Its unbelievable how underrated the importance of warming up in kids soccer drills is. It is something that being a coach, I would want to stress that warming up is obligatory and an important practice to lead the team towards a better start of the day. Coaches in youth soccer drills do not take this factor into consideration. The consequences are then faced by the players when they suffer injuries in training.
This article gives you some nice tips on how to get the team warmed up. Teach the players to warm up by following those body movements that help all muscles to work up. This is by far the best way to activate all the body parts. Rigorous sessions can result in stiffness and cramping of the muscles.
Tip 1: Have the players jog for about 5-7 minutes initially. It is advocated that players begin printing only after a light jogging.
This must increase the pulse rate to at least 120 beats per minute. But, slow improvement is better. This should be followed by players moving their legs backward and forward for approximately 10 minutes each. To conclude, the players should vigorously stretch their body more than 20 yards.
Tip 2: Talking of active stretching over 20 yards, it should be noted that it should be accompanied with some warm up exercises of its own. For example, make the players skip forward and backward. Teach the players cross stepping as well. High-knee carioca can also be taught to players. You can have these performed similar to sprinting.
Backward run is also a highly effective warm up drill in soccer drills for kids. However the right way to do it is to kick up the heels to the butt. It’s actually tough to practice it like this but there’s no choice as it’s the single most and right way of doing it.
Tip 3: In order to buildup the force for the training session, kids soccer drills include numerous other exercises also. You can make the players skip with loops or swings. These give an added element to the skipping exercises. Also have your players do the cross-over hopping. Although a little advanced, Quick Hip Swings is also a very effective and tested method that warms up the body a great deal.
Next, make the players do long shuffles with turns in the middle. Make them practice forward and backward leg swings. It’s a very efficient activity and helps in toning the body. Similarly high leg forward and backward is very useful too.
Tip 4: Stretch adequately and complete it in the approved manner. For the legs, stretch hinging works the best. Guarantee that all kids work out their hamstring, groin, calf muscles, and quadriceps without missing any of these. Stretching not only prevents injury but also increases the range of the muscles.
In soccer drills for youth, another important thing to ensure is that kids don’t do too much of anything. The kids get carried over in excitement and end up injuring themselves for no reason due to this.
In kids soccer drills, it’s for you now to make sure that kids do the warm up exercises before practice sessions as you’ve got all the knowledge on this. There is a wealth of news and articles of similar nature on our youth soccer coaching community. Join today and enjoy the advantages from them.
Andre Botelho is known online as “The Expert Youth Soccer Coach” and his free ebooks and reports have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Learn how to skyrocket your players’ skills and make practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Youth Soccer Drills.
Related Posts
-
No related posts
