SO WHAT NEXT?

You’ve got the equipment and you have your squad. So what now?

The most important aspect of youth football coaching drills is FITNESS. That’s right…fitness. The average junior soccer match will be between15 and 25 minutes a half with a 5 minute break in between. In that time your players are going to be running and sprinting; which means that they need to be fit.

 As I have mentioned before, a typical season will last for eight months of a year of which two months will form part of your pre-season training and the rest of the season will be taken up with playing matches. You need to realize that fitness training is as important as drills and basics. However you also need to realize that the type of fitness program needs to be effective or else you will fail. Getting your players to jog around a field once, twice or even three times during a training session will not suffice. Your squad needs to be conditioned and this requires body resistance training along with sprints. You also don’t want to turn your youth football coaching drills into a boot camp and end up with the vast majority of players leaving the club. Your squad needs to know the importance of fitness training. They may well dislike you but in the end the effort will pay you dividends during the season.

The very first and most important thing to do is to measure each individual’s level of fitness. This is done by measuring a 40 meter line with a start and a finish. You need a stop watch to time the sprint. Each player will sprint the 40 meters only once and you as coach will time them. This will allow you to focus on two important aspects:

1)     Who are the fastest players in your squad?

2)     And how fit are all of your players.

This exercise should be carried out once every three weeks and duly recorded. This will allow you to see the progress of your fitness program.

Next time we will look at different fitness programs.

Cheers for now.

Mike