Introducing Dribbling

A lot of the coaching I do is "Mini Kickers" - thats teaching pre-school children the very basics. Teaching dribbling with the ball to them can be very difficult but can be done with a lot of patience. Main issue I find is that if you place a ball in front of a 3 year old their first instinct is to kick it away. Heres some of the things I do:

- Firstly try and keep them static. Tell them you can use different parts of your foot. Get the group to try and do this on the spot. Slowly progress it into walking pace kicking the ball between their feet. I find telling them to do "baby kicks" works best in getting them to keep it close to their feet. Gradually pick up the pace.

- Start/Stop. To keep their attention, demonstrate the "Captains Pose." I've seen this done 2 ways - one is standing tall with hands on hips like a football captain supposedly should, the other is giving a hand to head salute like a ship captain supposedly should - ultimately in both they have one foot on top of the ball. This is what they should be doing when the coach shouts the stop command. Another benefit is that they are encouraged to keep the ball close to their feet and under control as they dont want to be last to do their captains pose. The kids all compete to see who's captains pose is the best.

- Traffic lights game. Basically same as before. When coach shows the red light (usually a red marker) they have to stop dribbling and put their foot on the ball, green marker means go and yellow means tapping the ball between feet on the spot.

- Follow the Leader. Everyone has a ball and stand in straight line. They all dribble, following same direction as leader. Change leader every 20-30 seconds.

Just a few ideas, hopefully their useful.