Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 10 (last post)

Structured Periodization for Peak Performance:

As the athlete begins to specialize in soccer and has laid down a solid foundation of both athletic and soccer technical skills, it is time to begin planning out their training. This becomes essential as we want the players to be able to perform their best in peaking phases and critical points in the season.

With players playing for multiple teams, differences between club and high school schedules, multi game weeks, weekly differences in schedule and all of the other craziness that is the soccer season, we need to be very flexible in our planning while still keeping the big picture in mind.

If our focus is development, we need to develop players at all costs. If our focus is wins, we may need to sacrifice the long term peaking potential of the athlete to satisfy a short term goal. Sometimes wins may be important. Certainly in psychological terms, winning increases ones enjoyment of the sport. And if you are loosing all the time, it could turn kids away from the sport.

It comes down to a balance between, having success on the field, demonstrating success in developmental programs off the field, elevating the players esteem and enjoyment of the sport, and continuing to progress towards a goal of sports mastery through fun and emotionally rewarding training sessions. This is the goal, and with the proper tweaking to fit your own needs this is the design.

This is the last post of the Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player Series…The next series will get into how we use our developmental pyramid model to help us create more productive practices and yearly (seasonal) progressions that target specific needs without overlooking the big picture – Continuing to progress towards a goal of sports mastery through fun and emotionally rewarding training sessions.

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 9

Part 9:  Introducing Tactics / Use of Strength, Speed and Technical Ability with a Purpose:

The tactical portion of the pyramid represents games, scrimmages and tactical practice sessions. This is where the player draws from their entire developmental foundation and begins to take the combination of athleticism and skill and blend it beautifully with other players to achieve a tactical goal or desired outcome.

As coaches, we need to understand the limitations of our team and the demands of the level of play. Trying to mold a team to a system can sometimes lead to frustration and burnout, but modifying a system to fit the team’s strengths is the essence of coaching.

In a perfect world, we would have perfectly designed teams with each player developing at a desired pace along this continuum. But how boring would that be! What makes sport exciting and entertaining for the fans, is the unique differences of each team and how the coach blends personalities, physical abilities and technical limitations into tactical systems that exploits each players strengths, allow them to reach their athletic potential.

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 8

Part 8:  Introduce Speed and Power Development / Confident Athleticism:

Training for speed and power is the ultimate goal, and it represents the peak of the physical development side of the pyramid (blue image). This is where the strong foundation in strength, work capacity, movement, mobility, and stability can be used as a launching pad for peaking athleticism. Any weakness or undeveloped block will be exposed as we train for speed and power, leading to inconsistent performance, plateau, frustration and eventually injury.

The demanding nature of this module is due to the reliance on high speed, explosive movements that utilize elastic properties of the muscles and an understanding of the physics and biomechanics behind force production, power and acceleration as well as stretch shortening cycle, eccentric utilization ratios and elasticity.

Advanced plyometric progressions, resisted sprinting, dynamic weight training principles explosive agility drills are integrated into off field training programs designed to peak the player’s athleticism, and move closer to reaching their potential as an athlete. Early on, many players realize the importance of speed training, but instead of starting with the foundational modules of this developmental pyramid, they jump directly to plyometric and speed programs that are designed to utilize advanced methods that the athlete has not developed. Without this foundation the athlete has trouble applying the drills and even though they may improve, they fall far short of their potential and usually experience many inconsistencies in performance.

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 7

Part 7:  Introducing Situational Application / Applying Speed-Skill with a Purpose:

At this point you should be starting to see the developmental progression begin to take shape. We have a balanced foundation of:

• Flexibility/Mobility/Stability
• Rhythmic Movement Patterns
• Technical Ball Work
• Technical Movement

These foundational four components will make up our warm ups and technical practice days. This is where we continue to fine tune their athleticism and skill as they mature and develop. We have also set a solid and progressive structure in place for:

• Strength and Conditioning
• Sport Specific Speed or Functionally Integrated Training (speed with the ball)

So now it is time to begin to apply it to small based activities through small sided games, focused scrimmages and

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 6

Part 6:  Introducing Technical Movement / Moving with a Purpose:

The technical movement module relates primarily to on-field tactics and should be left up to the soccer coach to develop at practice. However, from soccer fitness and development standpoint, the more we understand about technical movement, flow and tactics at a specific age and level, the more we can create drills and movements that mimic various styles of play and movements on the ball and off.

