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Well, hello coaches. Welcome back. Coach KW here. Sorry it's been a little bit.
It's been a busy start of the season. Uh between my two kids and coaching, we have literally seven days a week uh with multiple practices uh across a couple of
kids. So, it's been a busy one. So, sorry if I haven't been putting out some new stuff. For all those of you who are new, uh thanks for finding my channel. I
hope it's helping you with your coaching journey as the fall starts here. Uh and if you've been around for a while, thanks for sticking with me. uh
subscribe, like, and share and uh really appreciate it. Today, uh I'm going to talk a little bit about how to structure practices for new coaches. It's that
fall season. I've gotten a lot of messages from new coaches about, hey, don't really know what I'm doing. How should I put things together? I'm going to in this video break down basically
some big picture structure of how you can structure your practices. I'm going to reference a number of my previous videos because there's a lot of content in there that you can go back and watch
for more detail. So, we're going to try.
We always say that, right? I'm always going to try to make this quick and over the top uh easy, but um as we all know, I never seem to get there. So, let's
jump into it now. Talk about how as a new coach or even an experienced coach, the different ways, four different ways you can structure your practice and how
to think about it. And again, I'll give you those references along as we go.
They'll all be in the description. And of course, you can find them all on my playlist on my channel. So, go check that out as well. All right, here we go.
Okay, so here's the overview we're going to go about, right? New to coaching or maybe just uh kind of inexperienced, you're not sure what to do. We're going
to talk about these four things each in turn. We're going to talk about how, you know, setting your schedule, setting your expectations, setting your goals for the season, the week, all that, and
then how you set up sessions. I'm going to give you four different ways that you can structure a practice session, and you can pick and choose which one may be
appropriate for you, for your age group, etc., etc.
So obviously it goes without saying when you set your schedule your program is going to define uh a whole bunch of parameters. How often are you going to
practice? Is it one week, one day a week, two days a week? Maybe even more if you're at a, you know, different level type of deal. Um how long is each
session? And is it appropriate for the age and the level? uh when you're working with the younger kids, you know, U7, U8, U9, is 90 minutes really
appropriate? Um versus a U11, U14 team where maybe 90 minutes is basically the norm. But again, your schedule, your club, your town, whatever program you're in, but give you 60 minutes. You have to
work with what you're given and go from there. And again, we'll look at what's the setup, but really think about what is it that the organization is giving
you for a setup. Do you get half a field? Do you get a whole field? Do you get a part of a field? Do you get a
piece of grass that has no lines at all?
All those sort of things can work. Uh I've practiced many times where I'm just on a patch of grass someplace, no lines, no nets. You can still run an effective
practice. Maybe it's not all the things you'd like to do. Other times I get a whole field to myself with nets that are on wheels and I can push them together
and play smallsided or, you know, small field games with realiz nets. Again, you can make it work with lots of different things, but a lot of that stuff is out
of your control. So, as a coach, especially a new coach, what you need to do is you need to set some expectations. So, you need to set
some expectations with your players as to, you know, if your schedule time is 6:00 to 7:30, then what do you expect them to do for an arrival time, knowing
that parents work, then the kids aren't the ones that are driving themselves there, all those sort of things. But set that expectation up. Work out your prep
time. How are you going to get there early enough to prep for whatever it is you want to do? Again, life happens, traffic happens, kids happen, work
happens, all those sort of things. But if you have a plan and you can try and stick for it, it will make your life easier. If you know, hey, I'm going to
do these couple of things, so I need to make sure I get set up ahead of time, it just makes the whole practice go faster because the kids aren't standing around
while you do something else. Uh, again, that general layout. If you could be efficient with your layout, if you're doing something where you're going to start from a small space to a large
space, can you lay out all of it at once and then remove cones or add cones very quickly to break up that session or to expand that session or whatever it is
you're doing? Be efficient with your space and your setup so that you're not having to reinvent the wheel each segment you go through and have that downtime. And most importantly, again, I
have a video on this as well. Have that parent meeting at the preseason to set the expectations of what it is you're trying to do, what you expect your kids
to be doing when they show up, what they expect to do at home. If that's the sort of thing you want to do, have that meeting. Go watch that video. I cover
all those subjects for yourself. Set some goals. Reflect on the age and the level you're at. Is this recreation soccer with a bunch of kids who have
never played? Then great. Your your goal really here should be to make sure they come back next season and next year, have fun, and have some learning
opportunities. If it's a different level, again, reflect on that and figure out, are you in the middle of growth with them? Have they been playing for a
couple years and you're taking them on?
