One of the best ways to naturally bring out the competitive nature in your soccer players during practice is by adding in 1 v 1 activities, small sided games, and races. The human spirit is instantly ignited when there is a goal to score, a race to win or an opponent to beat. Below we give you 5 simple, yet competitive 1 v 1 soccer activities to ramp up your practices and help players work on their 1 v 1 skills.
Before we dive into the activities, take a look below at 5 basic dribbling skills to use when beating a defender.
- Use a low athletic position with knees bent. If you are standing up straight it is hard to be explosive.
- Use the inside and outside surfaces of foot.
- Use small touches in close, and then larger touches when you are behind the defender so you can to separate yourself from them.
- You don’t just have to dribble around someone to beat them. In some moves all you need to do is use body or lake fakes (without moving the ball) to make a defender think you are going one way and then you can explode the other way.