Are drill practices no good? 【Youth Soccer】Thinking about how to use them from history

Hello, this is Kazu, your instructor.

In youth soccer practice, how to handle drill training is a theme that many coaches probably struggle with. When you hear "soccer is best learned by playing soccer," you might feel a sense of guilt about doing drills at all.

For example, some of you may feel as follows.

• Are drills something we must not do because they lack situational judgment?
• I heard Spain does everything globally, so are drills an outdated practice?
• My team's coach does nothing but drills, but is this okay?

I myself, when I was young, had a period when I did only drill training.

In this article, I will explain the historical background of why drill training has been debated, its positioning in Spain, and when and how to use it on the ground. Once you understand the essence of drills, I think you will naturally be able to judge "let's use them in this situation" and "let's not use them in this situation," so please read to the end.

① "Soccer is best learned by playing soccer"

This is something you still hear often today, but there is a way of thinking that soccer is best learned by playing soccer. In that context, drill training is sometimes said to be not very good because it strips away too many of the elements necessary for soccer.

On the other hand, there are coaches who actively do drills, saying "aren't drills actually great?" Some people see them negatively, and some see them positively.

The reason this kind of debate arises is that there is a major background behind it.

② The debate that happened in the Netherlands, and the original Coerver Training

In the Netherlands about 30 years ago, there was a way of thinking that used drill training alone to develop players from the individual level to the group level and then to the team level, turning them into high-level players. That was turned into a method and systematized, and at the time I think it spread quite widely.

This is Coerver Training. Today there is also Coerver Coaching in Japan, but this was its origin.

The original Coerver Training analyzed and extracted the play of the world's top technical players of the time, and first systematized at the individual level how to dribble, how to turn, and how to feint. Furthermore, it compiled group combinations such as one-twos, overlaps, and switches, and created a method for how to install all of that from kindergarteners to about junior high school students.

As far as I know, I feel that it is vastly different from the current Coerver Coaching curriculum and training methods.

I remember being extremely shocked when I saw this video in high school, thinking that a third-grade elementary school student could do such things. When I was young, I had the footage given to me and dubbed it, and more recently I found the original VHS online and bought it. It was an extremely well-made drill training program, and I think it was quite revolutionary for its time.

③ The idea of complex systems, and element reductionism

On the other hand, the Dutch Football Association took the position that "that is not the case. Soccer is best learned by playing soccer," and it seems a debate arose there. So why did that way of thinking emerge?

As far as I can tell from reading books published in Japan about 30 years ago, I think the idea of complex systems was already present in the most advanced European training thinking at the time. Vitor Frade also proposed tactical periodization 30 to 40 years ago.

Until then, soccer had been reduced to elements such as tactics, technique, physical, and mental, and trained that way. For technique, drill training; for physical, running and sprints outside the pitch, and so on. The representative example on the technique side was drill training (analitico).

Then came the emergence of a way of thinking that captured soccer as a whole and dealt with it as it is, without reducing it to elements. I am not a researcher, so this is only the flow as I see it from my own experience and the context of the books I have read, but I think the soil in which drill training came to be debated originally lay in this kind of history.

① Analitico, Global, Sistemic

In Japan as well, about 10 or 15 years ago, there was a period when people said, "Drills have no opponents and no situational judgment, so they are not playing soccer itself. Therefore, we must do training that involves situational judgment, such as small-sided games." Because of that, some of you may have thought that drills should not be done.

However, drill training depends on how you use it. At coaching schools in Spain, you are taught that there are three teaching methods for soccer training: analitico (drills), global, and sistemico.

• Analitico: things repeated with no opponents or teammates
• Global: things done with opponents and teammates present
• Sistemico: that plus a play model added

In short, it is a matter of organizing whether there is context or no context. Within that, there are training formats such as possession format, oleada format, and circuito (circuit format), and the classes on methodology theory and training theory proceed.

In other words, even in Spain, drills are clearly positioned as one of the teaching methods.

