Individual Soccer Training

Soccer Dribbling: How to Practice the Most Important Skill

By Parker & Walsh 1 Comment

soccer-defending-block-tackle Dribbling is a crucial skill to develop from as young an age as possible.

Kids may not be able to understand soccer tactics such as spacing or be able to complete more nuanced tactics such as effective passing, but dribbling is much more natural and an accessible skill.

And it’s certainly not just for kids, as dribbling is important at all levels of play. Being able to dribble past defenders is a learned skill and takes lots of practice.

Even midfielders and defenders must also be able to dribble in different situations, so it’s crucial for everyone to practice it regularly, not just forwards.

As with most skills, lots and lots of repetitions are crucial to improvement. This is where dribbling has a clear advantage over other skills, as you can dribble a soccer ball around all the time.

If you want to get better, start to dribble a soccer ball everywhere!

Dribble in your backyard, dribble through the house (if you’re careful not to break anything), dribble on the walk over to your neighbor’s house.

Dribble in tight areas and try moves to get around objects or people.

Dribbling a soccer ball around all the time will allow you to be comfortable on the soccer ball and pick your head up. And ultimately, it will help you keep control of the ball when you get to a game situation.

How can dribbling improve your game?

We’ve already mentioned that all players need to feel comfortable dribbling, no matter their position.

Dribbling allows you to keep possession, put your team in a numbers up advantage situation and create your own shot, to give a couple of examples.

Next time you’re watching a soccer game, keep track of all of the situations where you see players dribbling. It will be a lot more than just forwards trying to get by a defender in the attacking third.

Do you see a defender under pressure who needs to dribble to open up a passing lane? Or a midfielder tracking back and keeping possession?

How many dribbling moves do I need to learn?

Fancy moves can look impressive, but players really need just two to three moves. You need a move to go each direction: left and right.

These might be different types of cuts with different surfaces, step-overs, or similar techniques.

If you want to take your game to the next level, then you need to combine two or three moves together.

How do I practice soccer dribbling moves?

In order to effectively practice dribbling, you need to develop the motor skills and muscle memory for your two to three favorite soccer moves.

First, start off performing the move slowly for five reps to get the motion down correctly.

Next, perform the move at about 75% of full speed for five reps. Finally, practice the move at 100%.

You will need to do this for each move. You can practice your soccer moves anywhere, but an open grass area will work best.

If you want access to a complete library of dribbling moves, plus daily training plans that will help get you playing better faster, check out our soccer training system.

Do you do anything particular to practice dribbling? If so let us know in the comments.

Can Yoga Make You a Better Soccer Player?

By Parker & Walsh 2 Comments

Soccer players need to be fit to be successful, and that requires more than simply jogging around the neighborhood.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to see top soccer players lifting weights, but what about balancing in a downward dog pose?

Yes, I’m talking about yoga, which has become more and more popular in recent years for both its physical and mental benefits.

But what about soccer specifically? Can yoga make you a better player?

Yes, and in quite a few ways! Read on to learn more about what yoga can do for you.

Yoga Benefits for Soccer Players

Yoga is all about gaining more flexibility, improving balance, becoming better biomechanically aligned, and controlling your breathing.

It also helps you increase your endurance and even puts you in a healthier mental state for peak performance.

These translate to some huge benefits on the field.

Being flexible, for one, helps you prevent injuries.

Yoga helps you loosen up your tight muscles, stabilize joints, and strengthen areas you don’t usually work. It also helps to improve your strength in key areas, and is a good exercise to add to any lifting regimen you may be doing.

Overall, yoga helps you make quick changes of pace on the pitch and lessens the risk of a muscle pull or other injury.

Yoga for Improving Balance in Soccer

Balance is key in all sports and doing yoga will greatly improve your balance. For soccer, improved balance gives you a better awareness of where your body is and how to control it.

Being balanced will help you keep the ball by not allowing another player to knock you off it, for example.

Better balance and a stronger core (which you develop through yoga) will also help you when you are challenging for balls in the air.

Yoga for Better Breathing (and Fitness)

Controlling your breathing in any exercise or sport is important. Breathing helps get oxygen to the muscles you are working the hardest.

If you cannot control your breathing properly, you are limiting your performance.

You will have more stamina when running and be more soccer fit if you can control your breathing.

