CBC-Sports

Warm up to your warm-up

June 1, 2009 10:28 AM | Posted by   Ron Kuipers  

Ron Kuipers is a writer from Oakville, Ont., who has been coaching and teaching young kids how to play soccer for several years.

Tell me if this one sounds familiar.

You arrive at the soccer field about 15 minutes before the game starts.

Your son or daughter runs over to the coach to say hi and to drop off the water bottle. He/she then joins a long, stationary line of teammates who are waiting for a turn to take one shot at the goalie.

Or maybe it's this one. Your son or daughter joins a large circle of teammates who are calling out numbers while stretching in a stationary position.

There's no soccer ball, no running, no dribbling. There's just standing.

Unfortunately, for many teams in most age groups, this is what passes for a pre-game warm-up.

Today, I'm offering a few suggestions so coaches can start making better use of the 10 or 15 minutes they have to prepare the kids for the upcoming game.

Use lots of balls

The first thing the kids should do when they get to the field is start working with a soccer ball right away.

Put a bunch of balls on the field and instruct the kids to break off into groups of two or three and start passing the ball around.

To avoid the 'standing around' aspect of this warm-up, make sure the boys or girls are running around while passing the ball back and forth.

They can switch positions after passing or move to open spots. It doesn't matter what they do as long as they're mimicking the real game.

Even if this is all they do before the game starts, it gets the blood flowing which loosens them up and gets them ready for the soccer action that's about to begin.

Keep them moving

If a coach insists on having his team take shots on the goalie as part of the warm-up, it should be done with the kids running with the ball before shooting.

Instead of one long line near the goal, create four shorter lines which are further out and spread from one side of the field to the other.

When the first player gets near the net, send the next player from the next line and so on. The staggered approach gets more kids involved at once and keeps the goalie very busy.

Goalie warm-up

Shortly before the game starts, the coach, an assistant coach, a parent or a teammate can take a ball and spend a few minutes tossing it to the goalie as part of his or her warm-up.

Throw a few high so the goalie can catch them and roll a few along the ground so the goalie can dive for them. After that, let the goalie throw and kick a few balls from the crease.

This is a quick and effective way to get the goalies' mind focused on the task at hand.

Pre-game speech

If you're a coach who believes in lengthy, Hollywood-style pre-game speeches, save it for the big screen.

Thanks to this new and improved warm-up, the kids are now thinking soccer and they should have the sweaty foreheads to prove it.

Younger squads don't need much more than a simple reminder to try hard and to play fair and to have fun.

Older teams might appreciate a quick reminder of something they worked on at the last practice.

Whatever you choose to say, make it short and to the point and then turn the kids loose and let them play soccer!

Spread the warm-up word

Soccer holds a huge advantage over a sport like hockey when it comes to the warm-up. Most minor hockey teams only get two or three minutes to prepare for each game.

If the kids are on time, soccer teams can enjoy as much as 15 minutes of pre-game action which is a perfect amount of time to get everybody ready for the big game.

So please feel free to forward this information along to as many coaches, parents and players as you can.

Together, we can make the silly sight of soccer players accomplishing very little while standing together in one long line a thing of the past.

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