Dribbling Exercises

You can tell the kids a million times to hold their heads high when dribbling the ball but it doesn't work. In fact the more you cut down on the speeches, the more time you will have on training.
Here are some simple dribbling exercises:

Note: every kid needs a soccer ball:

1. A soccer field's center circle is your friend. Take the kids to the circle and have them dribble around with the ball. They don't have to go fast but they should try to keep the ball on the line. After a few minutes, half of them should turn around and go the other direction. For sure they will run into each other. It's now time to tell them to keep their heads high so they can see where they are going.

Take a water break.

2. Have the kids dribble around the circle again. On the whistle each player should dribble into the circle, cross the center of the circle and get to the other side of the circle and start dribbling around the circle again. You can imagine that all the kids will run into each other in the middle of the circle. So they are forced to keep their heads up.

Take a water break.

3. Use the inside area of one-half of the circle. Have everyone dribble inside the half-circle. They should not be running into each other. They should keep dribbling around. After a while when the kids start getting tired, you will see that they start walking with the ball. It's fine. At this point get in the circle yourself and start kicking their balls out. The kids should be forced to turn their backs when you approach them to protect their soccer ball. Otherwise you will kick their ball out and away and they will have to run to get it back.
Alternatively, take away the soccer balls from two of the kids and have them kick other kids balls out of the circle.

4. When designing your own exercises, always remember the 3 L's:
a. No Lines - As you can see in the above exercise, all the kids are involved all the time. No standing in boring lines.

b. No Laps - Kids can get their workout during the well-designed exercises. No need for the boring laps which takes away the kids energy without achieving much.

c. No Lectures - I touched on this before. You can tell kids individually about their mistakes but do not hold up the whole group to explain something to one kid, unless it's real important for everyone. Keep the flow of the exercises going.