Getting a Jump Start to the Season

I continue to receive a lot of great feedback on the podcast as well as ratings and reviews on iTunes. I really appreciate everyone that has taken the time to send an email or write a review.

I'll do my best to bring you information on the topics and ideas you've requested. This week we went past 100,000 downloads of our episodes! I’m glad that so many coaches are finding the podcast useful and spreading the word about the training sessions and information that is available here. This week is the last week of our clubs summer break so this week I want to share what we offer our players and teams in the club to help them prepare for to return to training.

Each year our club offers a preseason camp available to anyone in the club. I like to use this as a Training Camp for my teams if there are enough players available to make it worthwhile.

The camp can also be good for individuals who haven’t had their foot on the ball since the end of the spring. I’ve found that it can be a great way to get to know a new team in a short period of time so I try to get everyone on board if possible. This year I have a U16 girls team that I’ll be working with for the first time.

We’ll have 10 or 11 girls which is enough to get some technical work done and start to build the team. But it’s not enough to allow me to spend much time on team concepts. We could do it but then we’d just have to do it again when we get everyone to training in early August. The camp runs for an hour and a half for four days.

I decided that I wanted to start with a fun activity, then cover a technical skill, add some finishing and end with a small-sided game each day.

I'll go through each session briefly here but I’ll also put the complete training session in the printable show notes below.