Why and How to Train Your Less Skillful Foot?

Learn why it is crucial for youth players to have a decent weak foot and how simple it is to start improving right in their next training sessions.

Starter exercises that you can practice anywhere

Start with basic and individual exercises can be a good idea. The examples below are just a few of the dozens of possibilities that players can try. Still, we highlight these as being a trigger to start improving the ball touch with the weak foot and for be possible to youth do it anywhere, avoiding waiting for your training sessions to start practice.

Ball Control exercises

Below a few suggestions to start using your weak foot in ball control actions. Remember to keep using your dominant foot; the goal is to mastery the ball control with both feet.

Passing exercises

Passing is one of the most important football skills; regardless of the player’s position, there are many moments in the game that has good passing skills with both feet will make the difference. Focus on your weak foot, but again, train always both.

NF Academy Exercises and Support

You can take a look at previous exercises that NF Academy published right here:
Ball control -> https://www.nfacademy.uk/effective-ways-to-improve-your-mobility-and-ball-control/
Finishing -> https://www.nfacademy.uk/effective-ways-to-improve-your-strength-and-shooting-technique/

Hopefully, these simple exercise tips will allow you to control the ball on the court better. The goal is to expose the less dexterous foot to novel scenarios, in which it will enable movements to be less rigid, more fluid, and quicker.

To make the resolutions more effective, try to apply each of them to your routines.

A last input from our Sports Director João Plantier

It is crucial to create exercises where success is not always guaranteed.

The NF Sports Director, João Plantier, shared some important notes regarding the Individual Training:

“It is essential when we are training individually that we try to create a game-like context. In the game, it’s not just about focusing on the shoot or pass, but also about many situations around us, such as teammates, opponents, the coach talking, and parents talking. It is possible in individual training to create different stimuli through visual stimuli – different colors for different goals, auditory stimuli through the coach’s/father’s instructions, and sensory stimuli through touch/pressure to decide where I am going.”

“To train as close to the game as possible, we only need one person to create these stimuli.”

“It is crucial to create exercises where success is not always guaranteed. The relationship between success and failure makes the practices more stimulating. For example, “count the number of times you can pass the ball in 30sec from the same distance” or “how long it takes me to run a route,” all related to the non-dominant foot.”

“Also, when we are training the non-dominant foot, we are not only doing exercises that will work our motor/biomechanical aspect, we are also training the mind simultaneously.”

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