I have no problem with kids playing multiple sports when they are very young, but with the top players investing 10,000 hours in perfecting their craft, how do we expect our multiple sport participants to have a chance?

I have players leaving practice early for tennis, not showing up because of softball or volleyball, not attending because of track, cross country, tennis, piano lessons, chess lessons ( yes..chess). The list goes on and on.

The parents want well rounded children with an appreciation for the different arts and sports. I get that, but what I do not understand is why parents are upset when our teams are slaughtered.

Of course, in their mind the coach must be doing something wrong. I explain to parents that when so many miss for so many reasons, it is very difficult to plan a session that addresses any team issues. How can you work on building from the back when the centerbacks are missing? How can you work on finishing when the strikers are not there or the goalkeeper has to leave early?

You get my point. Many of my coaches have to alter their plans based on who is there that day.This makes it very difficult to progress as a team, because some players never miss. They get better faster and now we have a disparity in ability and understanding.

The weekend finds a team together for the first time. They are not on the same page, we have no chemistry and some players are very unfit.

If soccer is recreational and you are not interested in pursuing this at any level, then this is fine..well it is not, but I can understand. The sad thing is that these players all say that they want to play at the next level. They have no idea what it takes to play there.

My point is that some of our players do not invest nearly the amount of time needed to be adequate, so forget about being exceptional.

The Dutch U17 National Team coach put it very simply at the A license audit I attended in January this year.

He said “How can you expect to be good at anything if you are doing everything.” There is a principle in soccer called SAID. It means Specific Adaptations to Imposed Demands.

Our players impose so many demands through multiple sport participation, that they never adapt to any of them. In other words they never master any discipline.

While there isn’t anything we can do about parents putting their children in so many activities, we can at least make it clear that this will hinder their child’s development and future in soccer.

Related posts:

1. Working with Your Soccer Moms & Dads
2. Coaching Your Own Kids

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Demonstration of hapkido by a old master

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UItilizes dribbling with a dynamic warmup. Video quality is a little low. Spartan Basketball San Antonio’s #1 Basketball Program www.spartanPT.com

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The ability to quickly transition from offense to defense is critical for soccer teams to succeed. Watch Barcelona play. The moment one of their forward players loses the ball, the whole teams gets back into shape and attacks the offense. The forwards and midfielders exercise a very high work rate to quickly try to get the ball back.

Even players as young as U9 can begin to learn the importance of transition. For kids this age, simple instructions like “try to win the ball back right away when you lose it” begin to get the idea in their heads.

As the players progress in age and skill, you can implement more complex transition activities to continue developing this skill. Today I’m going to share with you one of the transition activities that we have had good success with at our club.

Begin by setting up three 40×20 grids on top of each other. The total playing area will be 40×60.

The two outside grids have 4 players in them. The middle grid has 4 as well.

The players on the outside grids are keeping possession between them (8 players).

The four in the middle grid are trying to win the ball. They send 2 players into the grid where the ball is being played. The other two stay in the middle grid to pick off passes.

If a pass is picked off, the defending team in the middle is now playing 4v4 in two of the three grids. Their objective is the cross the line of the team on the outside grid. They defending team in transition can only attack the line of the team that gave the ball away.

For example, if blue gives the ball away, the red team plays 4v4 in the middle grid and the blue team’s grid. Red is trying to dribble across the blue team’s back line to score.

Switch the players in the middle grid every 5 minutes.

You want to encourage the possession team to win the ball back as soon as they lose it. You also want to encourage the defending group to capitalize on the mistakes of the possessing team as quickly as possible. The speed of play must be very fast. You can experiment with limiting the outside grid players to two touches if your team’s skill level permits.

You can move from this game into the same game with full-size goals and keepers on each end.  You can also transition to multiple small goals if keepers are not available.

Related posts:

1. Barcelona 5- Real Madrid 0. What happened?
2. Soccer Drills – Receiving Under Pressure
3. Soccer Drills – helping center backs deal with pressure

Ultimate Soccer Coaching

Two of the most powerful teams in the English Premier League are set to renew their rivalry. Manchester United will visit Chelsea in a huge showdown. After a hot start, Chelsea looked like they would run away with the EPL title. However, they have struggled a bit and slipped to fifth. Meanwhile, Manchester has taken over the top spot and has lost only one game so far this season.

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Edwin van der Sar has been strong in goal for Manchester. He has allowed 23 goals in 24 starts for the team. His stellar play keeps the team in every game they play. Offensively, Manchester has relied on Dimitar Berbatov. He has scored a remarkable 19 goals so far this season. Nani also provides a big offensive boost with over a hundred shots on goal.

For Chelsea, Peter Cech has been reliable goal. He has made every start for the team, yielding only 22 goals on the season. Offensively, Chelsea has a lot of big names. Didier Drogba and Florent Malouda lead the team with nine goals each. They also have Fernando Torres, who has appeared in two games since coming over from Liverpool.

These are two teams that are used to winning championships. Despite their struggles, Chelsea can never be counted out. This is the first meeting of the season between the rivals. Chelsea won both meetings last year. Of course, this is a different Manchester team. They have looked like one of the most dominant teams in the world for a while now. This should be a game that lives up to the hype.

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I’d it normal for your back to hurt / be soar after playing a game of soccer . I’m a goalkeeper nd my back hurts wen I’m done with practice nd wen games are over is this normal??

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tony hawks trick tips ramps

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*CLICK MORE INFO* A neat trick that a friend of mine told me about, but couldn’t quite master. I didn’t see any videos on this, so I wanted to create an instructional video that was easy to follow. As my first video ever, I will show you how to do a Mega Man X style vertical wall jump so you can have more time to get that perfect high-damage pounce. This video was also a test to get audio from microphone input to record alongside game audio…other than the low volume output, looks like it was a success! So in case you noticed that my speech sounds unrehearsed, it’s because it was all done on-the-fly. 1) With your back facing the wall, crouch while looking straight up and backing into the wall (holding ‘s’). 2) Make the first pounce while holding ‘s’ in and mashing in left-click. Before you hit the apex of the jump, slowly bring your aim down. 3) Once you make a second pounce, leave your aim there and continue pouncing. 4) Get a 25-damage pounce on a hapless survivor. *Note that unfortunately this doesn’t appear to work when on fire. I wish I knew who to credit this to, but, alas, I don’t. Anyway, thanks to whoever found this out as well as anyone who actually learns something from this video. Music is from the title screen and Armored Armadillo stage from Mega Man X…I figured they would be fitting for such a maneuver =)

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