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Soccer Edition 54 Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today’s subject will deal with shadow training. One of the things I was asked recently by a subscriber is “how many people get this newsletter anyway?” I thought this would be a good time to let you in on the numbers. The Soccer Newsletter currently has 1034 subscribers. The Goalkeeping Newsletter currently has 1165 subscribers and the newest newsletter dealing with drills has 915 subscribers. As far as the web site is concerned, it varies day to day but this past Tuesday was the busiest day ever with over 415 visitors looking at over 2600 pages. The reason I am letting you know this is because I think this site could become an even greater resource to people if it would become more interactive. Currently, 99% of the content comes from me. If anyone would like to share with the others some of their ideas on soccer by writing a guest newsletter, please let me know. If it seems like it would be a good fit, I would love to have a guest newsletter per month or something like that. While there is no compensation for doing this, I certainly would give credit to whoever was doing the writing. If interested, just email me at comments@finesoccer.com with your ideas. Shadow training is one of the greatest tools available to a coach. Unfortunately, I don’t think many coaches or players understand the tremendous value in doing this and therefore lose out on one of the easiest ways to teach shape and balance and movement. Also, too many players don’t understand the purpose of shadow training and therefore don’t get the full benefit of it when it’s used at a training session. The way shadow training works is to put 11 players on the field in positions, and have them move the ball (and themselves) without any opposition to start with. In other words, they are competing against their shadows. The reason for doing this is it allows the coach and players to see where all movement should go based on everyone’s movement off the ball. For example, if you want to work on switching the ball around the back (see http://finesoccer.com/soccer4.htm) you would have the players in position and it’s an easy way to see that the support is going to be behind square at all times and that the central midfielders are constantly supporting in triangles. Even if a coach talks about this type of movement off the ball, until the players actually see it and do it, they wont really understand how this is done. By utilizing shadow training, they can all see the movement as well as participate in the movement without regard for worrying about whether it will be successful at first since without opposition, it should almost always be successful. If, during your preseason, you are trying to put in a whole system of play that involves switching the ball around the back, overlapping runs and near post/far post runs, they can all be tied together in a shadow training session by having the ball start with an outside midfielder, she plays the ball back to a marking back who proceeds to switch the ball around the back to the other marking back who plays it up to the outside mid and then overlaps around her. The ball can be played to an inside mid who then finds the overlapping runner and then the ball is taken down to the end line and served to the near post/far post/12 yard runners. (see diagram below to see this movement)
By doing this pattern repeatedly without opposition, the players will be able to see all of the movements and see what is expected of them. The next step is to add 4-5 opponents against the 11 players (I actually do shadow work 11 v 1 with the one always being a keeper so that we always end up with a shot). This way, the 11 should still experience success but they have to pick up the pace. Once this is being done correctly, go to 11 v 7 and then finally end up with 11 v 11 and see if they can keep the patterns going against real opposition. I use shadow training more then most coaches because I feel that there are so many benefits to it with very little negatives. One negative is that it’s easy for a coach to lose a teams interest if there is too much talking going on during the shadow work. It’s not unusual for a coach to freeze a team during a pattern to make a point but do this sparingly and get right back into the pattern so you don’t lose the interest. The other negative is that it’s hard to get the intensity up during the shadow work so it’s vital for the coach to be very high energy in order for the players to realize the importance of the shadow work. If you are not currently using shadow training in your practices, I strongly encourage you to do so. Give it a try and let me know what you think. Remember that all previous newsletters can be found online at http://finesoccer.com. Any comments, questions or suggestions can be sent to me at comments@finesoccer.com or posted at http://finesoccer.com/forum.htm Have a great day. Lawrence |
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