Pre-Season Ball Mastery

Pre-Season Ball Mastery Taking more touches on the ball will benefit all players, at youth or senior level.

Ball mastery is used regularly within players' technical training, but it can be under-rated in its use during pre-season training.

Pre-season used to be the most gruelling time of the year. Players would be taken on long distance runs, to the point of physical exhaustion. But, with the development of sports science and improved coaching methods, we now see more relevant training to match-like situations. Gone are the days of running until you can't run anymore, instead replaced with short and sharp bursts of intense physical activity.

All players need a good base rate of fitness, possessing the ability to run for an extended period of time at a steady rate, but the most tiring aspects of football are the quick movements, changes of direction and pace.

If players aren't physically conditioned correctly then we will see fatigue set in at an earlier point of the game, tired legs, heavy touches, slow turns and a lack of pace. For a player, the harder aspects of physical fitness are the turning, change of pace, and strength on the ball. When you are tired you just feel like you aren't able to do any of this.

It is more common now, but it used to be that players didn't see the ball for the first few weeks of pre-season. Personally, I didn't enjoy this at all, I wanted to be on the ball as much as I could, and always hoped that I could develop my fitness with plenty of ball work.

I used to find that, if I didn't practise with the ball enough during pre-season, I would become sloppy with my touch and close control. I didn't have the strength, or speed in my legs to move the ball where I wanted it to go.

Pre-season is all about conditioning the player to be match ready. Are we match ready if we feel a lack of confidence and rusty on the ball?