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Individual Skill Work – Repetition is the Key

July 7, 2010 by admin

Author: Fernando Solis

In this news post I’ll discuss the importance of practicing skill work on an individual basis. This extra skill work is additional to organized club training and personal training sessions.

For those that have trained with me in Melbourne you will know the emphasis I place on carrying out your own training. I will go even further and say that if you don’t do this extra work you seriously reduce the chances of any improvement. If you are aspiring toward a professional career its and absolute must!

I also like to remind the younger ones that their parents are investing in a personal trainer for them to improve, so the best way to get something out of it is to practice!

With out practice and improvement their is no progression.

Club Training

Most players will train with their clubs twice per week for about 2 hours per session plus have a match on the weekend. This will equate to approximately 4 hours of structured training undertaken by a coach.
In club training coaches need to cover the following concepts:

- Passing
- Ball control
- Dribbling
- Heading
- Shooting
- Ball shielding
- Positional sense and tactical awareness
- Defensive and attacking principals
- Fitness and conditioning

Depending of the age of the players the time spent on these skills and concepts will vary.

As you can see it’s a lot to cover in only 4 hours of weekly practice!

Matches are the culmination of all the weekly training where all concepts of play unfold. The speed and intensity of training is never quite the same as a match and a player will find they have very few touches of the ball and little time to have the ball in their possession.

In the elite soccer countries kids are training at their clubs from 3 to 5 times per week. If you do the math it amounts to several hours of extra training per week. When you consider that it takes over 10 years to produce a player capable of playing pro soccer this will equate to countless hours of less ball time our developing players don’t get here in Australia.

Cultural factors also play a part (not as much as some make it out to be) with kids playing at school and in their spare time with friends.

Personal Training and Soccer Academies

Personal or individual soccer skills training with a specialist coach and private soccer academies are now common place in the soccer circles and are filling the void clubs leave in regards to player development. Clubs offer few training sessions and unfortunately the quality of the coaching is not always great.

I’ve been successful in improving many of my clients through my specialist individual skills coaching. But I do emphasize to my players the importance of carrying out the drills they learn with me on their own. Repetition is the key!

Practice with Friends or on your own

If you interviewed anyone who knew Maradona, Pele, Ronaldinho, Zidane or Messi as a kid, I’m sure they’d all say the same thing. “Yeah I remember that kid – every time I saw him he was kicking a ball around”.

The aim is to spend as much time with a ball as possible. Playing at school, meeting friends after school at a park or at a friends house.
It’s in all these hours of imaginative and free play that kids will improve their skills and become better players – and all under no pressure!

If kids are alone that’s ok – all they need is a ball, a park or patio and a wall – that’s it!!
It sounds too good to be true but I can assure you that’s all it takes for radical improvement. Watching the best players on TV and copying their tricks will keep you busy for hours.
Juggling the ball, running with it, left and right foot, shooting and passing it against a wall 1000 times.

Repeat these simple skills over and over again.

Remember this – Repetition is the Master of all Skill.

As I mentioned earlier – The best players in the world have superior skill because of the countless hours of individual skills training they did as developing players.

When the pressure is on and time and space is of a premium, the best players stand out because of the comfort and ease that they have to maneuver the ball around.

There are no easy paths to improving your game. That’s the honest truth.
Dedication, commitment and sacrifice are necessary, and if you have the self discipline and drive to practice I guarantee you will become a player of the future.

Good luck.

Stay tuned for my new upcoming web post – Why Repetition Training Works.
This article will explain the scientific and biological reasons that prove why repetition training is a successful development tool.