Skills Time Follow Up

Since posting the Academy Skills Sheets yesterday I have been asked to elaborate on how the kids will do everything.

Reader-There is a lot of stuff on the sheets.  Are they supposed to do everything each day?

AK: The idea of putting so many things on the sheet was so the kids will have options.  The great thing about soccer is that there are so many different ways to pass, dribble, shoot, and trap a ball.  You can work on something different each day.
Here is how it will work:  Say a player wants to work on their dribbling for a half an hour.  She can look at the dribbling section and choose to start out with the Quick Dribbling.  If she starts out with the 4 touch she works for as long as she wants on the 4 touch and she can try as many times as she wants to get her top score.  When she is done working on that she can put down what her top score for the day was and then move on to another section of the Quick Touches and work on that.

Dribbling
Quick Touches-Do As Many As You Can In 30 Seconds
Date/Top Score:
4 Touch	Goal: 19	4/21: 15
4 Touch Cap	Goal: 19	4/21: 14

After that maybe she wants to work on some moves.  The moves section does not involve counting how many times you do the move in 30 seconds because we want you to work on taking the ball away different ways and setting up the move different ways.  To record for this section you simply put down the date that you worked on the move and if you want you can put down how much time you spent.

Maradona

4/21: 5 min

If you want to do the the cutting grid you can take as many turns as you want to try and get your best score.  You only record your top score.

Inside Cut

4/21: 20

The same goes for the timed dribbling exercises where you can take as many turns as you like, but you only record the date and your top score.

10 Cone Quick Touch- Put 10 cones in a straight line 1 yard apart
Date/Top Score:
Anything	4/21: 8.4 sec

Now if that is all the time you had for one day that is fine.  You can come back the next day and challenge yourself to beat your scores from the previous day or you can select new things to work on.

For the Ball Striking section you can record what you did like this or you can simply write down the amount of time you spent working on the shot.

Shooting
Date/Time/Shots
Laces	4/23 50 Shots

For the Long Distance portion you can take as many tries as you want from whatever distance but you only record the furthest distance that you hit the wall from 10 times in a row.

Long Distance Passing- Pick a distance and hit 10 in a row from that distance
Date/Distance
Driven Ball	20 yds

For the Juggling Portion you simply write down your score.  For the Combos section if it says Foot-Thigh you have to alternate between your foot and thigh and you write down what your highest score was alternating.

The last section is the Circuit Training.  All of these exercises were covered in our winter Spat training.  For these you just pick one of the 3 circuits and do everything on the list.

Reader: Are you using any sort of motivation for the players to get them to work on the skills?

AK: We will be having the Skills Days once a month where we will give out prizes for the areas that I mentioned in the first article.  Besides that we will try to keep the kids updated with where their peers are at and the leaders in the Academy are at so they can have some extrinsic goals to reach for.  The hope is that the kids will simply do this because they enjoy working on their game and they want to improve.

As I said before, none of this is required.  If you want to go out and do your own thing or play with your friends that is great.  If you don't want to see a soccer ball when you are away from soccer that is fine also.  But as the kids will start to see, the players who really spend time working on their game will eventually see the improvements in their game and their skills.

If you have any more questions please email them to me and I will try to answer all of them.