How to Teach Procedural Athletic Skills to Youths in Soccer

Procedural athletic skills are skills about sports learned through a specific procedure, usually starting with cognitive skills and then working up to using the skills in practice. When teaching youths to play soccer, starting out with the methods of playing and explaining the skills before letting them try the skills will allow better understanding of the game.

Instructions

    • 1

      Explain the game rules and regulations. Youths playing soccer must know all of the rules before they are ready to start the game. If all a student knows is to avoid touching the ball with hands, mistakes are made while playing.

    • 2

      Show an athletic drill and explain the purpose of the drill. Give a slow motion demonstration so the youths can see how the body moves for the drill. Stop and explain the reason for the drill and what it helps with in the game. Procedural approaches to teaching sports skills require giving explanations of the skill and a cognitive reason for the skill.

    • 3

      Allow the youths to try the drill. Start slow and have them work up to the skills. Make sure all of the youths are doing the drill correctly.

    • 4

      Increase the speed of the drill gradually. This will improve the youth's abilities and prevent accidentally learning drills wrong.

    • 5

      Repeat the drill over and over again. The more repetition of a drill, the better the youths remember the drill. Not only will youths automatically perform the drill on the field, since they know the purpose of the drill they will know appropriate times to use the skill.