Soccer (5 & 6 yrs): Dribbling Warm-up Activity

This is one of our favorite warm-up activities for dribbling for our 5 & 6 year old program. When your young player participates in this drill, it develops three critical skills by inherently preventing three MAJOR MISTAKES: Mistake #1: Kids tend to look at the ball too much. By crowding the area, the kids inherently pick their eyes up off the ground and begin to develop the "eyes up" skill. Mistake #2: Kids tend to dribble too fast for their own good when learning to dribble. By confining the players to a small space, it's almost impossible to go too fast. In fact, lots of our feedback reminds and encourages the players to move quickly. Mistake #3: Kids don't learn to dribble with all parts of their feet. In this activity, the coach reminds his players and encourages them to use different parts of the feet. "GOOD COACH-BAD COACH" TIP OF THE DAY: Good coaching promotes ACTION, and action nearly eliminates behavior issues. In this activity, you see 7 children with a ball at their feet getting hundreds of touches. NO STANDING IN LINES or WAITING TURNS. This activity not only teaches technique, it invites improvement from all the repetition.