To plan a soccer training session efficiently, we must take into account some aspects. The time of the season. That is if we are in the Preparatory period, Competitive period, etc. The type of team we train. Soccer 7, Soccer 11, etc. The category of the team we train. The days a week that we train. Based on these initial ideas and decisions, today, we will show how to plan a football training session that trains 3 times a week.
How to plan a football training session?
In a session lasting 1 h 30 minutes, we can divide the tasks into two parts. The first part will contain 4 tasks, considering warming up as an essential task that will help us develop the rest of the session. According to our overall objective of the session, we can work with technical, tactical, conditional, or socio-affective objectives. To help you select the most suitable tasks, you can review the Warm-Up category within the exercises.
From there, we will work with 3 tasks where we will develop our content so that the session’s objective is met. The second part contains 3 tasks. We consider the activation warm-up (2 laps rolling + joint mobility, etc.) to immediately go to the session’s work.
The task times can always be adapted to the number of final tasks that we want our session to contain. Remember that you can mark the maximum time of the session in the creation sheet within the tools we offer you.
Session orientation
In a micro-cycle with 3 sessions, the session’s orientation will help us generate the associated objectives.
– Training session 1: Lack of Recovery
We will focus our objectives on those points of improvement that we have to face more in the short term. Both individually and collectively, our players and our team always have things to improve.
Competition is an essential point to determine what needs to be improved and the maturing age of the player. There are times when our players come from different teams, leagues, styles, etc. That conditions the initial level to develop other concepts.
For these reasons, we will use session 1 to attack the deficiencies (individual/collective) and establish a solid conceptual base to develop what our team has to do on the pitch.
– Training session 2: Enhance the Game Model
In session 2 we will focus on developing key aspects of our game model, both offensive and defensive. Here the most important thing is that we are clear, before executing this type of session, the following points:
- What do I want to play?
- What do I say “Yes” to and what do I say “No” when attacking or defending?
- Do I have players to do what I want?
About the style of play that we want to develop, we will generate tasks in a certain way. We can distinguish, for example, three basic styles:
- Dominate and attack in the rival field
- From the defensive organization, generate short attack situations.
- Be intense and base the game on the best in the 1v1 duel.
Depending on the decisions and styles made, the type of Session 2 will change in:
- Type of tasks appropriate for the achievement of the objective
- Instructions that the coach emphasizes so that the objectives are met
– Training session 3: prepare for the competition
At this point, we must answer a new series of questions:
- What do I want my team to do in the competition?
- How are we going to execute our match plan?
- When are we going to do it?
Considering the opponent’s profile or what we are working on, this session will focus on what we want the team to do over the weekend. Depending on the competitive stress, we will have more or less the rival in mind, but this should not affect the style or the game model.
Some key aspects of working on:
- Defensive block / Pressure types
- How to attack
- Strategy
Here the game plan is very important: the team must know what the coach wants from his players in the competition and work on it within this session.
Training session example
Finally, we want to propose training session number one based on the exercises you will find in soccer confession.
Situation: Our team has problems circulating the ball, looking for third-man situations or circulating the ball in the shape of a triangle.
Objective: Work 3rd man game situations.
Tasks to include in the session:
Task 1: RT1 0158 – 3rd man passing and triangulation exercise
Task 2: RTD 0410 – Task 7c7 + 2 with superiority on the outside
Task 3: RTD 0402 – 4v4 + 4 match with goals for goal
