How to best organise your coaching sessions

This can be seen in the 1v1 practice (fig 1, above), where a server plays into an attacker who looks to score in the small goal. 

If we then want to add further rules to increase the complexity of the practice, we can do so in stages.

By doing it this way, players do not need to take on lots of information all in one go - instead, they can receive it in smaller chunks, making it much easier to understand.

In this 1v1 practice, an additional scoring system can be added where the attacker wins a point for each of the areas they progress into, and a final bonus point can be achieved if they successfully pass the ball into the small goal.

Changing the area set up so the session can move into another practice quite often causes stress for the coach and becomes an opportunity for the players, particularly younger ones, to talk among themselves or become distracted.

This causes disruption to the session, which can then take quite a while to pull back and get flowing again.

A simple strategy to help avoid this, that allows the session to transition from one practice to the next effortlessly, is to have a set up where all you need to do is remove cones from the existing area.

The practice shown in fig 2 (below) is a 2v2 and a progression from the earlier 1v1 practice.

When setting up the first practice, two pitches are set up next to each other - therefore, when it is time to move the session into the 2v2, all that needs to be done is to remove the small number of cones that divides the two pitches.

This could even be done while the players are still active, thereby minimising disruption and, importantly, increasing the session’s ball-rolling time. 

If we also set these pitches up inside the main pitch, which will be used at the end for the game, the whole session will flow, with very limited disruption, which will make your life a lot easier.

By using selected coloured cones for each of the different areas, it can make the organisation of the session even more effective.

When co-ordinating players and explaining the practice, it is much easier to do so if the pitches are colour coded - the white pitch, the red pitch and so on.

It is the same for when we are moving into the next practice - you can ask players: "Can you pick up just the yellow cones?", which creates the bigger area.

In a similar way, using bibs throughout the session can help the organisation of the players within the practices and again aids the transition between the different practices.

If we look back again at the 1v1 and 2v2 practices, there are three different roles within them - attacker, defender and server. 

Having players in different colours makes it easy to organise them into their roles and to change them after a period of time.

"When explaining a practice, it is much easier if the pitches are colour coded..."

Ahead of the 1v1, you can say something like: "All of those in the blue bibs, you will start as servers; if you have a red bib on, you are now the attacking player". Then when it moves into the 2v2, it is easy to pair the players up.

The practice illustrated in fig 3 (below) also shows how this particular strategy can be used during a session.

Here, four different coloured bibs are used and who players choose to work with is restricted by their bib colour; "If you have a red bib on, work with someone in a blue bib".

Having a well organised session can have a really positive impact on the development of the players. 

The increased ball-rolling time gives them more time to practice while keeping them engaged, stopping them from being distracted and helping them to stay focused on developing around the session topic.

Plus, if the session is running smoothly because there is little to do in terms of reorganising after the initial set-up, and the players are solely focused on playing, it allows us to do what we really want to do; coaching and supporting the players to become better.