Last weekend I had two teams in a tournament in Omaha. We travel with our teams that are U10 and above at least once a season. It’s a great way to see some new competition, in a new environment. The fields were grass as opposed to the turf fields that we normally play on. They were good fields but provided their own challenges.

In addition to the different on the field challenges, traveling also provides an opportunity for the players and their families to get to know each other better.

This week’s question comes from Dennis.

He asks about teaching slide tackling. Dennis says,

“At what age would you start teaching the “art” of slide tackling? How would you do it?”

Thanks for the question Dennis!

To be honest I work on slide tackling with my teams. I never have. I only have so much time in training so I have to focus on the techniques and tactics that I think are the most important.

I think players pick up on how to slide tackling on their own so there’s no need to spend time on it in training. I would rather spend that time teaching them how to defend more effectively so that they don’t have to slide tackle.

In This Episode

It’s important that we transitioning from technical exercises to more functional activities. We need to teach the key points of basic technique but then we need to make it more like the game to see the transfer of training that we all look for.

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Future Episodes

I recently came across a list of common faults of coaches. Next week I’ll talk about the list give you suggestions for how to avoid the most important of them.