I'm returning to soccer after a 2 year layoff. I quit prior to my senior year of high school and plan on attempting to walk on my university's team for the spring season of 2013. My training in the weight room has gone into overdrive this summer, but I don't have enough opportunities to play high levels of competetive soccer to sharpen my skills again. During youth soccer I played at a top club in Ohio and did ODP for a few years, but this extended break has seriously dulled all of my abilities. Does anybody have a nice set of individual drills that helped them elevate their touch, passing, and shooting skills? All help is appreciated.
The 1000 touches drill linked below is Coerver based. If you are not familiar with the moves, there are dozens of video clips on you tube demonstrating them. Work on a wall and juggle. You can also practice restarts. If you can find a partner there is a lot more you can do, passing, receiving and 1v1. The Pele drill for instance. One player serves to the other, who receives using various parts of the body (alternating foot, thigh, chest for starters), controls and passes back. http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~dgraham/daily_drill.html http://www.playsportstv.com/soccer/soccer-drills_single-player-ball-receiving-drills# Youtube is your friend as far as getting ideas. Take a look at all the clips down the right hand side of the youtube page too. Anson Dorrance's book "Vision of a Champion" has the details of his off-season training plan for his UNC women's team. Fitness is a great area for you to work on. Not just strength training though. Do anaerobic endurance training and speed and agility training too. These areas you can perfect training individually, and they are extremely important. You may be able to get some recommendations for off-season training from the coaching staff at the university that you intend to try out for. Normal off-season training plans are heavily weighted toward fitness rather than technical or tactical training. Don't overlook watching matches.
passing to a wall has really helped me with passing and first touch. I do more than just stand there and kick it though. altering the power and height i put into the pass makes it come back differently, great for improving first touch. passing at an angle and then running to where it bounces off. when I do that I alternate one touch passing on the run and receiving it in stride. the other thing I do is put piece of tape on the wall as targets, which helps with accuracy instead of mindlessly kicking the ball. for shooting, the field i practice at has a couple different size goals, which is great. I like to take a smaller goal and put it in the bigger goal. Then I try shoot into the smaller goal. You can also take a smaller goal and put it in the box to act as a wall for practicing free kicks. I'll put a few cones on the ground and pretend they're defenders. I dribble up to them, do a move to create some space then shoot. It really helps to have more than one ball when you train alone. Otherwise you spend just as much time retrieving it as you do drilling. Get as many as you can, I don't think it's possible to have too many. When I figured this out and bought a few more, I felt much more productive during my sessions. Whenever I work on conditioning, I almost always have the ball at my feet. When I started dribbling the ball throughout my sprints and distance runs, I noticed an improvement on my touch during games. I'm not saying you should never train without the ball, but I feel like I'm already good at running, so why not add to the challenge. My favorite drill for this is to run laps around the field. I sprint the sides, and on the ends I slow down and follow the lines around the box. Can't really describe that part with words, so I drew a picture: I think the most important thing you can do when you train alone is to plan out and write down exactly what you're going to do before you go out and train. When I don't have an exact plan I find myself spending too much time on one area, forgetting drills I wanted to do, and wasting time just messing around. hope this helps