Maintaining Quality Practices
With Your Club

By Mike Barr, Director of Coaching, EPYSA

Every coach will go through a period where you feel the practices have become boring or even tedious to both the players, and to you as their coach. My advice is to alter your training a bit in order to bring some variety, and rejuvenate your team.

Sometimes, the best time to change practice plans is after a loss. The following are suggestions to bring about a new spark to the entire team.

1. Schedule a night where the whole team goes to a match (high school, college or pro) to watch and enjoy the game. If the logistics are difficult, schedule a night where the whole team watches a National Team qualifying match. Have each of the players bring quality snacks and drinks of their choosing.
2. Attend a local movie as a team. Make sure the film is age-appropriate and light-hearted in nature.
3. Comprise a practice that is only filled with fun games (soccer baseball, soccer tennis or volleyball, individual competitions). Even play a sport completely unrelated to soccer (touch football or basketball).
4. Make time to take the entire team to a pool.
5. Hold a complete practice of street soccer in which all you do as coach is record the scores and time the length of the games.
6. Bring in a new trainer to work with the team on a topic of your choice for one practice. Often times, you can pick up new ideas and the players have the chance to hear a new voice.
7. Have a contest with the entire team, where the winning player has the opportunity to run the training session for one night.
8. Ask the players to come up with a play off a restart and present it to the team. Choose the one you feel that could work and use it in the next match.
9. Bring in music to your training, especially in your warm-up.
10. Schedule a practice night in which each player has to teach another player something at which they have achieved a level of expertise. This could be a musical instrument, foreign language, a hobby, an art-related endeavor, cooking, or even the stock market. They could also share some things about their families in order to build strong bonds that carry through the season.

 

Coaches, think outside the box. Much of the information you need to have success may not lie in a DVD, coaching manual or a coaching course. Don't be afraid to step away from training and try something different.