Training Menu
Choose from these exercises for simple effective training sessions.
Rondos
Rondos are one of the most effective training exercises in soccer. They help players develop technical skills, decision-making, and positional awareness in a simple competitive format. We break them down into three categories:
- Static: Can be used during the warm up to just get players moving a bit and focusing on fundamentals.
- Transitional: Can be used as the warm up or second phase to focus on desired behaviour in small numbers. This should be a high intensity fast-paced exercise and can be adapted simply by adjusting field dimensions and team size to work on various aspects of the game.
- Positional: These rondos have a specified structure that mirrors structural elements from a game. Structure, field shape, team sizes and neutrals can all be used as adaptations to use these rondos to coach many elements of the game.
Small-Sided Games
These are simply soccer games with smaller fields and smaller teams usually teams of 3-7 players. Some notes on effective execution:
- Promotion and relegation between fields can keep intensity and competition level high.
- Possible goal variations: 2 full size, 1 full size vs 2 small, 4 small, 2 small
- Channels on the wing can encourage crossing/finishing
- Teams should not be balanced, but organized from strongest to weakest(but do give some consideration to positions for the top couple of teams)
Tactical
It's important to work on tactical concepts in realistic scenarios. While many tactical principles can be addressed in rondos and small-sided games. Sometimes it is necessary to use a larger space and larger groups to communicate certain principles and patterns your team should implement. These exercises can be useful in these scenarios and modified to cover all aspects of the game:
- 4 Goal Game
- Attack vs Defense with Counter Goals
- 11vs11
Adaptation Considerations
Proper adaptations are key to successful coaching. These are important ways you should consider modifying exercises to guide the players to the principles you want to instill in them:
- Modify team sizes/balance
- Modify field size -> bigger to work on defending, smaller for attacking
- Touch restrictions only for a limited time, and explain that it's specifically for improving decision making and supporting movements. Or to encourage more transitions if working on transitional play.