Soccer Skills And Drills - How to Maximise Your Time

Chances are you are not a professional soccer player.  If only we were, right?  I know I could use the extra $200 grand a week the very top pros get paid!  However, the point I am trying to make here is that because you aren’t a pro it means you have other things to do with your life, your time is at a premium.  You don’t spend hours every day practicing and training then enjoying a round of golf or playing on the PSP for 5 hours.  So when it comes time to practice, either on your own or with your local team, you only have a limited amount of time available.  You therefore have to do all you can to maximise your precious time and get the most out of your soccer skills and drills training.  Like most things in life, to be able to do this properly you must have a pre-planned routine and stick to it.

Your plan can consist of any number of drills and skills to practice and it doesn’t matter whether you are training on your own or as part of a properly organised training session within a club environment.  Devise a training plan and stick to it.  However, that isn’t enough on its own.  You must also monitor your progress.  What you have done, what you still have to do and most importantly where you are in relation to your final objective.  You must have a “destination”, an end goal you are working towards.  Without that you do not know what progress you are making.

Of course, all this just doesn’t happen over night.  Building your skill level will increase over a long period of time as the season progresses.  One way to help maximise your progression is to vary the drills and training.  You don’t want to be working on the same thing all the time.  After all variety is the spice of life but the difficulty is balancing the variety with enough repetition to keep each drill fresh in your mind.

It is not just a question of knowing how to do a drill or how to practice a certain exercise.  You must also know what it is the drill is designed to do.  What you are supposed to be getting out of the drill.  Don’t just do it, learn what it adds to your overall game and how it can be used within the game environment.  Knowledge is power, but applied knowledge is king!

In order to help maximise the variety within any training plan, try to have a healthy balance between general attacking and defending play.  Between such areas as passing, movement off the ball, retaining possession.  Ball juggling skills, free kicks, corners even penalties.  It doesn’t really matter what position you play in either, with the possible except of goalkeeper perhaps, as the more you learn about positions other than your own, the better you will be able to read the game and be ahead of it.

Try to imagine being within a coaching environment that didn’t have any kind of training plan compared to one that concentrated on the issues mentioned above.  Which one to you think will be more beneficial, more fun to be part of?

Whether you’re a soccer coach or a soccer player there are many programs available that will help you devise and put into practice a completely tailored and professional coaching training program.  Without one you and your team are not going to progress properly.  You owe it to yourself.

At the very least you should be reading my 7 part eCourse on Soccer Fitness, Training & Skills.  It doesn’t cost a penny and you can start receiving it in a couple of minutes from now by simply completing the form in the top left corner of this page.  Or you can click here to read more about it.

Alternatively you can read the Reviews I have written on some of the best soccer programs out there in the market at the moment.  Some of these programs are even used by top English Premier League teams they are that good.  Simply go to the Section entitled “The Soccer Blog Reviews” to the left of this page, under the opt-in form, and click on the links to learn more about such programs as Grass Roots Soccer Training, Play Great Soccer By Coerver Coaching and the new edition of Soccer Drills, Soccer Moves.  You won’t regret it!

Good luck!

The Soccer Blogger

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