Ages 8-12: Making warm-ups fun and impactful

In this first edition of FIFA’s Grassroots Coaching Essentials series, Stanley Gardiner explains how to make warm-up practices impactful, while keeping them fun. Throughout this article, you will be given three key tips to do so: organise competitions, incorporate possession games, and embrace street football. These tips can be applied to your own training sessions, as well as three practical examples to put these pointers into action.

Below, you will find an 8-minute presentation in which Stanley dives further into each tip, which is followed by a written summary and diagrams of sample activities to help coaches make the most of the training sessions for players aged between 8 and 12.

Incorporating competition helps to avoid the typical monotony of warm-up drills and keeps players engaged for longer. In this section, Stanley explains the different ways that competitive activities can keep a session fun and impactful:

• Practising unopposed: Starting with unopposed activities allows players to build confidence by getting more touches on the ball.
• Identify coaching points: Use leading questions to prompt players to reflect on their actions, such as balancing speed and control while dribbling.
• Add competition: Adding competition increases engagement and challenges players to perform their skills under slight pressure. Try to provide balanced teams and fair competitive conditions to ensure that each player gets the most out of the activity.

Small-sided possession games are a great way to ensure that players are constantly moving in the warm-up, while also learning core football skills, adding to the session's impactfulness. Here is why adding possession games is vital for a youngster's development:

• Encourage teamwork: Possession games require communication and collaboration, helping players understand how to work together, while also improving camaraderie within the group.
• Promote decision-making: Players are challenged to make quick decisions, simulating the fast-paced choices they will face in real games.
• Build spatial awareness: These games help players develop a better understanding of positioning and finding space to receive the ball.

Street football has become a lost art in the modern game. Stanley explains why bringing a playground feeling into a warm-up is a great way to make the session impactful:

• Bring back the joy of street football: Use street football ideas to make warm-ups fun and exciting, bringing back the freedom and enjoyment of informal play, while still ensuring players are practising core skills.
• Boost creativity and skill: Street football games push players to be creative and develop key skills like dribbling, passing, and shooting in a competitive but fun environment.
• Keep everyone involved: Adjust the rules to ensure all players stay active by creating separate training areas for eliminated players and using setups where everyone can participate.

Following the key points raised by Stanley in this presentation, coaches should have a greater understanding of how to make training sessions both fun and impactful for players between 8 and 12. Here is a summary of the key information from this presentation:

• Balance fun and learning: Make sessions enjoyable while ensuring all players, regardless of their level of ability, have the chance to practice and improve their skills.
• Be confident to start with play: Kicking off the session with a game immediately engages players, creating a fun and competitive atmosphere that encourages learning.
• Keep the ball central: Whether it’s competitions, possession games, or street football activities, always include the ball to keep players engaged and developing skills.