How to put together a training session for the little ones

One hour, well shared out: arrive playing, learn playing and finish playing. Structure, timings, how many exercises and the mistakes that come up most often with under-7s and under-9s.

Linkalde · 2026-10-15

With children aged 5 to 10, a session is not measured by how many exercises you get through but by how much time they spend playing with the ball. A one-hour session where the kids spend 15 minutes in queues or listening to explanations is a wasted session, even if the exercises are good. The golden rule is simple: talk little, play a lot.

The four parts of a session

The timings are a guide. With the youngest (5 and 6 years old) it is best to change activity more often, because their attention is short; with older ones you can extend a game if it is working.

Arrival and activation: play from the first minute

Children don't all arrive at the same time. Have a simple game ready that they can join as they arrive, without waiting for the whole group. A chasing or dribbling game is better than a lap of the pitch: at these ages the traditional warm-up (jogging, stretching) makes no sense, they warm up by playing.

Main part: one aim, one or two games

Pick a single aim for the day (dribbling with your head up, passing to the free teammate, defending one against one) and look for games where that aim comes up again and again. Two games done well teach more than five changed every ten minutes. Small groups (3 to 5 children) with a ball each or one between two are better than one big group waiting for a turn.

• Explain in under a minute and show with an example: children learn by watching.
• Start playing as soon as possible and correct on the go, stopping as little as you can.
• If the game isn't working, simplify it (more space, a joker, fewer rules) instead of explaining it again.
• If it is too easy, make it harder little by little: less space, fewer touches, one more defender.

Match: always, and with few players

The match is what they look forward to most, and it is where you see whether they have understood what you worked on. Make small teams (3v3 or 4v4) and, if there are lots of children, set up two pitches at once rather than having half of them sitting out. You can add a rule linked to the aim of the day (for example, a goal counts double if there has been a pass beforehand), but without turning the match into just another exercise.

Cool-down: five minutes that are worth a lot

A calm game or a stretch told as a story, then two or three short questions: what went well, what was hard, what did they learn. It is the moment to recognise everyone's effort and for them to go home wanting to come back.

The mistakes that come up most

• Long queues: if a child waits more than 30 seconds for their turn, the exercise is badly set up.
• Too many explanations: more than a minute standing still and you lose their attention.
• Changing exercise for no reason: children need repetition to learn.
• Adult exercises: eleven-a-side tactics or physical work without a ball make no sense at these ages.
• Forgetting the match: if there is no match, for many children there has been no training.

Prepare the session before you get to the pitch: which games, how much equipment and how to move from one to the next without rearranging everything. If the equipment for the next game is already set up, the change takes seconds.