Soccer Training Vs Practice
Soccer Training Does Not Equal Practice
When we talk about our sessions, I call them trainings, not practices. This distinction—central to the soccer training vs practice conversation—is intentional and meaningful.
In short:
Training = learning something new
Practice = repeating what you already know
In more detail:
At Fussbally, our goal is to help your child grow their soccer skills and game understanding as quickly as possible. The soccer training vs practice approach shapes everything we do. Many youth programs in Colorado lack a clear, long-term plan—often relying on random exercises or a coach’s weekly preferences. We created a curriculum that builds step-by-step on prior lessons. Unlike most clubs, our coaches don’t wing it; they follow a multi-year development plan designed to move each player forward, one skill at a time.
"Doesn’t our coach know best what the team needs to work on?"
This statement would be equivalent to: “Doesn’t our teacher know best what to teach in class?” The answer is: most coaches think they do, but if that is the truth is another story.
Training Build-Up:
Coaches, like all humans, tend to make at least one out of three common mistakes when building their own sessions:
1. Recency Bias:
Coaches often base training on recent events or gut feelings—like “we need to work on XYZ.” While this might help short-term results, it undermines long-term development and turns training into a random mix of exercises.
2. Personal Preference:
Coaches, like professionals in any industry, have topics they enjoy working on and others they prefer to avoid. Coaches often tend to focus on their favorite topics and themes more than on things they don’t enjoy training. This is, of course, not ideal. Imagine a teacher who really enjoys math but disregards reading completely over a year’s worth of school because they just really like math. Comparable things take place in many club teams because the coach believes the team really needs to catch up on a specific area of the game.
3. Lack of Planning:
When talking in interviews with coaches who currently work with other organizations and tell me that they “are so experienced that they don’t really need to prepare their trainings every week,” I become very concerned for their players’ training experience. Coming up with activities or even topics on the drive to practice or going through training topics week by week obviously results in a slower speed of development for players in the long term.
These points, often combined with a lack of knowledge, frequently lead to something I would call: practice. Of course there is exceptions and coaches who walk through a multi year self created fantastic plan themselves, but betting on it being done perfect is not good for kids.
What Does Training Look Like?
Training for us serves a long-term purpose of developing creative, smart, and technically sound players. Single training sessions are part of learning themes and coaching points that really matter in player development. Especially at a young age, there are basic skills that every player should learn, and organizations should not leave it up to the coach to decide if these topics are addressed at some point or completely disregarded.
Coming to Fussbally training always means:
Working in groups with low kid-to-coach ratios on detailed skills and decision-making concepts that help your child as a soccer player. All trainings at all levels are designed to help kids progress from easier to more advanced skills in the same area of play. In the same way that schools have curriculums built on top of each other year by year, with lesson plans for teachers going through what needs to be taught day by day, Fussbally is structured for coaches in a similar manner.