② The problem of ball mastery not showing up in matches

In Japan's case, it tends to happen that ball mastery, for example, raises the technical level through drills, but it is not demonstrated much in matches.

In Spain, within the definition of technique, ball-handling skills are considered to be demonstrated together with situational judgment, so they cannot be separated. For example, juggling like keepie-uppies is clearly said not to be soccer.

③ "As much as possible" is in quotation marks

That is precisely why there is a flow of trying to do training accompanied by situational judgment as much as possible.

However, what is important here is that "as much as possible" is in quotation marks. It does not mean that you must not do drills.

① When you want to raise the technical level

In coaching at the elementary school age, there are situations where players still cannot kick the ball well and you want to raise their technical level. You want them to be able to stop, kick, and carry the ball a little more solidly.

In those times, I think drill training is effective.

② Putting it into warm-ups or the first half of training

There is also a way to insert drills into warm-ups or around Training 1 or Training 2, and then do pass control (pass and control) and so on.

Also, shadow play is practice close to a drill. For example, it can be used to build an image of overlapping on the side and then delivering a cross.

③ For those interested in the ecological approach

Recently, I think many people are interested in the ecological approach. Even so, it is also said that for beginner soccer players, drill-like training has a certain degree of effect, more than constraint-led approaches. Also, even within drill training, it is possible to use ecological approach-like methods.

What is important is not whether drills are good or bad, but when and in what context you use them. For that purpose, I think it is necessary to know well the merits and demerits of drills.

① It is a mistake to think of it as "just repeating the same movement"

Previously, I received a question from a reader: "Kazu-san, you say you build technique through global training, but don't you do drills?" My answer is that there are times I do not do drills, and times I do.

From my experience, I feel that people who struggle with drills often do not understand drill training well. If you think drill training = just repeating the same technical action, you are greatly mistaken.

Because they discuss it without understanding the essence of drills, they end up never being convinced, wondering, "Are drills good, or bad?"

② You can do it by following the menu, but it shows from the outside

Drill training itself can be done by following the practice menu. However, if you do not understand the essence of drills, it often shows from the outside that you are not doing it well.

You cannot see why you are doing this drill, or whether it would be better to do it this way. It means you do not understand the merits and demerits, the coaching points, or what should be done.

For people who have 10 or 15 years of coaching experience but are not confident about drills, or for people who have just started coaching, I think it is very important to first properly understand drill training.

③ Drills are easier than global

I believe drill training is easier than global training. For example, compared with focusing on something within global training such as 5v5 + 2 servers, drills have fewer elements to analyze. Because there are fewer elements to focus on, even beginner coaches can grasp the phenomena they should look at more easily.

At the same time, it contains all the basics of coaching: the timing of freezes, how to coach, how to proceed with the menu, and so on. The easiest version of that is drills, and global and systemic are more difficult: that is my view.

That is precisely why I think it is impossible to say that although you cannot do well with drill training, you are perfect at global.

④ The amount of knowledge and practice supports coaching

I feel that soccer coaches need a great deal of knowledge, amount of study, and amount of practice. It is not something you can do starting tomorrow just because you played soccer, or starting tomorrow because you studied for one month.

Even taking just drill training, there are times when it does not go well at all on the field. It is important to deepen various kinds of knowledge while accumulating experience.

Summary

• Drills are discussed because of the history of conflict between reductionism and complexity thinking
• In Spain, too, analitico (drills) are positioned as one teaching method
• The "as much as possible" in "in practice with as much situational judgment as possible" is in quotation marks
• Drills can be used when you want to raise technique, in warm-ups, in the first half of training, and so on
• Drills are not "repetition of the same movement." If you understand the essence, you can judge when to use them and when not to use them
• Drills are simpler than global training, and they contain all the basics of coaching

I don't think you need to feel guilty about doing drills. What matters is being able to explain for yourself what purpose today's drill serves and where it is placed.

First, in your next practice, choose one drill and review its aim and how you run it. Try it at your own coaching site too!

Also, if you write down and keep your practice menus, including drills, it becomes easier to review the aims and how you run them.