Maximizing Time
I want to start with a confession.
When I was studying for my coaching degree in the UK, I wrote up a session in my dissertation where I had the players run three laps at the start to burn off energy. I submitted it. Got it marked. Moved on.
I think about that a lot now. Because that logic — they've got too much energy, let's burn some off before we do anything useful — is still present in sessions I watch every week. It just looks different. It's the long warm-up that works through a series of technical drills before anyone's allowed to play. It's the scrimmage at the end that players "earn" if they behave well enough. It's the five-minute introduction where the coach explains the setup while players shift their weight between their feet and try to look like they're listening.
All of that is time. And most of it is wasted.
Here are three things I do to maximize the contact time I have with players.
1. Send mastery challenges home
The hour or ninety minutes you have on the field is not the time to build ball familiarity from scratch. That work happens at home — or it doesn't happen at all.
Give your players a skill challenge. Film a short clip — an Around the World, a Rabona, something that looks hard and cool and makes them want to try it. Send it to parents. Tell players you want them to try it before next practice. Does every player do it? No. Do some of them? Yes. And the ones who do arrive with something to show you, having already spent time with a ball at their feet for a reason.
The argument I hear against skill challenges is: "But do they use step-overs in a real game?" Sometimes. But that's not the point. A kid practicing a Rabona at home means a kid with a ball at their feet, working on touch, control, and recovery. If they kick it away on the first attempt, they go and get it — and now they're chasing a ball, settling it, and going again. That's useful regardless of what the skill is.
Extend this beyond tricks. If you know a player identifies as a striker or a central midfielder, what do they need to be working on at home for that position? Send them something specific. When they arrive for your next session, you're not starting from zero — you're building on what they've already been doing.
The how happens at home. The why happens in training.
2. Organize the arrival
Watch a session that starts badly and you can usually trace it back to the first five minutes. Players drifting onto the field in ones and twos. No structure. Coach trying to get their attention while half the group is still putting their boots on.
Two options that work:
The first is a consistent, owned warm-up — the same structure every time, so players know what to do the moment they arrive. As players get older, they take responsibility for it. The coach doesn't run it. The players run it, and the coach observes, chats to individuals, and gets ready to coach. If you want to involve players in creating it — over a Zoom call, in a meeting, in a group chat — even better. Players who design their own warm-up have more buy-in to actually doing it.
The second option, especially for younger players: a game starts the moment they arrive. Goals are up, bibs are ready, a 2v2 or 3v3 is running before the session technically begins. Players join as they get there. Energy goes into the game instead of being burned off in a lap.
Arriving early helps too. If your session is at 5pm and players are there at 4:45, don't start the session at 4:45 — let them mess around. That's fine. That's valuable. But when 5pm arrives, you're on the dot, everyone is already warm and switched on, and you haven't lost a minute.
3. Pre-session communication
The amount of time spent at the start of a session explaining what the session is — describing the game, explaining the rules, pointing to cones, answering questions — is time that could be playing time.
Send it ahead. A picture of the session plan. A Tactical Pad diagram. A short video of the game setup with a voice note explaining the rules and the constraint. Send it the night before or an hour before training.
Not every player will see it. But half of them will. And when those players arrive, they self-organize. They explain it to the ones who missed it. By the time you say go, most of the group already knows what's happening. The explanation at the start of the session goes from three minutes to thirty seconds.
There's a bonus to this: accountability. When you share what you're working on publicly — even just on your team's group chat or your own coaching Instagram — you're holding yourself to it. This is what we're doing today. That focus shapes the session before it starts.
The bottom line
Coaches don't have as much time with players as they think. Between late arrivals, equipment setup, explanations, physical punishments dressed up as warm-ups, and scrimmages that get withheld until they've been earned — the actual useful coaching time in a typical session is a fraction of what it could be.
Send mastery challenges home. Design an arrival routine players can own. Communicate the session before it starts. Those three things alone will change what's possible in the time you do have.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 50 — Maximizing Time
@LeeDunneSoccer