Keep The Ball In Play
A friend of mine coaches at a club that has a simple rule baked into their training philosophy. The ball must be in play for 70% of every session.
Not 70% of the time approximately. Seventy percent, measured, tracked, reflected on.
When he told me that, I genuinely hadn't thought about it. I knew I ran efficient sessions — or at least I thought I did. I keep things moving. I use small-sided games. I don't do laps. But I'd never actually timed it.
So I did. And here's what I found.
The Audit
In a recent 90-minute session, I tracked every minute the ball wasn't moving. Here's what I logged:
Water breaks: 10 minutes. We train in California, it was close to 95 degrees when we kicked off at 5:30pm. That's understandable.
Explaining and clarifying: 4 minutes. What happens if the ball goes out here? What do you do if this happens? That kind of thing — necessary but it adds up.
Moving goals: 7 minutes. The coach on the other side of the field was using the goal we needed, so we had to wait and then shift it halfway through the session. I sent 14-year-old boys to move the goal. If you've ever sent teenage boys to move a goal, you know exactly how that went.
Fetching balls: 3 minutes. They end up all over the field. Someone has to go get them.
Coaching stoppages: 4 minutes. Two freezes across the session, about two minutes each.
Total dead time: 31 minutes.
Ball in play: 66%.
I thought I was running a tight session. I was losing a third of it.
What the Number Means
The target that UK academies typically use is 70 to 80% ball-in-play time. Not because the number itself is magic — but because it forces you to be honest about what's actually happening when you're with your players.
Two training sessions a week is already a small amount of time to develop anyone. If you're losing 30 or 35 percent of it to logistics, explanations, and dead time — and you have no idea that's happening — you can't fix it.
One important clarification on what counts: I don't count the ball "in play" when one player is doing a drill while twelve others stand and watch. A drill where one player at a time dribbles through cones is not ball-in-play time in the sense that matters. The metric only means something when the game environment has a demand on every player — everyone has to be ready, everyone has to make a decision. A 7v7 with the ball rolling, a four-goal game, a possession exercise with pressing triggers — that's what counts. If the ball is moving but your players aren't all involved, you haven't really gained the time.
The Simple Fix
The easiest place to start is with the mechanics.
Every player brings a ball. I have sixteen players — that's sixteen balls on the field. I'm never stopped waiting to retrieve them. That alone cuts a few minutes per session.
Water bottles go at the side of the field, not in a bag by the bench. When the interval ends, players grab a drink and come straight back. The break is productive because it was designed to be. They know what to do in the minute because you told them at the start: in this break, you drink and then reset for the next round.
Set up five minutes early and have a game running when players arrive. They come off the car park, they see a game, they join in. You're already playing before the session officially starts. That's not nothing — that's five minutes of ball-in-play time you didn't have to plan.
Use injured players and the odd parent volunteer to retrieve balls. They're there anyway. It's not about free labor — it's about not pulling ten players out of a game to chase down three balls that rolled to the corner flag.
The Freeze Is Costing You More Than You Think
Coaching stoppages are the trickiest one. The freeze — stopping play to recreate a moment, show the group what happened, coach the decision — is one of the most valuable tools you have. I'm not saying stop using it.
But be honest about what it costs. A well-run freeze takes about two minutes: stop, show it, recreate it, go again. Do four of those in a session and you've used eight minutes. That's nearly 10% of a 90-minute practice, and you may not have noticed it happening because each individual stoppage felt brief.
I averaged two freezes in that session. Four minutes total. That's manageable. If you're coaching actively through every activity with multiple stoppages per game — you may be well under 60% without realizing it.
The goal isn't to stop coaching in your sessions. It's to make your coaching moments deliberate so you know exactly what they cost and you're getting full value from each one.
Try the Stopwatch
The most useful thing you can do before your next session is find someone to track it for you. An assistant coach, an injured player, a parent — give them a phone with a stopwatch and one instruction: start it when the ball is in play, stop it when it isn't. At the end, you'll have a number.
That number will tell you more about the quality of your session than your subjective read ever will. Most coaches feel like training went well if the players were engaged and things ran smoothly. But you can have a session that felt smooth and still be sitting at 55%.
Once you know your number, you can work on it. Move the water bottles. Tell the players the structure before you start. Build the ball retrieval into the rest interval. Arrive early. All of these things are small and they compound — and the difference between 60% and 75% in a 90-minute session is nearly 15 minutes of additional play time, twice a week, across a full season.
As coaches, we all wish we had more time with our players. This is one way to take some of it back — without adding a single extra session to the schedule.
What's your number?
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 61 — Keep The Ball In Play
@LeeDunneSoccer