What does a good session look like?

I remember when I first started coaching and was obsessed with making everything ‘look’ nice.

Cones set out to exact measurements for some complex drill I’d put together.

Kids passing to each other in neat lines

Players doing doing skills together in what I hoped looked like some sort of football-equivalent of a synchronised swim team!

Experience soon helped me understand that what I was doing wasn’t the best way to develop junior footballers.

Of course, there were SOME benefits.

Lots of touches of the ball, nice & controlled sessions and parents looking on thinking ‘this looks good’.

And that right there was the problem.

See, just because a session LOOKS good doesn’t necessarily mean it IS good.

Good, in this context, means a session that maximises the development of each player whilst making sure they have a lot of fun.

This is at the heart of everything we do at Foot-Tech but back in my early days I got caught up in what onlookers were thinking.I’d have kids in lines waiting to dribble around cones & poles, all set up to look like the most professional session you’ve ever seen.

The players were controlled by me.

They had to run here, dribble there then pass to that player stood in an exact spot etc etc.But I soon realised – that isn’t the game of football.

The game of football is opposed.

The game of football is random and varied…it is not a controlled environment where we have to run, dribble, pass or shoot based on instructions from coaches.

The game of football dictates when we pass, dribble or shoot based on what is going on around us.When I was a kid the best training sessions I had weren’t at my football club.

There were on the street.Street football was varied and random with barely any rules but tons of opportunities to be creative.

Most importantly, it linked back to the game more than the nice looking, unopposed passing drills I was doing with my club.

The issue these days is that street football is all but dead.We recognised the need for this ‘street’ style at Foot-Tech and that is why you’ll see less drills that LOOK nice but more drills that ACTUALLY develop the players.

1v1’s, 2v2’s, 2v1’s, making our training areas small to promote quick-decision making, less stoppages from coaches and encouraging players to be creative all form part of our curriculum.

It doesn’t always look pretty…but it sure does work.The difficult part with creating these game-like drills is that some would argue ‘so, they’re just going to play matches all session and the coach just stands back!?’.

No. That isn’t the case.

Don’t get me wrong – it is harder to coach in this way but there is a way to do it that our coaches are taught (a blog for another time).

We met up with a friend of ours recently who runs a local academy and he commented on how he is struggling to balance what parents want to see with what he knows is best for his players.

And this brings us to the reason for this blog.

If a parent doesn’t know too much about football or has only ever seen the old-school way of coaching then you’d forgive them for not knowing the above.

Our aim is to educate parents and coaches at a grassroots level in hope of raising standards and also helping parents understand what a good session actually looks like so they can make more informed decisions on where they take their child to learn football.

We’ll be providing loads of useful info We’re always here for advice so please do feel free to get in touch.

Book a FREE Taster session here.