Could They Do It At Home?
Here's a question I want you to sit with the next time you drive home from training.
How much of what you just did — could your players have done at home?
Not with an opponent. Not in a game environment. Just with a ball and a wall and fifteen minutes before dinner. If the answer is a lot, you might have a problem.
Most sessions I watch follow the same structure. Players arrive, you spend ten or fifteen minutes getting them organized and warmed up. You run a technical activity — passing patterns, dribbling work, shooting reps. You introduce the practice, explain the rules, walk through it. And then with whatever time is left, you scrimmage. Maybe twenty minutes. And by that point you've done your coaching for the night, so you drift to the side, talk to parents, start packing up the cones.
That's ninety minutes. And if you're generous, maybe forty of them were irreplaceable.
The Technical Work
Here's the clearest version of the problem. You spend fifteen or twenty minutes at the start of training working on a technique. Ball control. Receiving on the back foot. One-touch passing. Whatever you've identified from the last game.
Now — could they have done that at home?
Yes. Obviously. A ball and a wall is almost everything you need for technical reps. If your player bounces the ball off the wall with one touch for one minute before dinner, that's sixty touches. Do that three times a day — before breakfast, before lunch, before dinner — and over a week you're looking at over a thousand touches on that specific skill. Touches you didn't have to supervise. Touches that didn't eat into your session time. And touches that actually matter more because they were earned through habit rather than compliance.
I know what you're thinking. My players won't do that. They're not committed. They're too busy.
Maybe. But set the expectation and involve the parents. You don't need them to do an hour. You need one minute before dinner. Every family can find one minute before dinner. And when you frame it that way — not as extra homework but as the habit that makes training better — most families get on board.
Now when players arrive, they've already got those reps in their legs. You skip the technique intro. You go straight to the game.
The Warm-Up
This one is simpler. If your club has an organized warm-up — a FIFA 11+ protocol, a specific mobility routine, a pregame sequence — your players should know it well enough to start it without you.
What does that look like in practice? Players arrive ten minutes before you take the field. They know the routine. They start it. By the time you're setting up cones and the group before you has cleared the field, your players are already warmed up and ready to play.
Instead, what usually happens? Coach walks out, players stand there waiting, coach leads a warm-up that takes fifteen minutes, and it's now 6 o'clock before anything meaningful starts.
I've written about pregame routines before. The principle is the same in training. If players know what to do when they arrive — really know it, have it internalized, could do it without being told — you don't have to spend precious field time supervising it. Better yet, you find out quickly who your leaders are. Because the player who gets there early and organizes the warm-up without being asked — that's your captain.
Introducing the Practice
This is the one most coaches don't think about, but it's where I think the biggest gains are.
If I'm running a four-goal game focused on switching the point of attack, I can spend five minutes explaining it on the field — demonstrating, adjusting, answering questions. Or I can send a thirty-second animated clip the night before via Tactical Pad, or tag players on Instagram, or drop a YouTube reference in the team group chat.
When players arrive having already seen the game, the rules, the direction of play — you do a thirty-second reminder and you go. No confusion. No standing around. The learning started before they even got in the car.
This matters more for younger players than coaches often realize. The game is the teacher — but only if they understand the game well enough to be in it straight away. When they've already visualized what the session looks like, they play at a higher level from the first minute. And that means you get more coaching moments, more decision-making, more learning in the time you have.
What's Left When You Remove All of That
Think about it honestly. Technical work they could've done at home: fifteen to twenty minutes back. Warm-up they could've arrived knowing: ten to fifteen minutes back. Session introduction they could've seen on their phone the night before: five minutes back.
You just found thirty to forty minutes in a ninety-minute session. That's not a marginal gain — that's nearly half your training time reclaimed for the stuff that only happens on the field, with teammates, with resistance, with a coach who's watching and responding in real time.
The things players can't do at home are the things you should be spending your session on. Decisions under pressure. Reading teammates. Playing in transition. Solving problems in a game environment that changes every second. That's the irreplaceable stuff. And right now, for a lot of teams, it's getting forty-five minutes instead of ninety.
The Question to Ask After Every Session
Next time you're driving home, run through it. What did we do tonight? Could they have done the first part at home? Yes — set it as homework. Could they have arrived knowing the warm-up? Yes — make it a routine. Could they have watched the game on their phone last night? Yes — send it tonight for next session.
Whatever you're left with — the things only a field and a coach and teammates can create — that's the session.
Build backwards from there. Every time.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 63 — Could They Do It At Home?
@LeeDunneSoccer