It will also help you stay relaxed under pressure, allowing you to use your energy more efficiently and effectively.

Most standard yoga poses and exercises will give us these benefits, so feel free to seek out a routine from anywhere, from your local yoga studio to a quick Google search.

A few exercises you might want to focus on in particular are the pigeon pose, the triangle pose, the warrior poses, forward bends and lunges.

Many professional soccer players, including the U.S. Men’s National Team, do yoga.

A couple of examples of players in recent years who publicly credited yoga to making a major impact on their game include Brad Friedel and Ryan Giggs.

That’s a good enough incentive for me. What about you? Will you give yoga a try?

photo credit

Why Practicing Juggling Will Make You a Better Soccer Player

By Parker & Walsh 2 Comments

Juggling the soccer ball is a good way to kill a few free minutes or challenge your friend to a quick competition.

But since you don’t juggle in a game, can it really make you a significantly better player on the field?

Yes, and in more ways than you might realize. Specifically, it helps improve your touch and balance, which both have tremendous impacts on your performance. Let’s dig a little deeper into why this is the case.

1. Touch

Sure, you won’t be bounding down the field evading defenders in a game all while keeping a juggle going, but the skill does come into play frequently. For example, think of an airball that comes to you at an odd angle, or a cross that bounces just in front of you.

Practicing juggling helps you perfect your touch so you can better control balls coming at you from all heights and in all situations. And in addition, you’ll notice that your improved touch makes it far easier to do things like weigh your passes properly and keep control of the ball while dribbling.

Overall, getting in as many touches as possible is one of the best things you can do to improve your play, and it’s hard to imagine an exercise that will get more touches in quickly than juggling.

2. Balance and Agility

Another major benefit of juggling is improving your balance and agility. To succeed in soccer you need to be able to keep your body in control and make quick adjustments and changes of direction. You need to be able to pull of a move seamlessly without losing speed or stumbling.

Juggling regularly, in particular switching quickly from left to right foot, helps greatly in this regard. Improved rhythm is another benefit: juggling will improve your “foot-eye” coordination so your movements will be more in-sync.

In addition, practicing juggling also helps you hone your focus, concentration and discipline, all important attributes for soccer players.

Best Ways to Practice Juggling

Juggling at its core is about as simple an exercise as you can imagine–just kick the ball up and don’t let it hit the ground–but there are endless variations and plenty of ways to keep it fresh and challenging.

Here are a few ideas if you’re ready to move past the basic juggle.

Juggling with only your non-dominant foot for as long as you can
Juggling in a set sequence (for example, right foot, right thigh, head, left thigh, left foot, repeat)
Juggling with no spin (or topspin, or sidespin)
With a partner, juggling for a set number of touches before sending a ball chest-high to your teammate who does the same
Juggle while you are jogging forward
Challenging yourself to reach a certain number of juggles, such as 100
Juggling a set number of times, then catching the ball on the top of your foot and holding it there for a couple of seconds before resuming juggling
Juggling while keeping the ball below your waist at all times (or above your head, or some other height)

Do you know of any other techniques for practicing juggling? If so, let us know in the comments.

Why Your Team’s Soccer Practices Aren’t Making You a Better Player

By Parker & Walsh 3 Comments

soccer-huddle There’s no denying that being on a soccer team is the best way to improve your skills.

Practicing regularly with your teammates under the instruction of a professional coach is crucial to your development as a player.

And the games provide a fun and effective method of testing out those new techniques as you learn them.

But for many players, their official soccer practices just aren’t cutting it.

Even after years of club or high school soccer, they just don’t seem to improve as much as they want to.

The same mistakes continue from season to season, and certain skills seem to be always just out of reach. What’s the deal?

Although organized soccer practices are great, they aren’t enough! Becoming a skilled player requires a deeper commitment to the game and a personal desire to get better even when no one else is around.

There are also some unavoidable limitations of official soccer practices which hinder your development.

In many club environments, for one, you will sometimes only have practice once or twice a week. Even if your club practices three or four times a week, you still need to put in work on your own.

Also, soccer is often not an all-year activity for many players, due to another sport or other activities, and a lot of regressing happens during those months without playing soccer.

We’re all busy, though, and I’m certainly not saying that you need to play soccer 24/7, 365 to become great.

Instead, you need to recognize the need to set individual goals for your own game, and then work hard to accomplish them.

