Pre-season "training" ?

Tell your friend to take their daughter off that team immediately. 1st off she's going to get fittness by doing activities with the socer ball, learning technical ball skills. Running the 1st 4 days for 90mins isn't going to get any of them match fit, which is just absurd. Spending 20mins doing fittness is more than enough 10yrs.

I repeat, there are ton of soccer activities(involving the ball and player) that one will get fitness from while increasing their technical skills, which should be the priority.

 

8maCookies is right on. Find a coach and a program that will incorporate a ball in all team activities.
Passing, receiving, 1v1 moves, juggling, shooting, emphasis on small sided games,etc. Starting at U-12/U-13 (when they move to the bigger field), conditioning becomes a bigger issue. Until then, extra conditioning for the sake of conditioning is not a good thing.

 

I like to know that coaches past history. They have to learn ball skills first. Want them to run, then dribble with the ball thats running. Everything off our game commes off the dribble.

 

I actually counted how many touches my son (U-10) got in a practice, between all the exercises, 1v1, 3v3, 4v4 etc. It averaged out (conservatively) to 60 touches every 5 minutes. Using 90 minutes as your baseline, minus 10 mins for warming up, 10 mins for water breaks, that would come out to 840 touches on the ball that your kid misses out on during each of these sessions.

 

In a professional game a player may touch the ball for less then a minute. So much of the game your moving without the ball.

In a warm up before a tryout you should get at least 300 touches.

 

Preseason training at the Magic was pretty intense - about the same amount of time on the ball as you mentioned with lots of physical running and training etc... I remember watching the players who looking like the walking dead afterwards.

This was an A team in the IWSL which had a lot of talent coming off years of playing together so maybe the fit part was more important to the training preseason.

Probably old-school and maybe not necessarily right, the girls were trained mentally to pull through games hard because they would be running if the flopped one that should have been a win. Seemed to motivate them during the games.

The next season we had a new coach - no training at all and we ended up flopping our way through A/B and eventually the team went their separate ways.

Not necessarily and answer - just my experience with training.

Many of the girls should have been at Eclipse or Sockers anyhow because Magic was not going anywhere for them.

 

That was pointless training session. Runing the hill was a pointless exercise for fitness when they could have gotten the same fitness from 1v1 or 5v2 drills or passing and moving drills. This exercise didn't improve any of their soccer related abilities.

The ladder drill is fine, it could drastically be improved with a soccer balls. The course would be, 10 yard spirt to a cone where there's 2 player 5-10yards away waiting to play a ball to the player. The player recieves & pass the ball back to passer, than recieve & pass the ball back to the 2nd passer. Than a ten yard ladder involving inside outside foot work, than str8 sprint 15 yards to the last cone. Still getting touches with the ball.

The relay races were also pointless exercise, extaclly how did that improve their soccer abilities, like touch, foot eye coordination, 1v1 skills(attacking/defending; increasing confidence to take players on).

Tennis soccer is kinda pointless if there aren't soccer ball related activities leading up to tennis soccer or after it. Tennis soccer is fun way to incorpate 1 touch volley passing and shooting., to expand on what the players will learn that day or have learned from earlier training sessions. It helps the player more if their doing activities that invlove using all the surfaces of the foot inside, outside, heel, laces, sole, etc...

The training session your friends' daughter went to is pointless and horrible. Their losing money if their paying for theses sessions and the daughter isn't increasing her technical skills, confidence on the ball, understating of tactical awareness, learning to pick her head up to see where her teammates are and where's the danger etc....

 

Hell 90% of parents are wasting $$$

 

Depends on what progams they are at.

 

12 Clubs in the area and only one is worth the money.

The rest are just stealing from un-educated parents who want to slap a club sticker on their car window with low end coaches who boast winning in the C/D or Red/Bronze group.

I suppose the parents do deserve it however.

 

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It's about development not winning. If your in favor of winning over development, than your part of the problem. Soccer is no different than any other sport, childern are there to learn 1st & formost, that should always be the priority. Let it be all about wins and loses at during the High School, College seassons and/or pro level.

I'm not sure where your from but what clubs in your area are top notch? You said that there are 12 clubs in your area and only 1 is worth it, have you checked out all the other clubs? Are there clubs your not aware of that are doing things the correct way that are just smaller progams/still growing?

 

11 clubs take money - play off the score board. 1 does not.

I drive an hour one way to practices and games so my kids can play with the one of best development clubs in Region II.

Not interested in winning at all. And I am very well aware of all 12 programs - know the DOC's various coaches and have done some business with a few.

This area is all about winning because that's all the parents know and the clubs here are just giving them what they want - which is why they are wasting their $$$

 

All the clubs in your area are bad? Are there just 11 clubs in your area? Or are there just 11 clubs in your area that you know aware of?

 

I think this coach is from Bolivia and ran the Tahuichi Way soccer camp there. You pay thousands of dollars for a month camp and half of the camp is devoted to just running.

