to go along with the videos is ideal.

Get the ultimate Soccer DVD technical training program with a full set of soccer passing drills, along with over 10 hours of the best skills training you’ll find anywhere at SoccerU.com.