Soccer Practice Drills: How Much Time to Spend Doing Skills Drills


by Scott Carlson - Date: 2007-08-14 - Word Count: 296 Share This!

Learning to trap, dribble, and pass are some of the must fundamental skills that must be mastered for anyone who is serious about soccer. As a coach, you improve your player's skills by giving them lots of touches on the ball during the drills you work on in practice. Be it skills drills or game drills, the more chances to control and carry the ball your players get, the more comfortable they will become.

Many coaches wonder how much time they should devote to skills related drills vs. time spent scrimmaging and playing other game element drills. My answer is this: Spend as much time as it takes for your players to properly grasp the essential soccer skills, and demonstrate the fact.

With that said, it is always important to keep your players entertained, as they will become bored if you spend too much practice time doing less active, sometimes boring skills drills. In my opinion, one or two skills drill per practice is plenty, and I would prefer to spend 65-75% of my practice time in small-sided games, and other scrimmage-like elements.

The idea is to make sure your players show during the scrimmage games what you have taught them in the skill drills. Don't spend too much time covering the basic skills if your players demonstrate they know what they are doing when real games come around. If not, spend as much time doing skills drills as you need in order to make your players comfortable with the ball.

For example, dribbling the ball properly means keeping the ball within a touch or two, and keeping your head up to scan the field. If your players are not demonstrating proper technique when they dribble, you obviously need to spend more time covering this skill during soccer practice


Related Tags: time, coaching, ideas, games, soccer, drills, soccer practice, how much

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