One example of this in the U10 – U12 age range is “Change of Pace”. It seems as if many players in this age range have 1 gear (fast or slow), and everything is done at a consistent pace. We need players to understand how changing their pace can set up a defender or allow an offensive player to separate from this defender.  Some players move fast all the time and on crosses come in either early or late due to their anxiousness and over commitment to the run. Delayed runs, on through balls, getting wide by backpedaling and creating space between you and a defender can be just as valuable as speed training if done efficiently and with great timing.

Our line based passing and receiving progression is a great start to teaching players how to time their runs, anticipate and attack the ball. For a more conditioning based approach, we have had success with drills that emphasize change of pace and pattern, such as shuffle to run where the player will shuffle until the ball is played and then sprint to receive the ball. This drill can be modified to also include backpedal to run, bent run to sprint, mirror drills using other players where the whole goal is to change pace as well as locomotive pattern, etc.

For a technical soccer example, also consider this module to include positioning of the body to receive a pass, how the foot strikes the ball, goalkeeper position and falling progressions, etc.

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 5

Part 5:  Introduce Specific Speed / Integrated Speed and Basic Technical Skill:

The Specific Speed module of our Soccer Mastery System is the second bridging component (the first bridging component was Technical Ball Work). In this section we will focus on building off the base established in the rhythmic movement and technical ball work to enhance the player’s ability to move aggressively with the ball against a defender as well as move with confidence defensively as they close in on and react to an offensive player.

This area, like the strength and conditioning module

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 4

Part 4:  Introduce Technical Ball Work: Improved Soccer Specific Foot-Eye Coordination:

As we begin to broaden the foundation of our developmental plan, we begin reaching out to the left of the model in a more sport specific approach. Much of the Technical Ball Work will take place on the soccer field itself, but you will start to notice many similarities between the rhythmic movement module and the ball skills module. In fact these two modules are so closely related that you can’t really train great ball skills without concurrently developing rhythmically coordinated footwork patterns.

For this reason we want to establish a base of footwork

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 3

Part 3:  Strengthen and Condition Athleticism / Correct Imbalances:

This module progresses the players over their entire career. It starts as a small portion of their overall training (the small point at the bottom of the diamond in the blue graphic), then broadens as the reach the 13-16 age group (widest part of the diamond) and then continues to get very specific as we shift away from strength and more into power and speed based fitness as some of the physical areas of their game begin peak out at 17-22 (top of the diamond).

This block, like the Specific Speed and Situational Drills block draw heavily upon

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 2

Part 2:  Coordinate Movement / Enhance Rhythm / Improve Confidence:

From an athleticism perspective, this is where we begin to lay down a very solid foundation. Especially in the early ages (6-10), we want to spend as much of our total session time dedicating our efforts to rhythmic, graceful and efficient movement. The time you spend in this module will pay off later as they start to add speed, resistance and ball based technical skills into their training.

We focus on several key movement patterns that show up in all sports when we are in this module. They are listed below:

• Linear Movement:
• Lateral Movement:
• Linear-Lateral Change of Pace and/or Direction:
• Jumping and Landing:
• Multi-Directional Change of Direction

Example of Change of Direction Technique in Young Soccer Players:

Creating a More Athletic Soccer Player…Part 1

Part 1:  Reduce the Risk of Injury / Enhance Warm Ups / Improve Function:

If the number one goal of our curriculum is to reduce the risk of injury, then we first need to set down a solid foundation in these key areas:

• Flexibility (or the movement about the joint, muscle or connective tissue)
• Mobility (the movement itself and whether or not it is free or impeded)
• Stability (or the ability to control the movement)

One might assume that many injuries could be avoided, and these avoidable injuries are caused by the athlete attempting to perform movements at speeds or loads their body cannot control.