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Learning to Juggle a Soccer Ball

Why bother learning to juggle a Soccer Ball?
All of the great players can juggle, Ronaldinho, George Best, Zinedine Zidane and the best of them all
Pele.
In fact Pele used a grapefruit before he could afford a real soccer ball!
"No, I can't really remember practicing in my spare time. It's easier to remember the times I didn't practice, and most of those were when I was watching."
- Pele
If you can improve your juggling, you will certainly

Improve your first touch on the ball.

Improve your ball control

Give you greater confidence when dribbling

Improve your concentration

Make you more comfortable and competent when receiving the ball

Lets get started and get you going!
Step 1

Use a slightly deflated ball

Start juggling on a firm surface that has a good even bounce

Hold the ball with both hands, arms straight out at chest height

Drop the ball and let it bounce once

Before it bounces again, kick the ball back to chest height and catch it

There, you have done your first juggle, now on to bigger and better things
The sequence that you just did is called

drop-bounce-kick-catch

Keep practicing Step 1 using both feet until you can consistently kick the ball up to chest height
Step 2
You will do a similar exercise to step one, but this time the pattern is

drop-bounce-kick-bounce-kick-catch

That's right, all we have done is set the number of kicks to 2 using the same foot
Keep practicing Step 2 until you can manage it consistently.
Step 3
We are now at the stage where we should be able to repeat the

kick-bounce-kick

pattern as many times as possible. We will continue as we did in Step 1 and Step 2, but this time
Try to kick the ball to the same height that it was dropped from
Stay within a square that is 5 yards by 5 yards
Step 4
Now for something a bit more challenging
We will repeat Step 1, but this time we do not let the ball bounce, so the sequence is

drop-kick-catch

Keep practicing Step 4 using both feet until you can consistently kick the ball back to chest height
Step 5
You got it, Step 5 is similar to Step 4, but with an extra kick, so the pattern is

drop-kick-kick-catch

Keep doing Step 5 using both feet until you can consistently kick the ball back to chest height
Step 6
You should be ready to do unlimited kicks, using one foot at a time, so you just repeat the

kick-kick sequence.

At this stage you should only use one foot at time. That is to say see how many you can do using only your right foot, and then see how many you can do using your left foot. Juggling Practice As well as using your feet, you should also include other parts of the body, such as the thigh and the head. When using the thigh, ensure you use the fleshy part of the thigh and DO NOT USE your knee.
You will undoubtedly find that the thigh is overused, because the thigh is an easier part of the body to juggle with
Avoid overusing the thigh, just because it easier
Rather than aimlessly juggling, using a particular sequence is a far better method to get better, so use patterns like

Left foot

Left thigh

Head

Right thigh

Right foot

Repeat 1 to 5

You can make up your own patterns, but I will stress again, it is far more beneficial to follow a pattern, that to aimlessly kick a ball around, just trying to keep it in the air.
Keep up the practice and you will definitely get better.
© 2007 TheSoccerHelper.com

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The SoccerHelper thesoccerhelper.com Registered Coerver Coaching System Representative

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