Training Session With U9 & U10 Teams
The Return
Last night we returned to training at Kekoa Coaching, Wednesdays is the U9 and U10 teams session day. After a long break for Christmas and New Year it was time to get the team back into the swing of things. The session have to combine fitness, speed, agility along with plenty of ball work to help shake off the rustiness due to the long break.
Fitness
I started the session with a fitness, speed and agility exercise, which started with some hurdle jumps, then into some touch cone dips, in an out of cones finishing off with a sprint. I wanted to keep things moving quickly so I didn't spend too long on the fitness at one time as I was going to come back to it after some ball work.
Ball Work
I order to get the team sharp and their football brain s going, I then moved onto some 4 a side games on a small pitch using small goals with no goalkeepers. The idea behind this was to get them playing quickly getting plenty of touches of the ball and small sided games are also great for team sprit. I rotated the teams every 10 or so minutes so that everyone got to play with each other and get talking and playing.
Mixing it up
I could see that the boys were enjoying the session and they were all very excited and enjoying it. I then wanted to mix things up so I went back to some fitness work for 5 or so minutes choose new teams then went back into games for the next half hour or so.
With around 10 minutes left of the session I opened the pitch up for a big game and set the teams up as they would be on a Sunday matchday. Overall I was really pleased with the session and it was really good to be back :)
Today its the turn of our U7 and U8 teams and I cannot wait.....
How much of an effect do you think fitness, speed and agility has on your players? Do they become better players and do you think the time would have been spent better if training touches, passing, tactic etc? Asking as I am starting another season with my U16 this thuesday.
Fitness, speed and agility is a very key part of training for me as the players will need and use all of those attributes during a game. I love ball work but you have to respect all training aspects as it will help the players.
If your working with 16 year olds being fit is very important as they play 11v11, working on recovery runs and general fitness is vital. Speed wise, with and without the ball should alway be worked on in my opinion. Agility and getting the players to move their body in all directions is also key as players need to be able to react and use their body in different ways.
I agree. I would think that fitness is a lot more important when dealing with 14+ years old. I would prefer at lot more ball work when working with U14 and down. I know, in Holland, they try to do at least 5k+ touches pr. player, which is probably why they have so many great technical players.