Chapter eight takes you through how to facilitate challenging & fun sessions for your players, keeping your learning outcomes and principles of play in mind.
Tag: Session Plans
Coaching Craft – Chapter 7 – Session Planning & Design
This chapter takes you through how to develop optimal sport-specific, game-realistic sessions to support athlete development and long-term growth.
The art of structuring an effective warm-up
We all know the importance of warming up the body in the proper ways, but many novice (or dinosaur) coaches fail to adequately know how to warm up the body in the proper ways specific to the sport. As a young gun in the soccer world, I can recall running laps around the field, static stretching, and even hill sprints prior to practice sessions and games. None of these are particularly helpful, even if they can work 1-3% of times in specific contexts (hill sprints aside of course). With that, I present the elements of an effective warm-up and how coaches can structure the warm-up to fit into the grander scheme of their session plans.
Train of Thought – The value of playing with touch restrictions
The mental side of the beautiful game is at least as important as the physical side, but is often neglected by coaches in training sessions. In this series, Travis Norsen, author of Play With Your Brain, will discuss small tweaks to standard training exercises and the large positive effects they can have on players’ decision-making and soccer intelligence. This week, Travis explores the value of using one-touch restrictions in your sessions.
Train of Thought – Situating training exercises in their appropriate place on the pitch
The mental side of the beautiful game is at least as important as the physical side, but is often neglected by coaches in training sessions. In this series, Travis Norsen, author of Play With Your Brain, will discuss small tweaks to standard training exercises and the large positive effects they can have on players’ decision-making and soccer intelligence. This week, Travis explores why you should situate your training exercises in their appropriate place on the pitch.
Session Plan – Spatial Awareness & Switching Play
Recently I have heard much in the way of what I would classify as "misinformation" regarding the readiness of youth players to learn tactical concepts like switching play. Switching play as a tactical concept ultimately comes down to recognizing space and making decisions based on that spatial awareness. Switching play doesn't mean crossing a long-ball forty/fifty yards from one side of the field to the other. It is about recognizing the space to see the opportunity of when space is condensed, versus when space is available and what to do in both of those situations. It is therefore an essential concept that can be taught to players of just about any age. Here is a session plan and key coaching points to match, all about spatial awareness and switching play!
How to make football graphics with Planet Training
As football content creators, we want to create stunning images that resonate with our viewers and stand out on the page. One of the best websites that allows us to do so is Planet Training, a tool that is more typically used for coaches and club directors to design session plans and club curriculums. Here is a video all about how to make stunning graphics using Planet Training, whatever your purpose.
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