FA Football coaching course will fill my week

I am spending this week going through an FA Level 1 coaching course to home up my coaching skills. I have agreed to help my sons' football team and as part of being able to coach I am on this course.

It started with two evenings last week and is followed up by four full (ish) days this week. Apart from tomorrow, which is safeguarding and First Aid, the whole week will be set aside to working out a set of practices that will benefit the players in the team. Everything is done under the supervision of FA coaches and is all linked to the FA DNA of coaching.

I need to make sure that the training sessions are safe, fun and inclusive. It is a really interesting take on football coaching and is very different to the training sessions that I experienced when I was young. The team I train are Under 10's so there is a lot of room for development and I am looking forward to working in training again when the course is complete.

The last session we did was to deliver a training practice and look at how this might develop our team. I went for a passing game with the emphasis on getting the whole team involved in touching the ball. It is important to give as many players as possible in touch with the ball rather than standing in a queue waiting for their turn.

A revelation for me was the introduction of arrival activities. This is where the players are involved with the football as soon as they get there. With a training session starting at 6.15pm we have players arriving at different times. To get them involved with the ball and moving around is much more productive than taking shots at each other or messing around. This will be introduced at training this week and I hope it has s big impact.