Tag Archives: Improve

Soccer Skills – How To Improve Your Soccer Skills Today

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Soccer skills are hands down the number one reason why soccer players will potentially move on to play at the next level. For some players however it is the sole reason that they do not. As a former professional player, I can say that most people train ineffectively and thus do not reach their ultimate goals for playing soccer.

But what do I mean by that exactly? Well for starters it comes down to maximizing the time you train. I’ve trained hundreds of players personally that went on to become great players. However, when they started there was one commonality to all of them. They did not know how to effectively skyrocket their soccer skills.

Soccer Tip

The reason for this is because they had never been taught this. Listen to this point carefully and as it is the main idea that I want to get across to you. If you want your soccer skills to leap frog other soccer players, you have to do this individually.  I cannot stress this enough. Do not expect to do improve greatly just by showing up for practice.

This is where most players go completely wrong. Think about this. How do you expect to improve drastically if everybody you know is doing the same drills? The answer is you will not. It takes that extra drive. It takes the right mindset of knowing that when you are training all by yourself or even with a few other motivated players you are practicing more than your opponent.

This alone is the reason why your touch will get sharper, your accuracy will improve drastically, and your shot will be harder and more fine tuned. When you go to practice you are learning team oriented drills that will help team chemistry but rarely will you fine-tune your personal soccer skills.

Think of it this way. Every soccer player should be observant to some degree and I’m sure you know who the “game-changing” players are on your team. You know who has the best shot, who will take free kicks, and who is the captain. Likewise, you should understand what areas of your own game you need to work on.

Do you want a better shot? Do you want to learn to run faster or kick more accurately? This is the reason why individual training is key. When you are in practice you have to perform drills that your coaches think the entire team needs to learn to improve on, like attacking or transitioning out of the back. Sadly most coaches do not even know do this even though they should.

Simply put, if you know how to improve your soccer skills you can literally leapfrog other players with your soccer skills.

People tend to ask me what is the number one way to improve my game and I really have to say it is two things. One is to improve your speed. You can overcome a lot of mistakes by simply being faster than your opponent.

This begs the question that is a huge myth. Can you teach speed? Absolutely!

How do you think that Olympic athletes improve? Did you think it was by accident? To put it this way, in two off-seasons I improved my 40-yard dash by one second. Now, one second may not sounds like a lot but in a 40 yard dash it is a huge improvement.

When I first started training I was a pretty fast sprinter. By the time I finished speed training before I went off to college I ran the equivalent sprinting time of an NFL wide receiver. I ran a 4.33 40-yard dash. So you can definitely improve speed and you can do it rather quickly if you know how to like I did.

Secondly, you need to improve your first touch. Wayne Rooney, of Manchester United, was interviewed saying the most important part of your game is your first touch. By mastering that you will have more time to figure out your next few moves. The ball will be exactly where you need it to be all the time. A simple way to start improving your first touch soccer skill is by juggling.

Juggling gives you the opportunity to multitask your training. You learn to concentrate, trap, manipulate the ball, and muscle memory all at the same time.

There are countless other ways however for other ways to improve but most soccer players just really do not understand how exactly to fast track their progress.

Soccer Skills – How To Improve Your Soccer Skills Today

Soccer Dribbling Drills to Improve Your Game

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Anyone who is just starting out playing soccer must realize how important it is to develop good dribbling skills. With good dribbling skills, you will be able to control the ball well and you can easily direct it to anywhere you want it to go. If you will watch how some of the best players play, you will notice that most of them are great dribblers.

To be blunt about it, if you will not develop your dribbling skills then there is very little chance that you will be a great soccer player. If you want to develop your dribbling skills, the best thing that you can do is to practice soccer dribbling drills on a regular basis. Like in other kinds of soccer drills, dribbling drills instill the necessary basic movements for a player to dribble the ball well. If you want to know more about how to develop soccer dribbling drills, then it is best that you read through this article.

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Things to Remember

There are some important things that you need to remember when you do soccer dribbling skills. First of all, you must use all parts of your foot – the inside and outside – when doing the drills in order to develop your whole foot. If you will watch good dribblers, you will notice that they can switch to different parts of their foot when dribbling.

Another thing that you should remember when doing dribbling practice is to maintain the ball at a certain distance from your foot, ideally at a little over one meter from you. This is to simulate a usual situation in a real game where you will normally see yourself squeezing between players with very little space to work on. Dribbling the ball close to you will allow you to develop the ability to pass by a number of opponents without losing possession of the ball.