Have you had them for a year and now you're taking them to the next level or the next year or the next season? All those things. Reflect on that and think
about what it is you want to do with them. You want to really be thinking in three pieces. And again, I have a video on how to think about a whole seasonl
long plan, but that short, medium, and long. long-term is the one that you really hope you win at. The short and the medium, you're not worried about the
game coming up this weekend. You're really not at these ages. You shouldn't be planning for the game. What you should be planning for is in the next
one, two, three sessions, I'm going to work on X and then I'm going to ask my team to show me how they can do this in the next coming games as kind of the
test. Practice is the is is the homework and the game is the test or the quiz.
And that's where you really should be sitting back, reminding them what it is we worked on, and then seeing if they can actually do it. It helps to break
down your season into smaller chunks.
Perhaps your season's 8 to 10 weeks long. Think of that in three-W week chunks with a a buffer week in there. If you practice one day a week, that's
different than if you practice three days a week. So, just consider that whole process in the big picture. Again, my video on that subject breaks that down in more detail. And whatever you
do, whatever chunk you're working on, try to stick to working to one thing at a time. It takes these kids a number of weeks to gain some mastery on whatever
it is you're trying to give them. And it will feel like you need to teach them everything all at once. They can't absorb that. So, just let that go and
just understand if this week all I hope to see out of my kids for the next two or three weeks is to improve their side foot passing within the range of five to
15 yards, then just focus on that. And then at the games, celebrate those things. Again, I have in my videos talking about parents and preseason meetings. Those are the sort of things
you can communicate week to week with your emails to say, parents, this is what we worked on. do me a favor on the sideline, cheer for and encourage this
thing because that's what we're working on. Get them on your side. As I always say to my coaches, if you don't give the parents something to cheer for, they're
going to make stuff up and it's usually not the stuff you want them to cheer for or you know, you know what I'm saying?
The sideline coaching gets out of hand.
So, let's talk about big picture how you can set up your sessions. And so, there's four main ones that I'm familiar with and comfortable with talking about.
And now those are the most popular one that US soccer has in their grassroots course courses and everything else.
That's the play practice play. The next piece of it is a whole part hole which is similar but different to play practice play in some subtle ways. Uh
we'll talk about stations is the way I sometimes set up things and then technical a tactical progression practice where you take something and you move it along. Again, we'll go
through each one of these things very quickly. Before we get into that though, what's important as a new coach, especially when you're setting up your sessions, is to be consistent. Have one
or two sort of structures, especially early on, that you do consistently because then the kids will understand what they're walking into at practice.
If every practice it starts in a completely different way than the week before and the week before that, they're never going to get in the groove. You
want them to be able to show up to practice and kind of know, okay, I can get right in on this as I start. uh because it just takes away that anxiety
and it makes your practices more efficient. So don't think you need to reinvent the wheel every single time.
Pick one or two of these methods. The first one will always be a little chaotic as you teach the kids how the structure goes. But once you've got that
under their belt, very quickly they're able to just fall into play and know what's coming next. And find out what works for your kids. If you've got a
bunch of sessions you try and you and like 80% of them the kids are okay with and 20% you just struggle and it doesn't m latch, don't beat yourself up over
those 20%. Throw them away. Find a different way to maybe work on that scale. And then those couple of gold standard ones, the skills or the setups
or the drills that really seem to just take off with your kids, look at those because there's always different ways to take that setup and work on some other
concept within that setup. that makes it familiar for the kids. And if they're already already successful and liking that format and and work well in it, use
that use that over and over again as best you can without making it boring for them by being repetitious by introducing new things because if it works, keep going with it. Play,
practice, play is the most common one.
US Soccer pushes this on all their courses and there's a reason for it because it's an easy way for inexperienced or new coaches to really get up and running. And it's a pretty
simple concept. When the kids arrive, you have some sort of arrival game. So, as soon as two of them are there, you can get them playing. Now, I got a whole
video on 13 different welcome games, because it's not always just a simple matter of put two nets on the ground and have them play. You can do lots and lots
in welcome games that then can feed into the middle part, which is the practice part that reinforce the things you're going to work on in the practice. And
then you put at the end the play piece.
During that initial play part, you're really not coaching. You're not trying to fix things. You may suggest things and ask questions that then in the practice part, you're going to work on,
but the idea isn't as soon as they get there, you're telling them, "Oh, you did this wrong. You did this wrong. You did this wrong." Let them play. Get their
energy out. But again, they want to play soccer, so let them play soccer. Then in your practice phase, especially for the younger kids, you're looking to do
something usually where one or two players at max have a ball or share a ball. So in that practice phase, you're now breaking down a skill, something
maybe you want to see in that smallsided game that you're going to do at the end.
