Help

[m_moosa]

I'm 15 years old and i play right back....or would like to at least....

I want to improve and I want a sort of training schedule that I could do by myself to improve the following:

Stamina
Strength
Skill
Dribbling
Control

Thanks in advance

Also if I train for 6 years is it possible to become alot better or is it just how much you put into it....

BTW anyone seen Jean Carlos Chera....he is just such a talent and only 9!

[Link]

Let me start with your last question. If you practice for 6 years and you put a lot into it, you could be amazing. You sound just like I did when I started playing. I'm 17 right now, and I started playing about 2 years ago. I used to play american football, and was still under the influance that "soccer" was a lesser sport. :sick: (sorry to everyone, I was young and dumb :worried: ) From the time I watched my first soccer match, to right now as I'm sitting herre typing this to you, I have not stopped trying to learn more about the sport, last highschool season was my first year playing for the school, and after last year, I'm now the captain of the team, because I have not stopped practicing, and trying to get better and learn more about the sport. I play every single day that I can possibly play. If it's raining outside, I go in my basmint and juggle for a few hours, I play non-stop! at the beginning of the last season, I wasn't as good as I am right now. Infact I went from worrying about making Varsity, to being the captain. Now on the highschool team, I'm a major part of the team, and I am still getting a lot better every day.

The first thing I would do, if I were you, is try to get a feel for moving with the ball. This is going to take a while, but it's an essential part of playing the game. What I did was, was almost ever day, I got a ball, and went for a jog with it. This will help you get in shape, and also, get you to have a feel for the ball when running, espically if you're running on a sidewalk, it will help you control the ball a lot better. This is very hard, and almost annoying at first, but stick with it, you'll eventually be able to run across a 2 by 4 piece of wood with the ball at your feet. If you're having troubble going for a jog with the ball at your feet, go to an open field, or parking lot, and run around with the ball there, the most important part of this sort of training is to look at the ball as little as possible. You want to be able to tell where the ball is going just by feeling where it touches your foot. If you want to play seriously, this is a skill you have to have, or else on the pitch, you'll be worrying about where the ball is, rather than finding a player to send the ball to. Espically being a defender, you need to know this.

Stamina and strength take a while to improve, and it's probably the hardest work of all. When I played american football, I was weight training a lot, so I had my strength there, but my stamina was terrible. I now have a 4 minute 45 second mile, and am damn proud of it! What I did to achieve this was run a certain distance in a set time, 5 times every night. An example of this would be for you to run a mile under 6 minutes and 30 seconds 5 times for a week, then the next week, set your time a little lower like 6 minutes 15 seconds, or what ever you think will provide you with a challange. Do this every night, and you'll notice results in a few weeks, and keep doing it, and you'll achieve amazing stamina. I'm still doing this today, and it helped me a huge amount.

Strength can be gained by either doing work with weights, or handling your own body weight. You're not going for a body builders look in soccer, so it's best to work with low weight, but do a lot of repetitions, if you're going to be weight training. I don;t weight train because I find it more effective to work with my own body weight, like doing sit ups, push ups, pull ups. all of these will help you gain strength just fine. Every other night I do 5 sets of 15 pull ups, 5 sets of 80 sit ups, and 5 sets of 20 push ups. The reason I decided to work with my own body weight to gain strength is because when you work with weights you are using extra weight that dosen't exist on your body, so essentially you're getting your body used to working with weight that isn't part of your body. The theory is that when you work with your own body weight, your body can adapt to the change in strength a lot better, and will be more balanced than you would if you used weights to gain strength. I don't know if this is true, but it seems to work for me. It really is personal preferance as far was strengthening yourself goes, so it's up to you.
To strengthen your legs, you might want to weight train, but I usualy do frog leaps, and a lot of hopping and jumping around, Jump rope, anytihng you can do to get your legs to work harder to hold you up.

I'm going to replace your "skill" with your agility and quickness. In soccer being quick and agile is a huge part, if you're a defender, and you're not quick, then a speedy striker will feel like a little boy in a candy shop. You need to learn to react quickly as a defender, and anticipate the movements of another player. In order to become quicker, you'll need to do some pretty tough training. What I do to train in this area is I'll work with cones, or spots, and I'll run in and out of them, or you can do "cross fields" When you do crossfields, you do a set of certain plyometrics across the field. Doing the "side shuffel" "karaokie" "high knees" and running stopping, running backwards, then running forwards again to the other side, all of these can help you get quicker on your feet. Just changing directions a lot gets you quicker too.
This is one of the more difficult parts of the training process, and I don't know all that much about it, but I do what I just told you, and it's seemed to work for me.

