drill question

Seems like a well intentioned drill not well thought out.

 

I've seen passing through gates (cones) with a partner in that field size but not with defenders. Best way to teach space is to give them a ridiculous amount of space.. 4v4 in a diamond shape, with 4 or 6 goals. Make the field wider than longer. Your defender will learn how to distribute from the back out wide and you wide players and forward will learn that space = more touches.

 

This kind of drill is supposed to teach players passing under pressure and movement off the ball. Probably the passing skill of the players are so low that the coach has problems making the exercise flow. He tries with no opposition first, then tries to add some.

Getting the level of difficulty right is rather hard. The coach needs some time to experiment. If he can't make it work after a few tries he will probably move on to something else.

 

I am not a coach either and have seen a similar drill. I understand the concept behind it, however, it seems like the coach has to many players in a small space to make a good pass. The other issue I have here is that you say that there is already a spacing issue for the players on the field. I am wondering if drills like this where your coach puts so many players in a small space and has them clump together during practice causes clumping during the game. Which is something I have seen before. What other types of drills does he do to promote proper passing and spacing? Do you know what his end goal is to get from this? Did he have an answer for your daughter? I am wondering what you coaches think.

 

1. What to say to your daughter: Don't undermine the coach's authority. I don't understand why you question the coach's answer. If you or she don't understand the answer, you should be asking him to explain. I suspect the answer doesn't make sense to you because you assume the drill is supposed to improve passing and receiving technique. It is not.

2. The purpose of the drill is to learn to pass through traffic. I would have phrased it simply: To improve vision. Passing in pairs without opposition but among other pairs is a classic exercise to teach players to look up and around while playing. Both USSF and NSCAA teach coaches this exercise.

My guess is that he has identified 2 deficiencies--1) dribbling with the head down and 2) failure to move and not look around while off the ball. This exercise encourages the desired behaviors.

@Soccerdad13: The bunching is a necessary part of the exercise. Without it the players have no need to move and look around. The exercise eventually teaches players to continually look for the open space and move to it. All the pairs will tend to move to the same space, requiring the players to look for the next open space. All consistent with the behavior that you want to see in matches. These types of exercises are still used at higher levels typically as part of a warmup. Bunching (to a greater or lesser extent) is part of soccer at every level. Bunching is what creates open space elsewhere.

 

I would like to first say thank you for your response. While I would not tell anyone to second guess a coach, sometimes questioning is a good thing.

In regards to your post regarding what I said, rca2. I have seen the drill run by several teams as you described, however, that was not the drill that tuffnut11 was describing in my opinion. Since she has posted a response and said that they were not working in pairs as I suspected. This sounds more like a way to cause the girls to run around in a pack instead of finding open space. While yes teaching the girls to play heads up soccer and to look for open space is what needs to happen this does not seem to be the case. Trying to pass through traffic is a skill the team needs to learn but at what cost. If the traffic is to thick with to many girls standing around in a very small space there is not a whole lot of space to move to open space without 7-8 other girls standing in the way all looking to get the only ball in play.

I could be mistaken. I have coached other sports and used similar concept drills. But seeing what she posted about the practice in general and push ups being used when a kid makes a mistake instead of correcting the bad behavior is not something that is taught in any coaching clinic I have been to.

 

At least they weren't standing in line waiting to dribble through a maze of cones.

 

I am sorry that I misunderstood what the drill was. The drill is not age-appropriate imo, regardless of what the intent was. I would not use more than 3 or 4 players at most on a side. Small groups or 1v1 except for scrimmages or shadow play to teach team tactics. They need to master playing with a partner first, which is supposed to be done by age 8.

Normally I discount a parent's description of their child's coaching, but a parent saying that a coach has the children run suicides--that I have to credit. Youth coaches are supposed to teach fundamentals and how to practice them. Ignorant coaches do fitness drills and devise elaborate tactical schemes, because they don't know how to teach what they are supposed to.

I don't find fault with pushups per se, just the use of them as punishment. Pushups are a good strength exercise as is crawling. I have used wheelbarrow races, which are more fun than just doing pushups, and spider crawl races for U Littles. It lets you assess the fitness of the players. Suicides and other endurance training are not per se bad either, just not an efficient use of U-Little training time. The training session should be planned and executed so that the players receive sufficient endurance training from performing mixed tactical and technical exercises. Best practice is not to introduce endurance and strength training before the hormonal changes associated with adolescence kick in. U-Littles do benefit from such training, but it is a poor use of group training time.

 

I agree with Elessar78: the coach has no clue. The one-touch passing restriction did it for me. Ridiculous in this context.

 

We all have the same problem, as I obviously just did. This is why elessar78 initially asked what the coaching points were.

When using small sided games to teach, most of the movements in the game are found in a 3v3 game. Techniques and tactics. Attacking and defending. On-the-ball and off-the-ball. You can tell only so much from the physical setup and the instructions. It is in the coaching points that you see what a competent coach is focused on for that exercise. (A poor coach won't focus his teaching points.)

Generic exercises are only a starting point. Every group of players is different, and each group is different on any given day. So the coach has to adjust the exercise until it produces the behavior that he wants. It has to be challenging but not too difficult for the group. He has to continue to change the exercise (including the instructions and coaching points) as the season progresses because the group will improve. The topics of the lessons need to progress in a logical fashion, building on and reinforcing earlier lessons. The best coaches follow a coaching plan, even if the plan exists only in their head. (It is tough to manage assistants if you don't have a written plan.) That is coaching.