Carlos M.

I was the varsity head soccer coach for the Academy of Academic Excellence, a K-12 charter school in Apple Valley, CA, in 2008. Some of my responsibilities were to hold try-outs, schedule practices, plan practices, develop each player and the team in general, and safeguard the kids, especially on road trips.

I was born in Peru and developed a high technical ability early, but it wasn't until we immigrated to the US that I joined my first team when I was nine. I would go on to lead my division in scoring each of the six years I played AYSO soccer.

At thirteen, I made the City of Santa Monica Club Team, which held a try-out for over 200 players. We went undefeated until the championship game, where we lost 1-0 to the team from the District of Columbia.

As a high school freshman, I played for the varsity soccer team at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. Unfortunately, it was the only year the school would fund the team during my time there.

After high school, I played on any club team that needed a player, often playing for two teams (in different leagues) at once. My competitive playing days ended in my late 20's.

A session begins with a light dynamic warm-up.

A 1 1/2-hour or 2-hour session typically consists of 3 or 4 drills. For each drill, we'll analyze the different stages involved in completing the drill -- whether that's mental awareness (e.g. tracking the ball, reading the direction of the shot), the right footwork (e.g. using or not using a plyo step), the proper body position (e.g. the different 'ready positions', down to detail about which way your palms should be facing), and so on. Then we put it all together to execute the given drill. We practice a drill for about 20-30 minutes to establish proper technique and start building muscle memory. Afterwards, I explain and model the exercises suited for improvement. We re-visit these drills in future sessions as we strive for mastery. The amount of conditioning we do is up to the client. If they feel they need the motivation to push through the conditioning, then we lengthen the conditioning parts of the session. Or, they can do conditioning on their own. Either way, I monitor progress. And there's no faking progress.

I am a firm believer in "tactical periodization," which is a fancy term for the simple concept of practicing under game-like conditions. Its application is somewhat limited in goalkeeper training, but still there are ways to optimize training. One way is to avoid drills that promote the wrong instincts and thus the wrong habits. For example, it makes little sense to slowly roll a ball two feet away from a keeper and instruct him or her to dive for it. No keeper would dive for such a ball. No keeper should have the instinct to dive for such a ball. So we don't train that way. It's also wasteful to spend 10 minutes only diving to your left, because you know the ball is going to your left and you'll invariably start leaning that way and certainly won't be practicing to read and react to the direction of flight, which is one of the most important skills to improve upon. So, once the rudiments are taught, we almost exclusively do drills which mimic game situations.

The final ten minutes of the session end with light stretching, during which we discuss how their bodies are responding to the exercises and drills.