And now you're going to start with usually individual or pair practice. And then you move that along. So maybe you first start with exploring or that learning phase where you're introducing
the concept, they're trying to figure it out and you're doing an activity that lets them kind of work it out on their own. The next activity usually I like to
do is more like a compete slashpractice phase where now they're trying to use that skill in some sort of game environment smallsided 2v2 1v one 3v3 where again you're trying to get them to
let them explore how to do that skill now within a smaller version of the game. What's important here is to make sure you do a little looping. You're
going to learn a skill, then you're going to ask them to try it in a more game-like experience. They're going to make mistakes. You need to loop back to
go, hey, let's go back and refine that now that you know what it's like to do in a more game-like experience. Let's go back to that individual pair practice to
reinforce what it is you're going to do.
Go back then to that more intense game-like practice so that you start to begin to build that resiliency and that understanding of the skill, whatever it is you work on. And then at the end,
you're going to go back to that small-sided game that you started with.
or maybe if you're using some sort of modified game, you go back to a traditional game. Whatever it is you do now at this point now, you can say to
the kids, "Hey, I would love to see X."
So when we play now, if you do this skill here or there, maybe it's worth two points for a goal or maybe it's some other incentive. But again, the idea is
you're trying to get them to now try that thing that you've worked on individually in pairs and small groups now in the full group setting when you
finish the game. play practice play works for all ages. Uh, young, old, U14s, U16s, it can work all over the place. I will say that older players may
need something other than a game to start for a couple of reasons. Sometimes they just need to warm up a little bit differently. Sometimes with the older
kids, you know, when I say older, I said medium older kids, fifth, sixth grades, sometimes they take that initial game as just a lark and they don't actually play
the game correctly and so they're not getting anything out of it. So, as a coach, you need to really understand the development of your kids and where they
are and figure out, you know what, I'm not going to have them do a welcome game because they don't take it seriously.
I'm going to do something else first and then maybe get into that. A lot of times what I like to do is I tell my players, hey, two or three of you share a ball,
passing, just pass 10, 15 yards to each other. Every time the ball comes to you, take a touch, take a couple of juggles, put it down, pass it to the next player.
It lets them kind of warm up and lets them talk to each other and joke around a little bit, but they're getting their touches in and they're warming
themselves up and getting in the mindset of, okay, let me get the school gossip out of the way, if you will, before then I shove them into a game-like situation
to start to play. Um, it's easy to break up these play practice plays in a 60 to 90 minute chunk because you can always extend the play phases on either end.
You could spend more time in the practice. Whatever it is you need, you can kind of flex that. Maybe the kids you realize today is not their day.
Maybe it's a 30 minutes of play at the beginning and 30 play minutes at the end because you know I'm only going to be able to get 15 and 15 or you know 12 and
12 with a break in the middle to get them to focus on something. I'm going to let them go. They're kids phases of the moon. Whatever happened in school, etc.,
etc. Sometimes that's all you can do. Um and remember the game is why they're there. So, don't hold the endgame as a punishment for not doing something
earlier on. It's not a great precedent to set, especially with the younger players. They came to play the game. You need them to play the game based on the
things you're trying to work on. Again, some days are just not your day and not their day. You still have to let it go.
Okay. Another method way of running a practice is called the whole part hole.
It's very similar obviously to play, practice, play. Um, but it's usually a more tactical and involved with uh well technical with group play and not necessarily individual development.
usually starts with some sort of scenario like the whole team like hey we're working on scoring from the wide areas and so you may start with playing
a game with the whole team where the incentive is hey we're focusing on this I want you to do x y and z pass the ball out to the wings cross the ball the part
then becomes you now take that apart and now you're working on the individual skills that go into that whole concept of scoring from wide area so now maybe
you're working on some combination play Maybe you're working on the quality of the cross and how you plant your foot and all the technical details of a wide
player. Then you work on what you do in the box, the types of runs you're going to make as a team. And then lastly, maybe you're working on different
finishing techniques of how to block the ball in if it comes from the right side to the left side, in front of you, behind you, etc., etc. Maybe you're old
enough and you can head and then you go back to that large scenario and then see if there's any improvement. So, it's a little bit different than play,
practice, play because it usually is involved around some concept of team play, pulled apart to individual pieces, and then back together again. Again, could be used at all ages. However, it's
usually a little bit more appropriate when the teams have had a couple years of experience. So, now you're starting to introduce some more team-based concepts before, you know, besides all
the individual skills that our players need to work on. Uh, it requires that understanding of specific moments in the game. And usually the coaches need to understand a little bit more about the
technical and tactical setups and ramifications of whatever it is you're doing. Um, and can be specific. Uh, again, players this age probably aren't spec position specific. Hard to say, but
you kind of have to understand of like, hey, these players tend to play in the wings. These skills, this is what we work on versus the players are in the
middle or maybe up front, etc., etc. All right. Another way of doing is to set up stations. Uh, I, you know, it's pretty straightforward. you set up two to four
different skill sessions where skill groups of kids work on different concepts a lot. You know, if you can make them a related concept like we're working on passing and we're working on
some different passing techniques. Maybe the all the stations are working on something different. Um you can use it in some regard. Sometimes I've seen it like where you do you teach them one or
two specific things in one or two of stations and then the other two stations are where they get to use it in a slightly more game-like play. like a 1v
one move is taught in one area specific one and then the next area is where they're playing 1v one or 2v2 against each other at smallsided fields. Lots of
ways you can make this happen and you really should at the end end with a game because you're going to do these stations as they come in and then you
want to see them using those skills that you worked on in a larger game and that's where you can reinforce that.
