Soccer training – Header – Soccer drill selection

Basics regarding headers

You can read the introduction into header techniques in the theoretical part of “Header Techniques – The Basics” on Soccerpilot.

Diving headers – Goal! Learning in header training?

Every soccer player has fantasized about it. But before we practice it, we should learn the technical basics of doing a diving header. For successful learning it is necessary that the player has been practicing extensively the basics of heading in general. Therefore, we will start with practicing heading and eventually it will work out with doing diving headers.

The study of heading techniques is very important for the performance of defending and attacking.The main focus in teaching young players should be on the correct technique. It is the only way to make sure that the children and teenagers are becoming free of fear from heading. If they hit the ball with their forehead, it is painless. Should they feel pain in their first heading training, either caused by excessive demand or only by bad luck, it can shape a whole player’s life. That’s the reason why every heading training needs to be planned and organized very well.

Do not do heading training with the smallest players, you only scare them off and there are much more important things to learn. In the past, voices have been raised to forbid heading training until Youth C. I will not comment this, but it makes clear how sensitive heading training is.

Introduction Heading – Learning of heading techniques

Start with light balls which every club should have available, and choose a nice day for the training, because wet or cold balls can be very painful. Just begin and raise slowly the level of difficulty.

Please do not forget that you need to be accurate when throwing the ball to make sure that the player can hit the ball correctly. There should be no pressure to do heading, the fun of playing soccer is the most important thing. The drill units are short so that the players should not have headache afterwards.

When I was a child I experienced the fear to go to the soccer training because I knew that we would practice heading. Grown man passed the balls to us by throw – in technique. The children, who dodged, had to run a penalty loop. Well, I am a bit older and I really do hope that this is a method from the stone-age and will not happen in these days anymore.

Information: There are already more than 1,000 animations online at www.soccerdrills.de, as well as plenty of interesting articles by very well-known soccer experts.

If you don’t want to wait for the translations, you can take a look at Soccerdrills.de. The animations often speak for themselves.