I want to talk about one of the most important aspects of soccer, and how you can train it. A players first touch can determine whether they score, get the pass off, or get tackled. As you get better and learn more about the game, your first touch needs to be able to keep up with your brain and ideas. A player always should know what they're going to do with the ball before they get it right? What if you know what you're going to do, but your first touch bounces off your shin and to the other team. Your first touch is honestly one of the most important things a player can train, and today we will be learning how to train it from Atlanta United's, Heath Martin. Feel free to read my description of the drills or simply watch his video!
Box drill - You will stand in the middle of a 3 yard by 3 yard box and have a teammate standing about 10 yards away from that box at a separate cone. Your teammate will pass it into the top side of the box, and you must take your first touch out of the left side of the box and play a pass back to your teammate with your second touch. Repeat the same on the right side. I would suggest 3 sets of 10 reps, 5 reps going out of the left side, and 5 reps going out of the right. This drill is here to work on your directional first touch to get out of tight situations.
Gated two touch - Set up a gate of 2 cones around 3 yards apart. Set another gate up around 10 yards away from the first one. Stand about a yard behind each gate, and with your partner, simply pass back and forth with 2 touches, and make sure your first touch doesn't pass the gate. This drill is mainly focusing on being able to stop a driven pass and being able to keep it in front and close.
Gated one touch - this drill is set up exactly like drill #2, but instead of taking 2 touches, you are playing it back and forth with one touch. This is perfect when working on weight of pass and playing accurate first time passes.
Numeric Juggling - With you and partner, juggle back and forth with your teammate. As you juggle pass, right before you pass it, call out a number 1-4 and you must take that amount of touches. Do that for around 15 minutes and this really helps with being able to control arial passes under any amount of pressure and circumstance.
Video from @nonstop.progress on instagram and youtube
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