Posted on July 25th 2018 by Richard Hicks

Pre-Season: Passing Fundamentals Session

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Pre-season: Pass Fundamental Session.

This session plan will use whole - part - whole training method to help your team brush up on their passing and handling skills, whilst improving their fitness with a conditioned game at the end. This Training method is most effective as it can break the skill down into its components, put back together again, and then practiced in a match like situation.

Warm Up

It is essential that your team is ready for the session and that a warm up is versatile enough to meet requirements of the training session ahead. It should be low intensity with gradual progressions through different movements and stretches. Here is a good example of a dynamic warm up for a start of a session:

Handling Skills Block

Whole

First of all to refresh your players' handling skills and to regain form at the start of the session the Whole skill must be practiced. Here are two drills that can be used in high repetition, to get your players eye in and concentration levels up before starting the main section of the session.

Part

Once players feel comfortable back on the ball, and have knocked off the off-season rust. Start to break the pass down into its individual elements. This allows the players to work on their weak parts of the pass, may it be the accuracy, power or flight of the pass. Here is a good session that will improve your team's passing performance and accuracy.

Whole

If you feel your players are ready, it's time to put the whole skill back together again. Here players can work on all the components of the skill at once. Making the drills a little bit more pressurising and competitive adds an element of fun as well as tests the players focus on the skill execution. Here are two drills that will test you teams passing accuracy when adding time pressure and opposition pressure.

Game - Conditioning

What is pre-season without a conditioning block to finish off. Touch games are for skill development, running, passing and support whilst also developing your teams fitness in the most fun, game related way as possible. Throughout this game ensure you focus on the skill that was practiced, so try to encourage as much passing as possible/ (maybe after every touch you team have to complete 2 passes before scoring).