How can I improve my soccer at home?
Can you improve your soccer skills at home? How can you make soccer training at home game effective?
The answer is ABSOLUTELY YES! One thing that the covid lockdown taught everyone is the importance of players training on their own, and the technical gains that players see when they dedicate themselves! I personally saw players who struggled technically before covid come out of the whole situation super confident, balling out on the field, with no fear! So in todays post I will tell you the exact process that I use with players so that they can improve by training at home with very little space and equipment!
How Can I Improve my soccer skills at Home?
The first thing that you have to do is actually have a plan. There's no point at all in just winging it, doing some random footwork drills or soccer drill here and there that you find on instagram! If you take your individual soccer training you will see that you are eventually gaining comfort on the ball in games, but the process should be completely unique to you!
So where do you start? First things first you need to know EXACTLY what you NEED to work. This is the thing... young players are usually so hard on themselves in games, that they have a warped sense of what they need to work on. I have made this easy for you, by producing a custom soccer specific Individual Development Plan for our players. This works for all players, even if they are of a young age, right through to professional players! The age group is not important, in fact, the younger you start, the more benefits you will see. So check out the Beast Mode Soccer Individual Development Plan (or IDP for short) here:
https://beastmodesoccer.com/idp/
Practicing Soccer at Home
Now that you have filled out your IDP, you will know exactly what you need to work on! Now obviously, most people do not have a full field, or $10k worth of equipment in their back yard like you see in most social media posts... So what can you do in a small space? I personally tell players to start with footwork. Footwork is fantastic because you do not need a huge amount of space. Here is a great example of some footwork that I do with Alex Morgan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vb1YWEpR0ww&t=11s
We usually use footwork as a warm up, but have also be known to do a full session of different types of footwork, we just add in different touches, 1v1 moves, changes of directions etc. Now we (literally) have 100's of footwork drills available online. Check out our YouTube channel and Instagram channel. What's the difference between our footwork and all the others? All of ours is PROVEN! In fact, a lot of our competitors just take our drills, modify them slightly, and claim that they re-invented the wheel lol. The problem is, they do not know WHY each touch has been put in there, which is HIGHLY important!
Next up, I would focus on dribbling drills, which dribbling drill depends on the amount of space you have available. Here is a great example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yiTTN1_v9s&t=27s Again, you should take inspiration from our drills but tweak them for yourself, unless you are using the Beast Mode Soccer+ app, which you should definitely follow the program!
Another one that you can do at home is passing!
How Can I Improve My Soccer at Home?
The post has covered the basic concepts of training at home. When you have very little space, you should focus on building speed fo your footwork. All of this individual training at home is the quickest path to becoming confident on the ball, which when it comes to playing soccer in games will obviously reduce anxiety and fear of failure. If you have belief in your ability, you will be surprised how well you start to play and maybe even start scoring goals!
What you want to avoid spending time of is spending hours trawling through YouTube etc for drills. I created a full, individual training app, which costs less than $20 a month, and has over 70 world class sessions in! Remember that there is no straight line with soccer development. I have been involved in soccer coaching for over 25 years, with the last 18 spent on individual player training and development, helping to guide some of the best players in the world.
If I had to pick just one thing that you should work on at home, it would be footwork.!