Games first, drills where they help. We hand you the blueprint: how to weight your time and what each block is for. You bring the activities.
Drill lists are easy to find. The harder part is the shape of the hour: how much play, how much skill work, how much focused technique, and in what order. Drill to get a new skill started. Play to make it work in a game. Keep kids moving and keep it fun, and lots of different activities will work. The reasoning lives here →
Our starting point, not a tested prescription. The percentages are our judgment, not research findings. Warm-up counts as play time when the warm-up is a game. Adjust for what your team needs this week.
Kids arrive at different times. The field should already be a game, not a line. A movement game that gets blood moving and decisions firing. Nobody waits. Nobody stands. This is also where you watch and learn who needs what today.
Small groups, changing conditions. The same skill under different speeds, angles, and decisions once kids can do it. Mixed reps look messier and look more like the game. The research on mixing is weaker for kids than it once seemed (Czyz 2024), so through age 12 this block stays at or below the games block. Keep groups tiny so touches stay high.
Where straight, repeated reps do their best work: a brand-new skill, a safety point, or a kid who is stuck or frustrated. Pick one thing. Run clean reps to get it started, then fold it back into play. For the youngest groups this block is short because attention is short.
The heart of the practice, and the biggest block for most groups through age 12. Read-and-react reps inside a game with a score, a constraint, or a consequence. Seeing the ball and moving to it happen together here, the way they do in a real game. Game-based work matched drills on technique and edged them on decisions in the studies we have (Bromilow 2025), so this is where the minutes go.
End on something they will tell their parents about in the car. A quick compete, a team challenge, a win. Send them home wanting to come back tomorrow.
There are no drill names here on purpose. Lots of activities can fill these blocks, games and drills both. Your job is to keep the shape and keep the kids moving and having fun inside it. If you want help thinking through what to put in a block, the articles walk through the principles, and the 4 Stages show how the weighting shifts as they grow.