Your team’s practices will obviously help you, but they will also involve tactical training, a variety of different drills, and preparation for particular opponents.

You won’t always be getting a ton of touches or working on the part of the game you need to improve the most.

Because of this, you need to dedicate yourself to training outside of your team’s structured environment.

You do not need to spend long hours doing it, but the more practice and time you put in, the more likely you will become better.

Be sure to remember that practicing bad habits will not help you, so concentrate on getting the correct fundamentals down.

Next I’ll outline some more specific examples that will hopefully get you going.

For an individual soccer goal, you might pick something like improving your first touch. To achieve this goal, you would then set a training plan that you are able to stick to.

Maybe you only have time to train once a week outside of practice.

But if you break your goal down into clear steps, like pledging to receive a ball into space 30 times with your laces, inside, outside, thigh and chest once every week, you’ll be surprised at how much your touch will improve.

And obviously, the more you can train, the better.

Other types of individual goals that might be appropriate to your game include heading technique, driving a ball, or shooting.

Finally, if you want some more tips on what you can do to train on your own, check out our post on 5 Ways to Improve Your Soccer Skills in Your Backyard.

You also might want to try our list of 5 Soccer Challenges That Will Help Hone Your Skills.

5 Soccer Challenges That Will Help Hone Your Skills

By Parker & Walsh 6 Comments

soccer challenges When you’re working to improve your soccer game, coming up with a fun game or challenge can be a great way to stay engaged and get your competitive juices flowing.

The following 5 soccer challenges are meant to be somewhat difficult. Don’t get frustrated if you can’t complete them right away, and feel free to use modified versions as you see fit.

These challenges are made to test your skills but also to help you improve as a player.

1.) The Crossbar Game Challenge

The crossbar game is a classic soccer challenge. I played this a lot before high school practices with my coaches.

To do it, stand 30 yards away and drive a soccer ball to see if you can hit the top crossbar of a soccer goal.

If you have with a partner to play with, then see who can hit the crossbar 5 times first. You can also try hitting each of the posts.

As you’re going through the challenge, try both striking a set ball and a moving ball.

Hitting a set ball will help with your free kicks, but you always hit a moving ball during open play in a game so that is crucial to work on too.

The goal of this challenge is to pick a small target and hit it.

This has a lot of real-world utility, because when you are playing in a game, just a couple of inches can determine whether or not you score a goal, complete a pass, or whether your cross gets over a defender’s head.

2.) The Driving Range Challenge

The following game is a variation of the crossbar game. Again, stand 30 yards away and strike a ball at the goal.

The goal of this challenge is to drive the soccer ball into net without the ball hitting the ground.

This will help improve your shooting skills, especially driving a soccer ball.

The more that the ball is on a rope, the quicker it will get from point A to point B. Again, it is often more enjoyable to challenge a friend, and the competition will make you better.

3.) Target Practice Challenge

To do this challenge, place a trash can 40 or 50 yards away and try to kick a soccer ball into it. It’s simple but fun and very difficult to get right.

I saw an example of this challenge in a Youtube video of a behind the scenes commercial featuring David Beckham, one of the game’s best ever crossers.

This challenge will help you with your crossing accuracy. Learn from the best and start practicing.

4.) Juggling a Tennis Ball Challenge

Juggling a tennis ball is very tough, but can do wonders for your touch and control.

You can start by just kicking the tennis ball with your right foot once and then catching it. Then go left foot once and catch.

Progress to right foot, left foot, catch. Once you get comfortable do not catch the ball at all. Just keep juggling.

If you try this one, let us know your high number in the comments!

5.) Partner juggling over a house or a large tree

The final challenge is definitely a strange one. I first saw it on a commercial in the early 2000s, and I am not even sure what the commercial was promoting or selling. I just thought it was so cool to see two soccer players juggling over a house!

So immediately after the commercial my brother and I went outside and tried it. If my memory serves me correctly, then my brother and I completed juggling the soccer ball over our house about 5 times.

You can take as many touches as you need in order to settle the ball and get it under control, but do not let the ball hit the ground. If you need to modify the challenge, then only allow the ball to bounce once per side.

See you if you and a friend can beat beat 5. Let us know. It is tougher than it sounds. (Also, be sure to get permission before trying and don’t try this challenge if you might break something!)

Do you have any other favorite soccer challenges we haven’t mentioned?