1/15 Ball Striking- Working On The Set Up

You can't build a reputation on what you are going to do.
-The Man Watching

We continued our work on our shooting technique today with the focus being on our set up touch and our approach to the ball.  Ask any player what are the keys to shooting and they will answer; keep your toe down, ankle locked, lean over the ball, and follow through.  They all know what to do.  So the issue isn't that the kids don't know the main parts of what goes into a shot.  So why is their form not better? 

As I have been watching and focussing on this for the last couple of weeks, I have found that the issue is found in the fact that most players have an inconsistent set up touch, and because of that, they have an inconsistent approach to the ball before they shoot.

If you watch, some players will take their set up touch too straight forward and they wont be able to get their core into the shot.  Not getting your core muscles into a shot will make the shot weaker.  Another side effect of taking the set up touch too straight ahead is that your toe will have to come up to avoid hitting the ground.  Others take their set up touch wide, but then the foot that they just took their touch with will move backwards, closer to their other foot, and they will follow that by a bunch of tiny steps up to the ball before exploding into the shot. 

When a player moves their foot backwards and adds in all the extra steps, it allows more time for the defender to try and block your shot and for the goalie to set up to save your shot.

Everything In Your Body Is Connected
The physics of a player moving her foot backwards forces that player to lean back slightly to stay in balance while moving.  If you are leaning forward with your chest over your knee, you take a touch and move your foot backwards while continuing to lean forward, you will get out of rhythm and almost fall.  This happens because your upper body is moving forward and your foot does not have enough time to take a full step forward with your body if it moves backwards first.  This, short awkward step, will cause your next step to be out of synch and you will be completely off balance.  To avoid doing this your upper body will lean back slightly as your foot moves backwards and your whole body will move forward again together. 

To work on this I used an exercise that Greg Wheaton, ISSE Soccer and Northwestern Men's Head Coach, showed me.

-Place 3 cones in front of the player so it forces her to take her set up touch at an angle.  Have the player take her set up touch and try to shoot with only using 1 step between the set up touch and the shot.

Key Points:
-Your foot follows the ball on the set up touch.  If you make sure your foot keeps moving with the ball, you will stay leaning forward and keep pace with the ball.
-Explode off of the foot that took the set up touch and followed the ball.  Because you have followed the ball your upper body will be over your knee allowing you to create lots of power with your next step.
-Follow through.  End up moving forward.

We did this exercise the entire time.  I was very impressed with how hard the girls worked to perfect this.  Doing the same thing over and over for 30 minutes can get boring, but they were tuned in and expressed enjoyment as they started to shoot harder and have forward spin and no spin on their shots.