As a football / soccer coach your football training / soccer training sessions will be one of the most important times of the week. Soccer training / football training is where you get your players ready for your next game and where you help mould them in to better players. You will normally only get one soccer training / football training session a week which lasts for one hour so you have to make the most of it.

Soccer training / football training is also a time where you have to get important information over to your players like details for the next game, where you are going to meet and what time you are going to meet, that’s if you’re not using the canyouplayfootball.com personal football organiser! It is where you need to get your players focused and paying attention.

During the later Spring, Summer and early Autumn months you will usually train on grass and you will have sunlight until late in the evening. These soccer session / football training sessions can be good as you aren’t as tight for time as if you had booked on to an Astroturf surface so if you are running behind on your schedule you can extend your training session at no extra cost and still in daylight. As you play your league games on grass the more time you can spend training on grass the better. The only problem can be with the weather - you need to make sure your players bring the right footwear depending on the weather and conditions. If the weather is torrential it may mean you have to cancel training if you are on grass whereas the benefit of Astroturf is that you can play on it in any weather.

If the weather is good, soccer training / football training in the summer is a good test as the players will also have the heat to deal with during pre-season training which will help them get fit and lose any extra pounds as they sweat through pre-season fitness regimes. It will get colder as autumn draws in and in the few weeks before you switch over to Astroturf you will also have to deal with fading light which will get even earlier each week leaving you with little soccer training / football training time or having to train in the dark.

When it comes time to switch to Astroturf you will no longer have the luxury of having extra training time and being the only team using a huge pitch. Normally most astroturfs are heavily booked and you are only allowed the hour you paid for and no more. So when you get to the Astroturf for your soccer training / football training session you will normally have to kick off the group that was on there before you who have overrun which will cut in to your time and then at the end the next group who are on after you will come early and hang around the pitch before trying to get on as early as possible. On Astroturf you will normally get a smaller pitch than you are use to on grass so everyone will be on top of each other and you will have less space to work with.

Extracts taken from ‘A guide to surviving youth football’ by Adam Sibley. Visit www.theyouthfootballguide.com for more information.