Feinting

A specific dribbling skill that you must learn if you want to be a good ball dribbler and a good soccer player is feinting. It is the act of stepping over the ball to get pass opponents. If you are already adept with the basics of dribbling then you can already try to practice feinting. When you have mastered feinting, then that is already a sign that you are an exceptional dribbler.

Soccer dribbling drills is very important when you want to be a good dribbler and a good soccer player.

Soccer Dribbling Drills to Improve Your Game

3 Best Ways to Improve Soccer Skills Individually

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If you’re looking for ways to improve soccer skills individually, you’ve come to the right place. I know that soccer team practice sometimes just isn’t enough if you want to become great. Just take a look at most of the great soccer players in activity. They always say that they spend a lot of hours off-pitch improving their soccer skills, which makes them so good in matches. But simply training after hours isn’t enough, you need to train intelligently, after a rigorous program.

Best Ways to Improve Soccer Skills – DVD Programs

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There’s a lot of these babies around the Internet these days, so if you’re planning on buying a DVD program for individual soccer practice, make sure it’s a serious author that created it and it’s not some lame compilation of soccer highlights with subtitles saying “Do this and you’ll be great”.

3 Best Ways to Improve Soccer Skills Individually

A quality DVD program is a great way to improve soccer skills, because it allows a certain level of interactivity to your learning. It’s not like learning from a TV show, because with DVD’s you can go straight to the chapter that interests you, you can go back and review stuff over and over again until you get the picture.

Best Ways to Improve Soccer Skills – Skill Focusing

If you notice that there’s a certain area in your game that isn’t on par with your other skills, focus on it to get it on level terms. Having an unbalanced skill set is extremely damaging to your game. For example, you could be very fast and strong, but if you don’t have good ball control, you won’t be able to use your physical skills for anything.

Same goes with players that are extremely technical but very weak on their feet, so improving your soccer skills in a balanced way is best. Also, you could focus on your best skill not your worst one. Are you a good long range shooter? Make that your trademark. Practice long shots over and over again and your teammates will soon know that they need to create space for your shots and you’ll be able to score more often. You could also make a trademark of your heading, your passing, your set pieces and so forth.

Best Ways to Improve Soccer Skills – Variation

Never allow a particular exercise or drill become boring routine, or you risk entering a stalemate with your soccer skills. Whatever you’re practicing, go for alternative techniques. For example, if you’re practicing dribbling, don’t just focus on a single type of dribble, effective as it may be. You will need to have a varied repertoire of dribbles if you want to stand up to your different adversaries.

In conclusion, you will probably want to combine these three methods, not just use them separately. Use a DVD program to cover the theoretical aspects of your practice and use the other two as practical methods of getting your skills up. You should be gaining an edge in no time!

3 Best Ways to Improve Soccer Skills Individually

Improve Running Speed – 5 Tips on How to Run Faster For Youth Soccer Players

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The ideal athletic soccer player regardless the age or gender for most coaches is strong powerful and fast. Many coaches want their soccer players to improve running speed so that their team can run faster than their opponents. Coaches want players to be first to the ball, first in the air and first to score.


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With these factors in mind here are five key tips to help you improve running speed for total on field soccer domination.

1. Increase glute (“butt”) and quad strength. Research in 2000 (Weyand, Journal of Applied Physiology 2000) proved that greater force applied to the ground resulted in increased top speed. In other words the more pressure your legs put into the ground the faster you run.

As the glute (“butt”) and quad muscles are responsible for driving the leg into the ground it is important to include squats and dead-lifts into a soccer strength training program.

Sprinters are a great example of powerful glutes and quads.

2. The hamstring muscles must have the ability to lengthen. This is important because “tight” hamstring may restrict the movement of the leg after the foot pushes off and swings forward. If a soccer player has tight hamstring muscles they may end up with a tear at top speed.

Consistent stretching and dynamic warm up of the hamstring muscle is crucial to maintaining flexibility. This must be done on a regular basis to avoid injury.

3. The hip flexor muscle must be both flexible and strong. Many hip flexors muscles are put in a shortened position on a day to day basis. Most young soccer players in elementary, junior high and high school are sitting at a desk through out the day. This puts the hip flexors in a shortened position. Over a period of time these muscles become “tight” and weak.

Thus it is important on a regular basis to lengthen the hip flexors and to strengthen them as well. To stretch out the hip flexors put one knee on the ground with knee bent at 90 degrees, hip in neutral and the other knee up at hip height ( hip bent up at 90 degrees.) This is known as the “fencer’s” position. Now lean forward until you feel a stretch in the hip area of the leg with the knee down.

