As a coach, it’s also not fun to see your own team slow and unmotivated. But don’t worry, we sat down with Bryant Lazaro, who wants to give you 4 little tips to make soccer training fun and motivating for players. Bryant Lazaro is a professional soccer coach born in Florida, USA, and is one of the few American coaches who are working in Europe. He has worked with professional teams like Sevilla FC in the La Liga and is currently the head coach of Øygarden FK in the Norwegian First Division.
Lazaro has worked under big names like Jorge Sampaoli, Pablo Blanco and JuanMa Lillo. Not only that, but he’s even worked with Ian Cathro, so he definitely has a few tricks up his sleeve about how to make the training more engaging and interactive.
Team up with another coach
Training a couple of times a week and with a match during the weekend, it is very difficult to prepare the training sessions correctly. The best thing to do is to get an assistant coach, for example, part time. It will improve the quality of your training sessions as each of you will have fewer players to focus on. Plus, they’ll also be able to contribute some new ideas and inspire you on how you might manage the next workout.
Varied and specialized training
From time to time, change the exercises. If the players don’t know what they will do during the next training session, they will never get bored. It doesn’t matter if you train children, teenagers or adults, always try to adjust the exercises of the workouts so that they are specialized. For example, during one week you could give it a physical focus and during the next a tactical focus and then mix things up. As long as these exercises are varied! Attacking drills are not only shots on goal, but also positioning and movements without the ball, so you can focus on one thing and then the other.
Make competitions
Whether you’re training kids or adults, it’s important to liven up your daily training sessions with a little competition. It will improve the overall intensity and winning mentality as no one will want to lose to their teammates. However, there is no need to go to the extreme of recording all the results in an Excel sheet with crazy lists containing trophies for the winners and penalties for the losers.
For example, you can start by making competitions where the losers have to clean the field of play at the end of the session. The important thing is that something is at stake. As mentioned above, you should make an effort to vary your competitions from time to time, so they don’t get monotonous and boring.
Be serious during the session
Unless your team is made up of young children, you should try to be more serious and strict so that your players do not fall into routine or boredom. Many coaches have the tendency to socialize with their players and take training very lightly, especially when the team is made up of friends and / or their children.
Clearly, it also depends on the ambitions of the team, because there will be a difference if the game is only played for fun or to stand out among the best in the sport. Therefore, if you want to go far with your team, it is important to keep your distance from the players, be stricter and be much more focused on the main objective.
The results will play themselves out on the field!