Optimize Your Training Environment
When I was coming through my own soccer experience as a kid, I had things going on outside the game. Personal stuff. And I went to soccer — the sport I loved — looking for somewhere to feel okay. What I found was a coach who never asked me a question, never listened to anything I had to say, and mostly just told me what to do.
That stayed with me. And I think about it every time I'm on the field.
The training environment is not just the cones and the small-sided games and the constraints. It's everything about how players experience being coached by you. Whether they feel safe there. Whether they feel known. Whether they'd choose to come even if their parents didn't make them.
Here are five areas where I think we can all do better.
Ask Better Questions
"How are you?" is not a question. Not really. It's a social reflex that gets a one-word answer and nothing more. I do it too — we all do — and nothing useful ever comes from it.
The questions that build a training environment are the ones that are actually specific to the person in front of you. Why do you play? Where do you want this to take you? What do you want to achieve this season — not for the team, for you? Do you want to go to college? Do you want to be a pro? Do you just love playing with your friends and that's enough?
If you do IDPs with your players, you already have the raw material for real questions. You know their goals, their favorite player, the areas they're working on. "Did you see Messi in the Clásico last weekend?" is a different conversation than "how are you?" — and if you know that Messi is their player, it opens a door.
The in-session version of this is just as important. Not "good job" when a player does something right, but: "Why did you make that choice? What were you seeing? What were you thinking when the ball came to you?" These questions build game understanding in a way that instructions never do. And they tell the player that you're watching them specifically, not just the game in general.
Listen to What They Actually Say
This is the harder part. Asking the question is easy. Staying quiet and actually taking in the answer — and then responding to what was said, not what you expected to hear — is the skill.
My two go-to responses when a player tells me something: "Tell me more" and "How can I help you?"
"Tell me more" keeps the conversation open. It signals that I'm not in a rush to give my coaching point. What they say next is often the thing that actually matters.
"How can I help you?" changes the dynamic. It puts them in charge of what they need, rather than me deciding what they need. Sometimes they need tactical support. Sometimes they need individual training suggestions. Sometimes they're struggling with something that has nothing to do with soccer. I don't know unless I ask and then wait.
One thing to watch: listening can't only happen around problems. If every player conversation is about what's going wrong or what they could be better at, you create a relationship built on deficit. Find what they're doing well and challenge them further on that. "You juggle really well — can you get your heel in every five touches? Can you do it with your weaker foot?" Push the strength upward, not just the weakness forward.
Challenge Players Specifically
The challenges that stick are individual ones, not team-wide ones.
Not "score more goals this season" — but "you're a central midfielder, and based on your position profile, the challenge for you today is to combine with the nine to break the midfield line. How many times can you do that? What does success look like to you when the final whistle goes?"
This resets what success means. A team can only win about a third of their games. If winning is the only measure, every player is failing most of the time. But if a midfielder came into the game with a specific challenge tied to their profile — and they executed it four times — that's a success, regardless of the scoreline.
I always add one more question to whatever challenge I set: "What happens if it doesn't work?" Not because I want them to plan for failure, but because a player who has thought about the contingency is better equipped when the game gets difficult. They're not panicking. They have an answer already prepared.
Guide — Don't Just Give the Answer
Rolling substitutions in youth soccer are one of the most underused coaching tools available to us. When a player comes off, that's not a rest — that's a coaching moment. They can see the game from outside it. They're still in the heat of it emotionally. And you have thirty seconds to thirty minutes with them, depending on the situation.
The temptation is to tell them what's not working and what you want them to do differently. Resist it. Ask first. "Why do you think that's happening? What would you try?" Listen. Then offer your perspective if they need it: "Do you want to know what I think?" And if their answer is reasonable: "Why don't you go and try that when you go back on?"
Players who solve problems themselves in training solve problems themselves in games. Players who wait to be told what to do keep waiting, even when the coach can't reach them.
Celebrate More Than You Think You Should
We have a tendency to only celebrate outcomes. The goal. The win. The clean sheet. But those things happen a third of the time at best, and they depend on the opponent as much as they depend on us.
There's a lot more worth celebrating than we usually acknowledge.
A player who tried to execute on their positional profile and lost the ball in the attempt — that's a celebration. You tried it. That's the thing we're working on. Now let's understand why it didn't work and try again. Spotlighting that attempt, out loud, in front of the group, changes the culture around risk-taking.
In training, when the ball goes out of play and you're resetting: "Just want to point out what Liam did there — look at the pass he tried to play, right into the channel, exactly what we've been working on." That takes ten seconds. It means everything to Liam. And every other player in the session just learned what the target looks like.
Celebrate all of it. Did everyone show up? Celebrate that. Did they all wear the right kit? Worth a mention. Did someone who's been struggling finally attempt something they've been avoiding? Say so.
We just came out of a year where nobody played at all. Coaches were fighting on sidelines the first weekend back after lockdown — one got sent off. First game back. After a year of nothing.
That's the opposite of celebrating. The field is the thing we all said we missed. The players in front of you chose this sport and showed up to practice tonight. That's already worth something.
Make sure they know you see it.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 56 — Optimize Your Training Environment
@LeeDunneSoccer