Becoming a Soccer Star: Constant Practice, Skills, and Endurance Needed - Essay Sample

Introduction

Becoming a good soccer player demands constant practice and exercise. Specific skills and techniques are necessary for a player to become a good soccer player. The player should possess dribbling skills, excellent body control, proper mindset, game intelligence, physical fitness, and good passing accuracy. Moreover, since soccer games typically last long and the players need to run fast for short distances and other times to move slow, the players need to have high endurance (Di Giminiani & Visca, 2017). Therefore, training sessions need to include activities that help players develop these skills and abilities. Studies show that a player that starts practicing early in life usually has better chances of becoming a good player in the future (Ford & Williams, 2012). Therefore, it is essential to develop an appropriate training process that helps young players develop the skills needed to become a good player. This paper develops a progressive activity experience that will help 14-year-old players to improve their skills for kicking a soccer ball. The plan will be divided into sections that define methods of developing specific skills.

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The Plan

Developing Locomotor Skills

This session will take a total of 45 minutes. And all the 16 players will participate in it. It will help them build endurance, which will allow them to continue playing despite fatigue and stress. A player needs to have functional locomotor abilities to score a ball. In this session, the players will need to run around the field for ten minutes before taking a two-minute break. They will do this practice four times, which will give them fatigue. However, since the aim of the session is to help them develop endurance skills, they will benefit for the duration of the session. Their last two laps will be hard to complete due to fatigue. After finishing this session, they will have gained high endurance skills, which will allow them to kick a ball and score it regardless of the amount of time spent running around the field.

Developing Stability Skills

Other than high endurance, a good soccer scorer needs the ability to twist and turn fast with the ball to reach the goal post. Moreover, the player should do this while maintaining ball possession without losing it to opposing players. Therefore, this session will have exercises that can help these young players to develop these skills. The session will use pre-arranged obstacles on the field, which are supposed to guide the players' movement in the field. The players will need to run fast past the obstacles while kicking the ball to succeed in this section. If a player loses the ball, he or she will need to go back to the starting point and restart the exercise. This session will last for twenty minutes. Players that succeed in this session will be allowed to perfect their skills by repeating the exercise. This session will continue for twenty minutes, after which it will end, and the players will move to the next session. Successful completion of this session will help the players to move fast around players and any obstacle without losing balance. These skills are necessary for a scorer.

Developing Manipulative Skills

The last session of this exercise will include activities that are meant to help the players develop manipulative skills. These skills involve kicking, dribbling, striking, and other techniques that will allow the player to score a goal. In a standard game, players will meet with other opposing players who will want to snatch the ball. Therefore, a good player needs to be able to prevent others from taking the ball. Therefore, this session will last for about 25 minutes, and it will help the players to move well past other players successfully. This session will include two teams, and the teams will aim to move past other players and score a goal successfully. Moreover, each team will need to take the ball from the opposing team and prevent them from scoring. The trainer will direct them appropriately while playing to ensure that they develop abilities to dribble the balls. They will also need to manipulate the opposing players and take the ball from their possession. Successful completion of this session will allow the players to have skills that will enable them to become better players in the future.

References

Di Giminiani, R., & Visca, C. (2017). Explosive strength and endurance adaptationos in young elite soccer players during two soccer seasons. PLoS ONE, 12(2), e0171734. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0171734

Ford, P. R., & Williams, A. M. (2012). The developmental activities engaged in by elite youth soccer players who progressed to professional status compared to those who did not. Psychology of Sport and Excercise, 13(3), 349-352. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2011.09.004