USING SMALL SIDED GAMES TO MATCH YOUR DESIRED TRAINING OUTCOME/S

                                          

These points come from a study I read during the week which is based on Soccer but transfers fully to any team sport with relatively high player numbers per team such as footy, soccer, rugby etc.

Read through to the end to get some usable tips on how to make small sided games work for you and your players for more than simply "playing games" without a real purpose.

• Individual performance does not represent a teams success since high levels of cooperative behavior between teammates are necessary for success
• Smaller player numbers increase ball contacts and technical actions and is slower moving allowing more time for lower skilled players to react, decide and act on action affordances
• With outnumber advantage player numbers (5v4, 7v5 etc), there is increased tactical actions without the ball per player such as coverage/unity as well as depth mobility
• Smaller playing dimensions favor skills like ball control, dribbling and shooting actions as well as interceptions and ball repositions
• Bigger dimensions increase tactical principles such as penetration and defensive balance and defensive unity team possession periods become longer and the greater size also influences players perception of space, conditioning it's occupation/use as well as the distances between players and their interactions
• When possession was the goal, players held the ball longer and used shorter passes
• When there is an "x" amount of passes required before scoring rule then players played  faster in a more offensive manner
• In 3v3 with 1 defender, midfielder and forward per team, players performed position specific tactics under similar conditions than those normally associated with the demands of each playing position in full sized games
• When developing technical aspects (passing/dribbling etc) use fewer players
• To increase ball contacts per player set your player's game plan to maintain poss as much as possible finding open players and utilising easy to kick to teammate options
• For quality and quantity of tactical actions, use bigger playing area’s