 

What is the context of all this? I have read that this is worthless if they are not learning tactical, technical things in conjunction with their conditioning. It is 4 days. Is this the same practice they run during the week in mid October? Are these things really worthless or do people need to see what they can accomplish with a little more effort. The assumption being made is that these u11s are fit already, perhaps spending an hour or so a day at the park playing pickup soccer with their friends. I have seen plenty of kids on soccer teams who I would not necessarily consider fit. They ran a mile up and down a hill, did 20 minutes of quickness drills, ran relays and played a game of tennis soccer. I think that is hardly child abuse nor can the coach be judged based on 4 days of practice.

 

Don't try and put words in others mouths, no one suggested that it is child abuse period.

2nd the context is exactly what Jeddy wrote. These are 10yrs old youth players that play on a small field, fittness should even be an issue there. There not playing a 90min game with 3 subs were one has to have a high level of fitness.

How does running benefit the growth of the players technical skills, tactical skills? Whether it's 4 days or 4 weeks running/fitness should never have the majority of the training session for youth players. 20-30mins of fittness in the middle or towards the end of a training session will increase one fitness the same as spending the entire training session dedicated to fitness.

A coach can and should be judged on 4 days of practice if they are requiring the parents to pay for these session where their children are running, which is something they can do at home for free and having the majority of that time spent on soccer related activities involving a ball.

 

That's even worst. There wasting 5-8 weeks of training with the majority of that running/coniditioning/fitness. How in world does that benefit those player(10yrs) or any youth player on the technical skill or tactical skills?

Your friends are wasting their money and time at that club. Hell I even know AAU basketball programs that are flawed, yet they run a better progam than what Jeddy Rasp has descripted.

 

The club structure in the area varies.

Four clubs come in around $500-$700 per season. These are obviously smaller programs.

These clubs are all volunteer coaches who go out and get the bare minimum for certs - E license. You get what you pay for but unfortunately the better kids really never fully become aware that there is an entirely different world of youth soccer out there which they could benefit greatly from with a larger program. That said these clubs are just fine for your advanced rec players who want to have fun but probably will never kick a ball beyond their sophmore season in high school.

A fifth club is similar but they bring in C certified level coaches who train once per week season round and also provide for keeper training.

These small clubs are great and needed but I think the community would be better served if a development club ran an intermediate program for them rather then an advanced rec program put on by the parents. Plus most of these coaches would not know what to do with the really skilled players. Heck even I pushed my best players to other clubs because I could not grow them any more and they were just carrying the team at every game.

Generally the coaches and clubs are not that educated on the real world of soccer and thusly cannot help the most talented players grow.

The next group of 5 are larger community based programs - this is where you find the sort of parents who think they know all there is about soccer and generally like to pull ahead of you on the road to show off their clubs sticker on the back of their minivan. Many of these parents know nothing and can be the most competitive of the lot to a point that they will yell at refs and tell parents on the opposing team how the game is played. The reality is they play in the weakest region of their leagues and it would be a stretch for any of these parents to tell you what ODP/DA/ECNL etc... even stands for.

Every one of these clubs have a decent DOC but that DOC is general strapped by boards of over weight potato chip eating board members who grew up playing baseball. They control the DOC and often preclude $$$ from being spent on decent coaches. So in turn you have the DOC with 7-8 teams and then a handful of coaches with E and D certs running the lowest ranking teams. Those coaches do not develop. They deal with the bottom end of players who in some cases have potential but very little of that will be achieved via these coaches. At u10 ot u12 a coach will say "What position do you play" and play that kid in that spot for seasons on end.

But yet they are charging $1550-$1700 for that??? IMO the parents could spend maybe $200 per season and send then to a development club where they will learn.

The last 2 are development clubs however one is a satellite location which I am not sure will pick up traction. The other is a large community based program with C/B/A certified coaches and a good support staff. They have enormous resources (indoor and outdoor) and a huge rec pool - all controlled by one family for years. They develop 100%. If you player has athletic skill, is positive and wants to play, they will take them - because their coaches can develop.

The real problem I have with my area is saturation. Saturation in terms of having 3 different clubs that do 3 completely different things in terms of youth soccer.

1. Advanced Rec
2. Local Community-Based "Competitive"
3. Development

Development should not be the basis of only just one of 12 clubs in this area. It should be the foundation of every club period. But that takes a program/coaching structure that is common. You need coaches who are more then just a volunteer dad or mom. You need coaches who have something more then an E cert - they need to as well shadow development coaches - watch development practices and incorporate that into the lower ranks.

But you cannot stop there - you need a development path for all these kids. They need to know that if they are in the Advanced Rec group and are skilled that they can move to the next level and so on... They need to know that ECNL or DA is out there for them - that winning the A division is great but that's just the middle of the road - that there is a path that goes higher.

It's all about organization, access, resources and educating the parent as well as developing the player.

It's a mess out here.