Addressing the Issue
Striking a soccer ball has been compared to a golf swing and me trying to say what is causing a specific spin on the ball without seeing the strike is like me going to a golf instructor and saying that I slice the ball, now without ever seeing me hit the ball, can you tell me why.
Any skill in life, whether it is striking a golf ball, bowling, hitting a baseball or any aspect of soccer simply takes getting expert instruction and then repeating the tasks properly thousands and thousands of times.
What happens with Young Players is that they will continually take 2 steps forward and then one step back. Some days they look like they have never hit a ball in their life and other days they look like a world beater.
The reason this happens with young players has to do with mental and physical development as well as with human brain function with regards to learning capabilities. I see kids that have excellent cognitive learning abilities but then go through a growth spurt for as long as a year or so and they cannot do what their brain tells them to do. My job is to recognize WHY something happens, or goes wrong and address that issue in preparing the player for the LONG haul.
Training takes expert training, lots of hard work from the player and lots and lots of patients from the parents as well as the player. For example, there are sessions where we can use a the wall so that the players can learn how to have fun using the wall and get hundreds, if not thousands of reps in a session and hopefully enjoy it too!! If I cannot make it fun for them, then there is no point, soccer has to be fun. Hopefully the better they get the more fun they will have learning new skills.
