What follows is a simplistic way of bearing in mind the essential soccer coaching factors ate determine the team philosophy and moving along with it. Using this philosophy for your youth team can be very practical; and simpler than you may think.
The elements which are essential for an effective youth coaching philosophy are 6; parents, coaches, excitement, selection, time, and success windows.
Communicating with Parents regularly: Parental influence is the key factor for soccer training which is essential in the mental and physical growth of your players, particularly on the day of the match. “Parental responsibilities”, the brochure supplied when the term starts is not sufficient. Regular meetings should be arranged with the parents to highlight the key points again and discuss issues.
Developing soccer coaches: Training of soccer coaches should be an integral part of your philosophy instead of targeting the players. You may try if one of your kid’s parents can become a soccer coach? They would be most suitable and a great option for the future.
Selection: One of the biggest reasons why players with great soccer skills drop out is non-selection. Studies show that players would rather get selected for a bad team out of the fear of getting rejected for a good team. Thus a logical system which provides the players equal game time should be used.
Time: Be particular in starting the session on time and also the timely arrival of the parents. When the start times and finish times are clearly defined, you can execute the session very well.
Excitement: Is it absolutely necessary that all the soccer coaching sessions are entertaining? You must definitely try to make each session a delight for the kids but then, its not possible all the time. So adopt “excitement” as a substitute for this.
When you train the kids, it is perfectly natural that coaches have problems coming up with different ideas on how to make sessions fun. Hence, the biggest challenge is to be so good with your thinking that you can come up with several great ideas to make drills fun for kids.
In soccer drills, it is a good idea to keep increasing the level of difficulty every time. A method of doing this is to start a game, introduce a problem, and then find a solution of it in a drill.
Success windows: Make an effort to create a success window for the season as an important part of your training. This actually requires you to determine a lower limit and an upper limit of time with a view to measure the level of success that needs to be achieved.
For instance, time frame of minimum four and maximum eight weeks. This can be done for both team as well as individual team members.
Do good and adopt a soccer coaching philosophy like this become a part of the development phase of your kid’s training once the basics have been covered. If you would like more such knowledge and resources, subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community.
Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Soccer Coaching Drills.
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