Dribbling is a fun part of the game to learn, I think at least. You can work on dribbling in any way you want, as long as you have a ball at your feet what ever you're doing. I love watching matches, or highlights and trying to mimmic the moves the pros do, then try to beat my friends with them. But in order to be able to do this, you need the basics, like having a nice touch on the ball, and being able to control the ball without having to look at it (paragraph 2) This is a huge part because when you come 1 on 1 with another player, you want to be able to see how they are set up in order to get passed them, you always attack another players planted foot, and if you're looking down at the ball, then you're not going to see how your opponent is set up, and you're probably going to run right into another defender. Once you can handle the ball without starring at it, then I'd start moving in and out of cones, or running in one direction, and then cutting to another. once you can move good with the ball, then you can start to get fancy. The most basic of moves I'd say is the step over, you probably know what a step over is so I wont explain it, but I like to run with the soccer ball, and just do a lot of step overs, this gets you associated with doing them in a match successfully. there are a million little tricks you can do with a soccer ball, I suggest watching soccer clips, and trying your own little moves. The best way to learn how to beat your opponent is by practicing on your friends. My friends aren't as obsessed with soccer as I am, so after playing 3 times a week, they get bored, and wont play any more, so when this happens, I just try to visualize what the defender would do if I approached him, and I work on things from there. As a defender you wont be using fancy moves as much as you will be using very conventional fake outs, and tricks.

Control, you should achieve whaile doing all the training I had just described, but juggling helps a lot with control, it gives you a real nice touch on the ball, and is a great way to show off :D You'll get control just from practicing with a ball a lot. It's not that tough, you just have to be constant with your training!

If you train for 6 years, you can be a great soccer player, you just have to stick with it. I plan on playing for as long as my body allows me. And I want to go as far as I can in the sport, and I feel that if I keep training, then the possibilities are endless. Just stick with it, and try to get on a club, you'll be suprised with how fast you gain skill when you focus on training.

there may be a thousand spelling and grammar mistakes in there, sorry :nerd:
I hope this gives you something to work off at least, When I train, I liek to look to this website http://www.expertfootball.com/ In the training section, it gives you a bunch of tips and methods. Goodluck!

[Mirko Mandic]

dude how long did that take :S

[Rickster]

one of the most important tings for a defender is to learn the tactic, the vision, positioning, and the areas of attack

if you learn the tactic you know where the attackers are likely to attack and u are already in that position before they start that attack. u must have the vision to see where the attacker might attack where is the most vulnerable part of the pitch to attack(its the middle). tis is one of the most important part of being a defender. even if your tackling isnt superb n if u know how to mark the zones n position yurself the attacker will not try to dribble you (unless hes zidane or c ronaldo) n rather he will pass the ball. or the attacker might try to dribble u but yur posityioning is too good tat it makes it easy for u to tackle the ball.

[m_moosa]

Although I usually play at right back....what would I have to work at to play as a striker and how would I work at it....

Also could i play in strike and excel in it if i train for 6 years or so

[Link]

Going from a back to a striker requires switching your mentality in the game really. If you plan on being a striker, I'd work on your shooting, dribbling, heading, volly's, everyhting thata striker would come up agenst, espically dribbling at highspeeds. If you go to that website I posted in my last post, you'll learn everytihng you need to know. Just watch a lot of games, and see what the pro strikers go through, then keep at it. If you want to take it seriously, then you can be as good as you want to be.

