Coaching Soccer Conditioning

By Daniel Severn

This week’s exercise can be used as a technical warm-up or as the main technical focus of the session. There are endless variables with this exercise; I will share some of my favorite ones at the end. This works best if the players can be paired up, but there is also a continuous rotation option if you’d prefer groups of 3.

Set Up and Directions
The exercise is set up as shown below, showing one player with a ball, one without a ball and three cones spaced apart as shown.

The player that begins with the ball will be the ‘feeder’ – his job will simply be to play a 5yard pass and receive a 20 yard pass throughout the duration of the exercise. Our ‘active’ player (shown in the yellow jersey) will be doing the majority of the work and is the player we’ll be focusing on for this exercise.

Play begins on the coach’s call with the feeder playing a pass into our active player. The active player tries to move forwards towards the ball to control it in front of the cone. With his second touch, the player performs an inside cut to change direction (now facing away from the feeder) and he dribbles quickly towards the far cone.

After the active player arrives at the far cone (to the right on the diagram) he performs another inside cut to change direction (no facing towards the feeder) and plays a firm 20 yard pass in to the feeders feet. As soon as the feeder receives the pass, the active player sprints forward to the middle cone to repeat the exercise.

Timing
To help keep a high intensity I like to run this exercise in short bursts between rotations and variations. Spells of 45-60 seconds per player should be suitable for most age groups.

Variations
1 – The Feeder – This player can deliver the ball to the active player at a number of heights. You can focus on aerial control, thigh control, chest etc.
2 – The Turn – Vary the turns (and the foot used to make the turn) each time. Drag-backs, Cruyff turns, Outside cuts etc.
3 – The Aerial Pass – When the active player has dribbled across to the far cone, he can now turn and play a weighted aerial pass in to the feeder player.

I hope you enjoy the exercise!

Dan
Program Director
BRASA Brazilian Soccer Academy
@coach_danny

By Daniel Severn

This week we have an exercise which will work close control, changes of pace, protecting the ball and plenty of skills and trickery. The exercise can be used as a fun game after a warm up or as the technical part of your session as you can focus on many different aspects of the game in this situation.

Set Up and Directions
Players will work in pairs, with one ball between two. The exercise is set up in a 20×20 yard area with small, 1 yard gates scattered around the area.

Through the diagrams, I will show the exercise running with just one pair of players but I would often use around four or five pairs working at any one time.

When play begins, the two players will compete one versus one to score as many points as possible within the time limit. The players score points by

Read the rest of this article »

By Jebreel Bubtana

This is a fun exercise for your team to do that gets both your attackers and goalkeepers working hard.

Set up the field as shown below in figure 1 with 10 soccer balls on the edge of the 18-yard box.

The attacker dribbles towards goal on a breakaway and tries to score the 1v1 against the goalkeeper. The goalkeeper can come out and try to stop the attacker from scoring, as they would do in a real game situation. After the attacker has had a shot they

Read the rest of this article »

By Jebreel Bubtana

This is a great exercise to use during pre season training as it gets your players working very hard. You can also use this to get your players competing against each other.

There are 3 stations to set up as shown below with the cones being placed 5 yards apart (figure 1).

Station 1 – The players dribble to the first cone, turn and then dribble back to the start as quick as they can. This sequence is repeated with the second and third cone. The players must be encouraged

Read the rest of this article »

By Daniel Severn

This week we have a very high tempo, quick-fire 1v1 exercise that is worked in groups of three. It is always good to practice 1v1s they happen all over the field in every single game. 1v1s also get players thinking from both the attacking and defensive side of the game. A good warm up should be performed before this exercise as it is played at a very high tempo.

Set Up and Directions
The exercise is set up as shown below. The feeder ( player in blue on the outside of the field) must have a number of soccer balls available in order to keep a high tempo for this game. The two active players wait centrally in the 20×15 yard field marked out with two goals, one at either end.

Play begins with the feeder playing a pass directly between the two competing players. The two players then compete for

Read the rest of this article »

By Daniel Severn

This week we focus on speed and agility combined with crossing and finishing under pressure. The exercise works best when run as a competition as this adds extra motivation for the players. Speed and Agility are obvious essentials in any game of soccer as players in any role or position on the field will benefit from having good speed and being more agile. The crossing and finishing aspects are more honed towards specific positions, so depending on the situation of your team, (whether you rotate players in positions or if your players have set positions) you can work a little bit of positional specific training into this exercise, especially for your outside defenders and midfielders. A good warm up should be performed before this exercise as it is played at a very high tempo.

Set Up and Directions
The exercise is set up as shown below with the coach positioned centrally around 30 yards from goal. The coach must have a supply of soccer balls to keep the exercise fluid. We also have two wide players, positioned on each wing. Each will have three cones laid out in front of them which they will use to perform agility. The wide players will act as neutrals and should try to play crosses into general areas, trying not to favor a team, but giving the players a good chance to score from the cross. Two teams will line up on opposite sides of the goal (minimum two players per team) with a goalkeeper in the goal.

Play begins with the coach playing a pass out to either wing (left wing in the example below), the winger then shuffles through the cones as quickly as possible and then

Read the rest of this article »