Every training session should be seen as an opportunity to improve the players at your club.
Whether your coaches are looking to implement a new playing system, work on set pieces, or encourage better distribution of the ball, each session should have a clear focus and takeaway.
But with so much planning involved behind the scenes and so many demands on their time, it can be all too easy for coaches to waste training sessions by focusing on the wrong areas.
The most reliable way to guard against wasted sessions is to develop a detailed, watertight soccer coaching curriculum across each age group. This way, it’s immediately clear what a certain group of players should be working on at any given point in the season.
We’ve already given you a detailed introduction to soccer coaching curriculums. Now, we’ll talk through the process of creating a curriculum for your age-level teams.
First off, it’s worth reminding ourselves why you’re doing this in the first place.
A soccer curriculum should be formulated before the start of a season, with the aim of helping the players at your club meet clearly defined development goals.
For instance, you might wish to focus on improving your team's ability to play through the thirds. Relevant drills – concentrating on areas such as possession, passing and movement – would be held throughout the season, with regular reviews undertaken to identify progress at team and individual level.
But while two coaching curriculums may share the same end goals, their approaches to meeting these goals may differ substantially in line with a wide range of factors – everything from the experience of coaching staff, to the age level and skill of players, and the type of facilities available to the club. The curriculum will provide a roadmap for meeting your ultimate objectives while taking into account the specific challenges of a given team or age group.
While the benefits should be apparent, the idea of building a training plan spanning an entire season can seem intimidating. How can you be sure you’re focusing on the right areas? What proportion of time should be spent on each type of training session? How will you find the time to bring it all together in the first place?
Fortunately, building a soccer curriculum couldn’t be easier with The Soccer Manual.
Rather than devoting hours – or even days – to developing your curriculum, our intelligent software can create a whole season’s worth of drills and exercises in a matter of minutes. Here’s how it works in seven simple steps:
Of course, even the best-laid plans will become outdated at some point.
Any number of factors may necessitate changes to your season curriculum. Perhaps you’ve lost a key member of the coaching team. Perhaps several new players have joined your squad. Perhaps, having carried out performance reviews, you’ve discovered that players are well behind or (hopefully) ahead of schedule, requiring objectives to be updated.
Whatever the case, your soccer curriculum should be treated as an agile, flexible plan that can be amended in line with the changing needs of your players.
However, you shouldn’t change for change’s sake. Our software understands how to build a curriculum that’s appropriate for each age group and will help you achieve your goals.
Don’t be tempted to make wholesale amendments off the back of two or three shock defeats or victories. When it comes to helping your players develop, consistency of approach is vital. When you do iterate, concentrate on highly specific changes targeting one or two key areas of your curriculum, rather than tearing up the rulebook and starting from scratch.