Soccer Practice Games: How To Shoot Properly
Thursday, May 6th, 2010Kids enjoy being a part of Soccer practice games the most when they get to score as many goals as possible. For this reason, you must look for opportunities to score goals and integrate for them. If you try, you’ll find countless ways that can be used to create such opportunities for them. For example: small-sided games, full-field scrimmages, and shooting drills.
Throughout the full field scrimmages and small sided games, you need to continue amending the methods that help scoring more goals. You can include such games that can be played without a goalie, or restrict their moves inside the warning lines. There is another way of increasing the possibility of goal scoring by broadening the goalpost being used or else by adding up more goals.
During soccer training, players can improve goal creation by becoming a skilled shooter and developing their judgment skills. Similar to passing skills, it works well to initiate shooting methods pretty early in the development of kids but lay more emphasis at the later stages.
Carrying out soccer drills is one of the means to equip the players with requisite shooting skills. Shooting skills of the players are developed and they get better in scoring goals as a result of these drills. It is therefore important that you encourage your kids to become skilled at shooting the ball precisely.
In your soccer exercises, coach the players how to strike the ball appropriately while shooting it. Players can take repeated shots at close range from the inside of the foot. Using the inside of the foot results in enhancing the shooting precision. If more power is required to hit the ball, ask the players to strike the ball using the instep of the foot, with toes pointed downwards and ankle locked.
Positioning of the non kicking foot has an effect on the height of the shot. So instruct the players to position the non kicking foot ahead of the ball to keep the shot low. Make sure you eliminate all distractions for example moving balls, moving shooters, or defenders to focus your player’s mind on striking the ball.
Kick start the drill progression in soccer practice games with the help of stationary ball and a striker. As you move on with the shooting techniques, increase the challenge by putting the shooter in action before he/she hits the ball. This modification will deviate from the accuracy of the striking efforts at first, because the player’s visualization must serve a double purpose.
One, it helps the shooting player to get some space in the direction of the ball and two, it helps them manage their foot right where the ball is.
As players become confident, enhance the level of difficulty by placing both shooter and the ball in motion, and create a more game like state. Once they show improvement in shooting the ball, introduce varying speeds for the ball.
Here it is! Develop more opportunities for the players to score goals in soccer practice games and make the most of practice sessions. For more of such tips and other soccer coaching resources, join our youth soccer coaching community.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Soccer Training Tips