TRAINING AT HOME WEEK 1: A message from a ‘socially distant’ coach to her U12s team

23rd March 2020 Jen O'Neill

Here’s what super proactive coach Annabel Ault sent out to her U12s players  to suggest different ways to practise while social distancing (it was too good not to share)…

Hey team,

I hope you’re all well! I spoke to your parents, and we thought it would be a good idea to send through some ideas for football training you can do by yourselves in the next few weeks. I think this stuff could be helpful for your health & wellbeing whilst off school and socially isolating, so I will be sending out these notes once a week. Please let me know what is helpful and what isn’t and we can adapt as we go along! And if you see anything online that you want to share with the team, please email it to me and I’ll include it 😊

Indoors

It’s hard to be disciplined when doing exercises like this, and I find I often get bored halfway through – I’d recommend setting the timer on your phone to buzz every 2 minutes, then you can do each exercise for that amount of time!

  • Ball Control: This video ⬆️⬆️ is a good routine to try – rolling the ball from side to side and tapping it twice on each side
  • This article has 10 ball control practices you can do inside in a small space (under the skills section at the bottom)
  • Look at this video from 1.31 for some more ideas on indoor ball control
  • Look at the #StayAtHomeChallenge for inspiration for doing keepy uppies with a toilet roll (And upload it to TikTok if you want to!)

Outdoors- Solo (if you can get to a park, pitch or stretch of grass in the garden or nearby to home)

  • Keepy uppies
  • Running around dribbling a ball and focusing on looking up as much as possible, changing speed & direction often
  • Dribble & Run Endurance Exercise – Run across a distance (ideally about the width of a pitch) with the ball, dribbling as fast as you can until you are halfway, leave the ball there, run at 80 per cent speed without the ball for the rest of the way, turn and run back to the ball at the same pace and dribble it back to your starting position as fast as you can. Repeat this six times, taking breaks if you need to
  • Start incorporating some of the ball control skills in the indoors section into running – most players can do stepovers stood still, but it’s key to start practising doing these whilst moving and at speed. Start slow and speed up as you get more confident. Think about which skills you’ve practised would help you get around someone else in a 1 v 1, and practise those

Outdoors- Partner

  • Long range passes (practise with your weaker foot too)
  • Running in a straight line whilst passing between yourselves (like we’ve done in the last few training sessions)

Alongside the above activities, here are a few ideas for things to keep yourselves busy:

1)     Download the ‘FA Player’ app – this is where most women’s football videos in the UK are posted. Have a look at the editor picks, best goals & match highlights- you can also search for your favourite team & player to see any videos from them

2)     Players’ Tribune – This is a great website that lets football players write articles about their lives. I’ll recommend a new one each week- start with  Carli Lloyd’s piece. She’s one of the best female footballers in the world – you can watch her highlights here !

3)     Watch this documentary on how the US won the 2019 Women’s World Cup

That’s it for now – look after yourselves and please feel free to email if you have any questions!

USE info@shekicks.net & we can pass them on.

 

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