What You Need To Know About Session Structure And Kick Counts

 

The following is an extract from my book - Kicking Essentials: The Ultimate Guide for Players and Coaches, and addresses some of the confusion that surrounds session structure and kick counts. It seems that one day you hear it's important to be putting in hundreds of kicks per week, yet someone else will say you can get by just fine with a fraction of that. In my experience, the following guidelines seem to strike a nice balance between building confidence and skill, and not overkicking to the point of fatigue.

REPETITION

Resist the temptation to over kick during a session, weekly, and over time. Whilst repetition is important in establishing technique and confidence, concentrating too much effort in one area of training can be prohibitive to development and often leads to muscular imbalances, reduced coordination levels, and burnout. Balance dedicated kicking time with other skill areas and make sure you are consistently developing strength, mobility and overall fitness.

Regarding kick counts it is my firm belief that there needn’t be a restriction on the number of kicks younger athletes perform. In fact, in recent times the opposite is almost true. Younger athletes are spending less and less time practicing their kicking skills and when arriving into high school and club level grades showing large deficiencies in kicking ability. So I encourage young athletes to have a ball in their hands and at both feet as often as possible to develop the coordination and control required to perform at higher levels when older.

KICK COUNT

When out of season, the total number of kicks per session should range between 30 and 60. This gives a range of 90 - 180 total kicks per week. In season, the total kicks per session should range between 20 and 40. This gives a range of 40 - 80 total kicks per week.
 
Once players move beyond high school into club and representative grades my recommendation is to perform 2-3 dedicated kicking sessions per week when out of season, and 1-2 sessions per week in season. The duration of these may range from 20 minutes tagged on pre or post team trainings, or up to 60 – 90 minutes as a stand-alone session. What is most important is the quality of the work.
 
I realize there are some die-hards out there that want to lay down some big numbers and time on the field. There are many stories of kickers repeating hundreds of kicks per session, or undertaking marathon 3-4 hour long sessions until satisfied. These sessions can serve to benefit from a psychological perspective giving you mental strength and confidence in your ability to perform consistently well over time. However, these sessions should certainly not be the norm as they take a toll on your body over time and I firmly believe you can achieve similar performance improvements within half an hour as what you can in two hours, when done regularly.

STRUCTURE

The structure of a kicking session holds no hard and fast rules. Individual habits, tendencies, superstitions; not to mention specific kick counts, in-season or out-of-season, time constraints and field accessibility are all things for the player or coach to consider. On the following pages I have provided some general examples of sessions that I have used with athletes with specific drills and approximate kick counts.

The general structure of a session looks as follows:

·         Warm Up: Various strength and mobility exercises.

·         Drills:

·         Technical: Drills focusing on a specific aspect of the kick in part motion.

·         Open: Drills focusing on a specific aspect of the kick during a full motion.

·         Scenario: Drills utilizing a full kicking motion applied to specific situations.

·         Challenge or Game: Designed to be competitive and fun.

·         Stretch: Various flexibility exercises plus specific exercises as required.

If you have any thoughts on the above I'd love to hear them! Please leave comments below.
If you want to find out more about session structure, overall programme design and skill development, and how that all fits in to an overall plan to develop kicking and in game performance, my book Kicking Essentials covers all of this and more. Visit www.kickingessentialsbook.com to find out more.