Howto Improve Your Play: Get Some Rest

A recent Stanford study has found that athletes performed better on their drills & exercises after increasing their sleep times. Specifically, improvements were observed after the athletes extended their sleep to 10 hours a night for five to six weeks. Ten hours is probably more sleep than many of us can afford, but the study still demonstrates just how much sleep matters to your performance.

So are you getting enough sleep to perform at the highest level?

Visualize Your Performance

A great way to help you prepare mentally for a big game is to visualize your skills.

Imagine your self on the field playing. Imagine a soccer situation, receiving the ball with pressure on you, and how you can deal with it. Visualize scoring goals. Visualize winning tackles. Visualize making the big game winning play.

But don't just take it from me.

Visualisation by Wayne Rooney

“I always like to picture the game the night before: I’ll ask the kitman what kit we’re wearing, so I can visualize it. It’s something I’ve always done, from when I was a young boy. It helps to train your mind to situations that might happen the following day. I think about it as I’m lying in bed. What will I do if the ball gets crossed in the box this way? What movement will I have to make to get on the end of it? Just different things that might make you one per cent sharper.”

Goals Goals Gols Gols

US WNT wins Four Nations Cup: Highlights

Technique, Technique, Technique

Gerard Piqué:

I think when you're young the most important thing is the technical stuff: how to control the ball, how to pass the ball short and long, how to treat the ball really well. And maybe the results are not so important. I remember when I was really young and we played against all the Catalonian teams, Barcelona against Espanyol and all the others. Espanyol always wanted to win, to get the results, and they worked a lot physically with all the young lads. It's good to work the physical stuff, but when they're older they need the technical stuff to be different. Now with Messi and Iniesta and Xavi, they are all really great players because they are technically very good. Maybe physically they are not so good. Now the soccer in America, it has to get more technical than physical, you know. The difference between La Masía and all the others is they do the technical stuff for the lads.

Read the rest.

Know Your Options

Here is Andres Iniesta talking about his soccer development:


And here are two of his best match winning moments.



Watch it again. You can see how he moves to make space for a shot before the pass is played AND his body is shaped to be able to strike in one touch.

Then there is this one..maybe you remember it.

Howto: Play the #10

Today brings another example of what it takes to be the creative #10.

New ShowBoat

Gol GOl goL GOL!!

What a great dribble and finish.



Ignore the commentator, he meant to make take that touch away from the last defender.

WoW!

Practice Review: Freekicks

Direct Shot: Tips -- It is most important to get the shot on target and make the goalkeeper work. If the freekick is close, chose placement over power. If the freekick is from farther away, hit it with more elevation and pace.


Quick Freekick: Used to catch the opposing team off guard by playing quick before they can set up. Requires everyone to be in-tune with the game.

Save of the Week: Wow!

Great footwork! Great TV to pick it up!

U14G Tryouts Coming In February

The new cycle starts in Feb!!!

Don't forget to check out the dates:

U14 Girls--

Fri, Feb 4 – 7-8:30pm
Sat, Feb 5 – 12:30-2pm
Sun, Feb 6 – 12:30-2pm
Sat, Feb 12 – 4-5:30pm

Don't forget to Register. It's super easy and takes only a minute!

Try to make it to as many tryouts as you can.

And if you know someone who should be playing for us. Get them out to the tryout. A friend of your is a friend of the club.

New Evals

Sac United has begun a new Player Evaluation program through Zoom Reports.

This is a new Evaluation system that will make the evaluation process much easier to refer to for our player, parents, and coaches.

Zoom Reports will not only email your player evaluation, it also tracks all your previous evaluations so you can review your progress.

I would like to release the evals next week and meet with each player (and parents if available) starting next week to go over some of the finer points.

Some of you have already logged into Zoom Reports and you know the site, other will be getting login information with your eval.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Showboat: Weekly Skill School

Welcome Back! Hello 2011!

Hope everyone at a wonderful winter break!

Now it's time to get down to business and finish off the season.

Lots to do:

1. Stanford Tourney - Jan 8th &9th in Palo Alto: State Cup Tune-up
2. NorCal State Cup Matches
3. Player Evals - **New digital Club evaluation system**
4. GOTM contests - Easy Soccer $


See everyone out there on Tuesday.