Next you need to increase hip flexor strength. Stand with arms by your side. Then raise one knee to hip height. From there raise the knee to the chest and lower to hip height.

These two exercises will help improve hip flexor strength and flexibility.

4. Soccer players need to have “core” strength. Core strength prevents or minimizes movement of the hip bones. Too much movement at the hip may lead to both hamstring and quadriceps pulls and worse case scenario an anterior cruciate ligament tear in the knee joint.

The simplest exercise to help with core strength is a plank. To perform a plank you need to be face down on your forearms and tips of your toes. Once in this position imagine the “belly button” moving to your back and squeeze the glute muscles.

5. It is important to have some type of a single leg squat included in your exercises to improve running speed. You must remember that running is done a single leg and as you know in soccer there are starts, stops and change of direction. A single leg squat builds strength, power and balance. It is also an excellent exercise for anterior cruciate ligament injury prevention.

In summary if you address these five things you will improve running speed. You will shock and amaze your team mates and opponents unless you share these key tips on how to run faster with them.

Enjoy the process and have fun on the soccer pitch.

Improve Running Speed – 5 Tips on How to Run Faster For Youth Soccer Players

Tips to Improve Physical Fitness and Conditioning in Soccer Players

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“The dictionary is on the only place you will find Success come before Work”

- Vince Lombardi

First I should address an important concept. Becoming physically fit is as much a mental task as it is a physical one. Are you going to be mentally strong enough to get up early in the morning and go for a run? Are you going to be motivated enough to hit the weights and work on developing your strength? Are you going to have the disciple to spend the time needed to improve your flexibility? If you’re serious about becoming a Soccer star, then you should have no shortage of motivation.

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I know some of you may dread the thought of going to the gym, or running on your own time, but if you really want to achieve your dreams, it’s something you’re going to have to get used to. Give it a chance. Once you get into a consistent physical conditioning routine, working out becomes fun. Challenging yourself becomes like a drug (a good one), you’ll become addicted. Oh yes kids, I forgot to mention: stay in school, don’t do drugs! It’s not good for your Soccer career. But seriously, once you get over that initial hump, physical conditioning can be a lot of fun, a stress reliever, it does wonders for your self confidence, and not to mention it is a crucial ingredient in achieving your full potential as a Soccer player.

Contrary to popular belief, fitness is more than just running endless laps and doing sprints. There are several components of being physically fit. For the purpose of this book I have separated Physical Soccer player development into four categories:

o Strength & Power

o Flexibility

o Endurance

o Speed

Below are a set of examples of how you may improve each area of your Physical fitness. Realize that these are only examples; you can implement them into your training regime or come up with your own. The choice is yours.

Strength & Power.

If you’re not already on a Weight training program, you need to get on one. Be sure to focus on “functional training” rather than “body building”; looking good is one thing but performing well on the field is a whole different topic. Use full body movement exercises like, squats, dead lifts, bench presses, and clean & jerks.

If you’re below the age of 14, can’t afford a gym membership, or don’t have access to a gym, you should focus on body weight exercises. Different variations of Pushups, Squats & Lunges, Chinups & Pullups, and different core exercise, can be used to improve your physical strength and power.

Whatever the case start today, even if you’re doing 20 pushups, 20 situps, and 20 squats, every other day you need to start now. I would suggest at least a day of rest between training the same body parts.

Flexibility.

Realistically you should stretch every day. Stretching does wonders for your general health & fitness as well as improves on field performance. Take 15 minutes out of your busy day and stretch the major parts of your body. Hold each stretch for at least 20 seconds and focus on breathing. The stretch should be slightly uncomfortable but not unbearable.

Endurance.

The game is 90 minutes long. Can you play at a top level for that long? The best way to improve your endurance is by running. You can run every day, if you’re really committed. You should start with at least 3 times a week. All it takes is 15 minutes. Over time you can increase the length of your runs and the speed at which you run.

Speed.

To increase your speed you will have to focus on sprint training. Do a combination of Hill Sprints, and flat ground sprints (30, 50, and 100 yard variations). I would recommend at least twice a week. Focus on quick starting accelerations and once you get to top speed, hold it. Aim to go a little faster every time!

Don’t make the mistake of neglecting any aspect of your physical fitness.

All of these areas work together. Improving one area will in turn improve others. Improving all areas of your physical fitness is going to take commitment, dedication, and hard work, but I know you can do it. Now get off the couch and put in some work! Actually, read the rest of this book first, then you can get to it.

Tips to Improve Physical Fitness and Conditioning in Soccer Players