[m_moosa]

Thanks,

So what kind of drills could i do every day by myself to improve the things i would need to be in strike....I would be willing to put in 2- 2 1/2 hours a day without fail. So is there like a rough schedule i could follow to work on everything i would need in strike

[Link]

If you wanted to be a striker, you're gonna want your shooting, ESPICALLY vollies, headers, half volies, and deflections to be good. What I did to touch on these was Just spend about an hour and a half AT LEAST per day, just hitting the ball off the wall, and then whne it bounced back, I'd volly it, or if the bounce was high enough, I'd head it. Also, it's good to aim at certain spots on the kick board, by maybe drawing a fake goal on the wall, or circles that you want to hit the ball in. If you don't have a kick board at hand, then Go to any soccer field. When I first started playing, I had a street hockey net that I'd shoot at, I think hat got my accuracy up a lot. Basicly whenit comes to shooting, you just want to do it a lot, and make sure you're taking a lot of yoru shorts whaile you're on the run, and try to hit bouncing balls, and headers, like I said, a striker has to be able to hit any ball that is evan remotely playable.

Another huge skill a striker has to have is the ability to have complete control over the soccer ball, evan when running at high speeds. When I was learning how to do this, what I did wasfind a nice field, or parking lot, and you set a certain distance to run, not too far, but far enough to make you have a work out, I'd say maybe 30- 40 yards. Then, every 5-10 yards, put aome sort of a marker down. Start at one end of your area, and sprint to the first marker, and then stop, then sprint to the next and stop, do this all the way to the other end. Ence you've been doing this for a while, you can do different moves at each spot. I liked to spproach my cones head on, and do step overs, then cut to one direction at the lasrt second, you need to get the basics down at teach cone though, You have to learn how to change speeds with the soccer ball, and still have 100 percent control over it. You should also try sprinting the entire distance keeping the ball right infront of you, I'd say no more than 1 or 2 steps infront of you, if you want to be a sucessful striker. Sprinting with a ball will slow down any player if the player isn;t used to running as fast as he can whaile keeping a soccer ball with him, It's easy to kick it 10 yards infront of you, and then run on to it, but if you're closing in on the goal, and you put it more then 4 or 5 steps infront of you, the goalie will smother it. The drill I just discussed can be done any way you want, don;t just do what I'm telling you either, be creative. You eventually want to weave in and out of coned keeping the ball with you, it is also a good time to record times that you can do these drills in to see your progress, record how long it takes you to do the drills without a ball, then record how long it takes you to do them with a ball.

Getting control over the ball is another HUGE thing for a striker, one of your teammates is rarely going to play the ball right to your feet at a speed that is easy to control. This is where you're going to need a friend if you don't have a kickboard. What you do is have your friend send you balls at every angle, from directly infront of you, from behind you, from your left side, and from your right side. When he sends you these balls, you should be making a run, you want him to give you fast balls in the air, bouncing balls, and hard passes along the ground, before you can progress in this you may have to spend a while just working on controling a hard to handle pass. stand about 15 feet away from eachother, and basicly shoot the ball at eachother, not as hard as you can, but make it so it's going to be difficult to handle. This is one of the most important skills a striker must have, if a striker can only handle the balls that are played right to their feet, then you're not gonna soo too much scoring.


If you're really going to take this seriously, I'd say 2-2 1/2 hours a day should be perfect. A good idea for a schedule would be to do only conditioning on monday(try to use a ball whaile you do your conditioning exercizes, except your plyometrics) Then on Tuesday work on your conrtol witht he ball, like the hard to handle passses I was talking about, and anything that involves taming an ugly ball. Wednesday should be the day when you work on your dribbling and movement with a ball, like the drill I just talked about when you sprint with the ball, and then stop, then go again. Thursday should be another conditioning day, try to work on yoru distance running, and stammina on thursday, Friday will be the da you work on your dribbling moves, and juggeling and just the kinda easy stuff. Save saturday for what ever you think you dind;t really do that well durring the week, or give yourself a nice little break.

The most important thign about training is to stick with it, When I first started, I hated it, because I had no one to train with, and I didn;t think I was getting anywhere, but I stuck with it, and right now, I'm just as good as anyone else I play with, and they've been playing for almost 2-3 times longer than I have. It's important to put all you can into your training, if you cheat in yoru training, then you're only cheating yourself. If you have any questions about anyhting, then just keep posting them, I'll be more than happy to give you any help I can :)

[Mirko Mandic]

striker - know where you are and who is around you at all times this will help so much dont know how you would train for that just play alot and it will come to you.
Shot accuracy work on accuracy before power.
heading the ball.
and have suffecient strength and speed to beat the best defenders anywhere on the park.
and you must have split second decsion making like "shoot or take an extra touch?" aswell as great recation time.