Obviously this works for all ages. Um it usually has a technical skill focus.
you're working on individual or maybe partner skills in each and one of these things. Um, it obviously needs enough staff to staff each one of the stations
to make sure you have the coach there to um to correct and and and coach.
Honestly, um, it's great for mixedability crews. If you've got a large crew together or your team is mixed ability, you could be strategic in how you break up your groups as you go
through the stations so everybody gets what they need at the level that they need it. Uh, that's fantastic. Um, it's great for combined practices with multiple teams or even preseasons where
maybe you're bringing in a number of teams because it's a summertime and lots of people on vacation. A team practice doesn't have enough numbers, but maybe you're bringing in all the U12 players
or all the sixth grade players at the same time. Great way to do this. And lastly, we'll talk about technical tactical progressions. Uh, they could be slightly more advanced, although I've
used these down as as low as third and fourth grade because it takes a skill or content and builds it up from simple to getting the whole team to do it. It's
multiplayer skills most of the time.
Things like wall passes up, back, and through or combination plays are a good example. Playing out from the back is a great example of this where you really
need to be, you know, teach them how to do each of the things. So you're working on that tactical and technical combination of when this ball goes here,
this is what we do, etc., etc. And it ties into positional rondo is one of my favorite skills. I've got a video on that as well. Really, uh, all these
videos, all these concepts have additional videos that'll be linked below. These can be very deliberate.
They look very static uh, being observed because a lot of times it's pass to pass or step to step, especially with the younger team. If you're teaching a team
how to play out of the back, the ball starts with the keeper. What's the next thing? It goes to a centerback. Great.
Once this center back on the right has it, what do these other five players do?
Do that motion. What's the next step? It could be very deliberate. It could be very prescriptive, but you're trying to impart some knowledge about the game to
a group of kids who maybe, you know, because they don't watch it as a family and have that innate sense of how to do it. You're kind of really having to jump
start that process of like, hey, you would know this if you watched a little bit more on TV with somebody who knew what was going on. we need to kind of
give you that framework to understand what's happening here. Um, often often it's there's two parts to it. It's that very deliberate phase of hey, we do this. Okay, great. Here's our options.
Here we do this. Let's practice it again step by step. And then the simulation phase. Uh, for example, for playing out of the back. Great. All right. Keeper
has the ball. We're going to put one player at the top of the uh at the line.
They're going to be the pressing player.
Play. Okay. We're going to put two players as a pressing player. Play.
We're going to add three players. And so now you get into what I call positional rondos. Another fantastic uh skill uh practice that you can use. It has so
many applications. Go watch that video.
But the idea is you've gone from a very deliberate step by step. What do we do?
What do we do? Into okay now let's practice it with increasing moments of pressure or confusion or whatever it is that you need to do. So that's where
this kind of comes in play. So that was a lot of information thrown at you very quickly. It was a highlevel concept of it. I have tons of videos about all
these subjects in my playlist on my channel. So, please go take a look at both the descriptions uh in the video description below and you know just go
through the playlist and the timeline.
I've got uh you know I've got multi- dozen videos by this point over the last couple of years. This all these things have been talked about. But again, this
is a big picture. It's really hard to tell a new coach do this. Here's the step by step. But I'm hoping these give you enough ideas that you can now go off
and research and find things that will help you figure this out. Talk to your club, your town, your coordinators in the programs. So many of them have
materials for you to help you out as new coaches. So, uh, I hope that you've started your season well. If you have any questions, please get in the
comments section. Happy to answer as many as I can. But until the next time, see you out on the fields. Thank you so much for watching and bye-bye.
