Do you want your soccer players to improve their ball skills? What coach doesn’t! Ask your players to dedicate 10-15 minutes every day at home toward these activities. These soccer activities can be done at home or anywhere because they require little space and cost! You will notice increased confidence and comfort with the ball at one’s feet, not to mention improved fitness.
Coaching youth soccer: 5 activities to improve confidence with the ball
by Ken Kruse, Seattle Soccer Examiner
Do you want your soccer players to improve their ball skills? What coach doesn’t! Ask your players to dedicate 10-15 minutes every day at home toward these activities. These soccer activities can be done at home or anywhere because they require little space and cost! You will notice increased confidence and comfort with the ball at one’s feet, not to mention improved fitness.
Jumping Rope – Great cardiovascular workouts that will improve endurance, speed, and build leg muscle. How long can you last without messing up? Perhaps tell players to start by counting the number of jumps they can do in one minute. Tell them to work at increasing the number of jumps per minute in addition to duration.
Step-Ups – How many can you do in a minute?
Ball Taps Between Feet – How many can you do in 30 seconds?
Two Hop Ball Tap – How many can you do in 30 seconds?
Ball Juggling – How many juggles can you complete without messing up in 30 seconds?
Advertisement
Bonus Activity #6 – Try combining activities 3 and 4 with 90 and 180 degree turns. Are they using both feet? How many can your players do without messing up in 30 seconds?
Do you want to validate the success of these basic soccer activities? Try recording progress and rewarding effort and improvement. Players can record activity on note cards, using Excel, some phone application, or whatever is easiest for them. Maintaining activity records allow players and coaches to recognize improvement, or perhaps habits and activity levels to change so goals and improvement can be realized.
Rewarding both effort and noted improvement will keep players motivated to continue activities, which in turn helps build confidence with the ball. There are hundreds of ways to reward players for dedicated effort or reaching a particular goal. The simplest, recognize their accomplishments in front of teammates and/or parents. What other ideas have worked for you or another coach, teacher or parent you know?
