【Soccer Drill Practice】The Pitfall of Drills With Long Waiting Times | Once Every 6 Seconds

Hello, this is Coach Kazu.

In youth soccer practice, many teams incorporate drill training. But even with the same drill, the number of times kids touch the ball changes greatly depending on how it is run. I myself often watch other teams doing drills and feel that the waiting is long.

For example, you might feel the following.

• In shooting practice the line gets long, and the kids get bored waiting their turn
• While you are correcting their kicking form or body orientation, the practice does not move along
• Even though you are doing drill practice, you do not feel the kids are getting better

In this article, I will explain how to secure the amount of activity in drill practice, and the measure of whether a player touches the ball once every 6 seconds, including my own experience from when I was young. If you read this article, I think it will become clear where you should look in tomorrow's drill practice, so please read to the end.

1. Set aside the talk that drills have no decision making for now

It is often said that drill training has no decision making. Here, I will set that talk aside for now. What I want to convey this time is not whether drills are good or bad, but how far you can pursue and execute a drill.

When you do drill training, you can generally tell the coach's ability. To put it a little more, you can tell how they nail down the details. I think many people know about drill training, but I think this is surprisingly a pitfall.

2. What matters is the amount of activity and intensity

Regardless of drill training, there are several important elements in daily training. First is the amount of activity. It means the amount of moving, the amount of touching the ball, and the amount of being involved with the ball.

And another one is intensity (the intensity of play). These two are very important. Beyond that, elements such as doing it in short, concentrated bursts also come into play.

How to secure this amount does not change between global training and drill training. Of course, it is different when they are tired after a match, or when their bodies are not moving yet after a day off. But in daily practice, I think you need to be conscious of this.

3. Making them practice and making them do it well are different

Soccer practice can technically be set up with any menu. Making them do drill training itself is something anyone can do. But whether that drill is efficient, whether the amount of activity is secured, and whether the intensity is raised are separate matters.

Including whether the players' motivation is up, this is a part you cannot do unless you properly make them do it.

1. Shooting practice with a long line

Drill training is mainly a training method for developing technical actions. There is some off-the-ball work too, but I think the basis is technique. At that time, it is very common for the amount of activity to be insufficient.

A common example is shooting practice with a long line. About 10 people line up in a row, receive the pass, lay it off, and shoot. It is practice where the waiting time until your turn comes around is very long.

When you have just started coaching, I think you tend to do this kind of practice.

2. You end up watching only the player who is playing

A common thing is that the coach, wanting to observe the players in various ways and tell them to kick more like this, ends up watching only the player who is playing. Even people with long coaching careers do this quite a bit.

Thinking they have to develop technique, they focus only on the player touching the ball. They call out, step in more, orient your body more. But because they are not watching the players who are waiting, the players who are not playing, they do not notice that the wait for their turn has become long.

I think this kind of thing happens quite often.

3. Structurally impossible cases are surprisingly few

When I watch other teams' training, I sometimes feel that the waiting is long. But cases where it is structurally impossible no matter what are fewer. Most of the time it feels like, it would be fine if they just split the group in two, or it would be fine if they just used two balls.

In the first place, their awareness does not turn toward things like turnover rate and efficiency. I think this is a common experience for coaches in the early days.

1. For pass and control type drills, once every 6 to 10 seconds

So how should you check? When I do drill training, I time it. For example, with pass and control type training, I measure it as whether each person touches the ball about once every 6 seconds.

The reason it is once every 6 seconds is that it was based on something a French person said long ago. Efficient drill training generally involves touching the ball at about that frequency. Of course it changes depending on the menu, but at the longest it is about once every 10 seconds.

Shorter than this, once every 3 seconds is difficult for pass and control drills. I have done it until now too, but touching the ball once every 6 to 7, 8 seconds, or 10 seconds at the longest, is probably about efficient. If you touch the ball much more than that, it becomes a dribbling type menu.

② In the same 10 minutes, 100 times and 20 times

If it is once every 6 seconds, that is 10 times per minute. Over 10 minutes, you can touch the ball 100 times.

Conversely, if you can only touch the ball once every 30 seconds, that is 2 times per minute. Over 10 minutes it becomes 20 times. It is an extreme example, but even in the same 10 minutes, 100 times and 20 times.

That much of a difference comes out in drills.

