As summer winds down and school starts back up for most of the players we train, we keep getting the same question: How often should my player train one-on-one while they are in season? Some parents want to train once a week, on a night that may or may not already have practice, while others won’t think about private training until the season ends. The reality is that there is no one right answer. Every kid and every family probably needs something different, and it is the job of the parent to figure out where their child stands and make that call. Three lessons guide how we think about it.
The first lesson is to understand your own player more deeply than we can. Most of the time, our understanding as coaches is not enough to read the full picture of a player’s home life, club life, and school life. You cannot build that kind of understanding on two hours of relationship a week. We do not know whether your player needs more time at the dinner table, more time on a tough class, or an earlier bedtime, but you do. Your task is to understand deeply the habits and inclinations that give your child the best chance of success.
The second lesson is that no coach makes a player on their own. Some coaches, both private trainers and team coaches, will claim that their way is the only road to some elite, ethereal status. They take their craft seriously, which is good, but they forget the thousands of other coaches who do the same. Players do not develop in a vacuum. The club, the school team, parents, mentors, teammates, friends, directors, and, yes, coaches all shape the path a player is on. So when a coach, especially a private one, is eager to show off “their player” and imply that their coaching is the reason for it, we have to laugh. The private trainer is but a cog in the wheel, and the club, the parents, and the teammates have done far more. If a coach claims to be the reason a player succeeds, they need a dose of humility.
Here is how that connects to your question. If you believe one coach is responsible for your child’s development, you will lean on that one thing too hard. Keeping private training in its right place starts with being honest about how small a part of the picture it really is.
That brings me to the third lesson: private training is supplemental. It is not an end in itself. Its telos is to sharpen the mental, physical, communicative, and technical skills that reveal themselves in matches. That is where the fun lies. Learning the game is fun. Making passes, dribbling, and combining with teammates is fun. Scoring goals is fun. Winning is fun. The club exists to provide competition, and practices help a player play within a team so that the competition is better. The player’s why behind the why is simply to have fun.
The order is clear. Matches are primary, practices are secondary, and private training, like speed, agility, and weight training, is supplemental. The competitive environment is why parents pay what they do to these clubs, not the extra reps. So schedule sessions when you can, when they are needed or wanted. This is not something that should be weekly during the season. Our college players do it best. They train through the summer and winter, anywhere from every other week to weekly, and again around their smaller breaks, like spring or fall. Depending on the player, that comes out to somewhere between 12 and 20 sessions a year, and anywhere in that range is a good amount for a supplemental activity.
Insight provides an environment where players feel safe, known, and challenged.
So as the season begins, good luck to the players who love the process of getting better and love watching a summer’s worth of work reveal itself in competition. And good luck to the parents, who do the hardest work in a player’s development, most of it unseen. We at Insight are currently building out more resources for you, and we cannot wait to share them.
See you on the pitch.
Insight Soccer Training runs private and small-group sessions for competitive youth players in Aurora, Colorado.