3/5 Tourny Prep Sessions

Everyone knows that champions are made in the off season. The training and sacrifice of what you do when no one is looking paves the way for success when the lights are the brightest.

I don't like to spend very much time on conditioning with young kids because it is more important for the players to be working on their technical skills and playing than getting in top condition.  Besides, if you can keep the players motivated they should be working hard during your session so they can get their conditioning in while they are playing.

However, if I completely neglect the conditioning aspect as we move towards our first tournament of the year, not only will the kids not be as prepared as they should be for the tournament, I would be putting them into a situation where the possibility for injuries will be increased.

Our lack of games during the winter is great from a training and development aspect, but as everyone who has played the game knows, there is a huge difference between being in shape for training and being in game shape.  We are about to go from having two 11v11 games in the last 5 months to playing in hopefully 4 games in two days.  So each Wednesday we will have our Tourny Prep Sessions where we that will be designed for the girls to work hard and get into top level shape before we go to West Des Moines.

As I was writing up all the plans for each Wednesday session I wanted to be sure that the girls would work hard and get in better shape, but at the same time I want them working with a ball and having fun.  Conditioning is not nearly as hard if you can make it competitive and fun.  So my goal is for the girls to focus more on the competition aspect of what we are doing and the conditioning will be a by-product.

We started out with a bunch of relay races

The encouragement relay is a good way to build team unity because your teammates are helping you through a difficult time by showing you that they support you.

After we finished our relays I moved to 1v1 battles.  There is not better conditioning than 1v1 games with intensity.  We played 1v1 stop it on the line.

We finished with playing.  We had 3 teams of 6 players and rotated with every goal.  It's always important to end with a game.

I was very happy with how hard all the girls worked today.