On The Pitch

One of the biggest challenges youth soccer coaches face is coming up with activities for practice. It is a common complaint and you find in most coaching classes, the most useful part is getting to see what activities the instructors and other coaches do. In my ‘D’ class we would furiously scribble onto legal pads while classmates were out on the field doing model sessions. US Youth Soccer has had some handy flip books for a number of years, but they were sometimes hard to get (because they were SUPER cheap). We bought them for our coaches for a couple years.

Now they have taken those books as a foundation and released three new coaching guides in PDF format.

The US Youth Soccer Coaching Department has introduced its latest coaching resources with three age-specific practice activity guides. The three guides — for the U6-U8, U-10 and U-12 age groups — give coaches an idea of what should be covered throughout a season while highlighting activities that focus on development in a low-stress, fun-filled environment.

Each resource covers multiple types of practice activities, from warm-ups and individual training to small-sided and group games. The exercises are tailored to meet the cognitive and physical characteristics of each age group.

The guides each contain individual activity descriptions with accompanying coaching points, so coaches are aware of what to watch for during each exercise. With 20 sessions broken down in each guide, there are more than enough activities to meet the needs of any youth soccer season.

Flipping through them, they are very well laid out with many suggested activities as well as a lot of useful information for the new and experienced coach alike. If your a coach, I’d suggested downloading them ASAP. DOC’s should send these to every coach every season…