How to make training at home fun
Spice up your practice sessions at home
If your children are going to maintain regularly practicing it’s vital that the sessions are fun – enjoyment is the most important part of football after all! When you train every day, it can be hard to keep that element of fun in there, so here are a few tips to help you do just that.
Mix it up
Doing the same exercises can be repetitive and boring, so it’s a good idea to introduce new ones frequently. Don’t spend too long in one session doing the same thing and vary what you’re practicing each day. Did ball mastery yesterday? Why not switch to passing today, and work on finishing tomorrow. The Players’ Club has hundreds of exercises, so you shouldn’t ever have to do the same one twice in a row.
Make it challenging
Practice can get boring if it becomes too easy. Make sure you’re picking age and skill-level appropriate exercises for your children, so they’re practicing the right things and finding it sufficiently challenging. Most exercises can be made harder if you need them to be. If they’re finding scoring too easy, make the goal smaller. If they’re dribbling through cones easily, make the gaps between them smaller.
Practice with them
Not only is practicing together a great bonding activity, it can also help them practice more of the exercises which need more than one participant. There’s also an extra element of fun, as your children will enjoy dribbling past you with their 1v1 moves!
Find ways to keep score
Exercises are always more enjoyable when you’re keeping score, so try to introduce this wherever you can. Count the number of goals scored in a finishing exercise, the number of touches in ball juggling, or the speed your child can complete a dribbling exercise – and then see if they can do it even better next time!