Increasing the Intensity of Your Session
Having proper intensity and urgency in your sessions is very important. How you devise objectives often will foster an increase in intensity.
Here’s an example. If you tell your players they are going to play for 21 minutes, they will do just that. They will play for 21 minutes with varied intensity (probably very little).
In a 21 minute game, players will pace themselves. The game will only take on some meaning towards the end.
If you tell them instead that they are going to play three 7-minute games with the best out of three as winners, you are going to see more intensity and enthusiasm.
It teaches kids that even if they lose the first game, they can come back and be successful.
Or play seven 3-minute games if you really want to see a high level of intensity. The first team to win four games wins. You will surely see a lot more urgency here. The players will play with the proper intensity.
Your teams also gets used to working at a high level of intensity all of the time. This will pay off in a big way on game day, as they only know how to play with full intensity.
Changing the objectives of your activities will also change the thought processes of your players. Playing a game to 3 goals will create a different type of game than playing to only 1.
Increasing Speed of Play
In order for average players to become good or even great players, they have to increase their speed of play. You can do this in two different ways:
Limiting Touches
Limiting Time and Space
Some coaches are concerned about stifling the creativity of their players by going to limited touches. While this is the case often with very young players (plus they don’t have enough skill to execute two-touch soccer), it is very useful to encourage speed of play in older players.
Limiting touches forces your players to think faster.
Limiting touches also forces players to have a cleaner first touch. If you allow your players to always have 3 or 4 touches, they don’t ever learn how to make clean concise touches.
Limiting touches increases the quality of off the ball movement, especially in a one-touch game.
Limiting touches forces support runs to be made much quicker so that players with the ball have numerous options.
Am I going to put an 8 year old on two-touches? Never. But I will with a 13 year old group for part of the session. You do want to finish the sessions with unlimited touches, because you want it to represent true soccer.
For younger players, quality of play takes precedence over speed of play. Speed of play improves as technical proficiency increases.
An activity you can use is as follows:
Set up a grid with two lines. The distance they are apart will vary depending on the size and skill of your players.
Have two attackers go against a single defender with the objective being to dribble the ball over the line.
Now players will learn to recognize that other players might be in a better situation than they are. This takes some time to develop, as very young players don’t know how to create space by moving away from the ball.
We make the game more realistic by adding a second defender.
This will force the attackers to work quickly as they will have only a small window of time to score before their numbers up advantage is gone.
Begin with a two-line grid as above. This time have a defender on each line with a halfway marker. Once the attackers reach the halfway marker, the second defender can “recover” and join the game.
Even though we are working on speed of play, the first defender will soon recognize that in a numbers down situation if he can delay his opponent’s attack, he allows his teammates to recover to help him (economical session).
You can take this exercise a step further. Allow the defenders to attack the other line if they win possession of the ball. Now you are teaching transition without having to say anything.
You can run 2v1 and help your players recognize a numbers up situation, while at the same time helping them realize that they don’t have that advantage for a very long time in a game.
Attacking players will learn to quickly exploit their advantage before the defensive recovers. Defenders will learn to be patient until help arrives. Both teams will understand the value of quick transitions, as the defenders become attackers when they win the ball.
Just as you have given your attackers an objective, give one to your defender as well. Allow them to counterattack; don’t force them to just give the ball back and restart. This is unrealistic. There is no reason to have the defender do something he will never do in a game.
Teach your defenders to play soccer after they win the ball!