Heads up and beat the chaos

We need to develop players’ ability to pass with their heads up to see what’s coming. This session helps them pass in corridors of traffic and limit the chance of collisions. It is a simple session to set up and has plenty of developments.

Warm up time: 5-7
Session time: 8-10
Development time: 10-15
Game time: 10-15
Warm down time: 5-8

What to think about

You can change the difficulty of the main exercise by changing the dimensions of the box. Make it shorter and wider to make it harder. However, it is important that there is little opportunity for players to collide when they are not braced for contact. Hence, you should avoid “crossing” in the exercises. Any of the variations can be used as a warm-up handling exercise.

set-up

1. Run straight, look up and pass when the receiver is in space.
2. Keep the ball above hip height when you pass.
3. Look ahead and then look at the receiver.

What you get your players to do

Put three players at one end of a 15m square on one set of coloured cones and three players at the opposite end on another set of coloured cones. They run down the box, receiving a pass from a feeder at the edge and moving the ball to the other feeder - as in the top picture. They turn and repeat. They should do one “there and back” before changing positions. Restart if there is a dropped ball.