In This Article: Single-Touch and Take Away Zipper

Soccer players improve the more that they play. But it’s also important to warm up stiff muscles and loosen them before stretching. Running laps does not simulate a game-like condition, even if you are dribbling the ball while you jog around the field. Here are two exercises you can try with as few as three other players.

 Single-Touch and Take Away

Start with all the players dribbling their own soccer ball within a large square area. Now, instruct them to touch the soccer ball once for every step they take and see how long they can maintain that discipline. Using a predetermined command, have each player leave the dribbling of their own ball and find another ball in the square as quickly as possible. To make this even more interesting, remove a ball or two out of the square, so that there are more players than balls.

 Zipper

Form two lines twenty yards apart. Each player at the start of the line has one ball. Halfway down the practice area place a cone in the middle of the field, where the players from each line must cross into the middle and overlap to the other side without colliding. You can even place two or three different cones to create numerous crossover zones. At the end, have them reverse course, so they begin where they started and pass to the next player in line. For variation, players can use only the inside of the foot or the outside of the foot for dribbling, or alternate from the inside to the outside.