③ Look at the places without the ball

If you do not notice that the waiting in a drill has become long, you are mostly focused on the ball.

Whether training is going well or not is everything, including moments other than when the ball is moving. What the waiting time is like, if there are 3 groups, what all 3 groups are doing at the same time, whether there is anything dangerous around.

It is a feeling of looking at the technique actions too, while looking at various things at the same time.

This is the same for game analysis in matches. It is often said that you look at the area around the ball with indirect vision and look at the places that are not that. During matches too, I am always conscious of looking at the places without the ball.

In the places where there is a ball, you can mostly understand what the problem is. The places without the ball are difficult to analyze, and surprisingly large problems are often there.

The same goes for drills: if you look at the players who are not playing, you can see whether they are able to concentrate, whether the waiting is not long, and whether the players are not bored.

① For 5 or 6 years, it was only drills and games

When I was young, there was a period when I really did only drill training and games. I think for about 5 or 6 years, I did only drills. During that period, I learned a lot of things: "if you do it this way, it goes well," "if you do it this way, it does not go well."

After that, I thought it was not enough to only develop technique actions, so I thought about tactical things and came to lean toward global training and Spain.

② Even in the same amount of time, 3 or 4 times the results came out

At that time it was a boys' club, and it was not an environment like now where there are practice matches every week. The number of players was not large either, but we did drill training thoroughly and got results. Every year there were players selected for the city or prefectural training center, and 1 or 2 advanced to the youth setup of a J.League club.

In city tournaments too, we were always in the top ranks, and we also won.

However, I do not think that was simply because it was drill training. It was about 25 years ago, around the 3rd to 5th year of my career. At that time, I think the training of other teams was not very efficient.

Both the amount of movement and the intensity were low.

Even though it was the same 3 times a week, the same practice time, and a similar match environment, our team, thanks to leaning toward drills, had a considerably higher number of ball touches, amount of movement, and intensity.

Simply, even in the same amount of time, there was 3 or 4 times the training effect. Looking back now, I think that was the background.

③ The children started morning practice on their own

And one more thing, this is a very important point. It is how to raise the players' motivation.

At that time, the children said "we want to do morning practice" and started practicing on their own.

I was told, "Coach, please come and watch in the morning," and there were times when I joined the morning practice. From the parents too, there were voices saying "they started waking up early and practicing," "they completely stopped playing games," "they became absorbed in soccer."

If you raise their motivation that much, the players start doing it themselves.

Playing with the ball every day, kicking the ball with friends in the park, makes you better. Drills are training that tends to lower motivation, but even so, I think there is a way of building them so that the children do not get bored, concentrate, and start practicing on their own.

① First, entrust drills to the assistant coach

For example, suppose an assistant coach is attached to me. Probably at first, I think I would entrust warm-up type things, or drill type things like the pass and control in training 1, to them. If I see that and think "this person can do it," then it is the next step.

Suddenly entrusting the assistant coach or second coach with the main training, such as the final 5 vs 5 plus 2 servers small-sided game, is not something I do first. I think this is the same not only in Japan but overseas too.

② Drills are simple, so they should be easy to watch

Drill training should be easier for a coach to watch than global training. Easy means simple. The technique action to focus on is decided, and other problems do not come out.

The structure of the training itself is not that difficult either.

In global training, many phenomena happen at the same time. Is it a tactical issue, a technical action issue, a cognitive issue, or a decision-making issue? The elements multiply and it becomes complex.

That is exactly why, if players cannot do drills well, they probably will not be able to do global training or game analysis very well either. Leaving aside whether a drill is good or bad, I think being able to do drills well first is the foundation.

Summary

• Watching drill practice shows how thoroughly a coach builds in the details
• What matters is volume and intensity, and this does not change in any practice
• Waiting time gets long because you are only watching the players who are playing
• For pass and control type practices, measure by time how often one player touches the ball, once every 6 to 10 seconds
• Even in the same 10 minutes, once every 6 seconds means 100 times, once every 30 seconds means 20 times
• If you watch the areas away from the ball and the players who are not playing, you can see the state of the practice
• If you raise their motivation, the children start practicing on their own

In your next drill practice, time it once and try measuring how many seconds it takes for one player to touch the ball once. Splitting into two groups, using two balls, just that alone can greatly change a practice, I think.

Please try it at your own coaching sessions too!