A lot of the time, it’s difficult to get together with a team to train and work on your soccer skills. This week, I thought I’d mix it up a little bit and show you what a workout looks like for me when I work on my ball control. This workout contains some great individual soccer drills that really help with your ball control.

Remember to start off with some great music. Music amps you up and gets you excited to get to work. It doesn’t really matter what the music is as long as it gets you excited.

Any time you work out, you should start off by warming up. Here are the exercises that I do to warm up. All of these exercises are done from the end-line to half field and back. Watch the video above for more info.

Warmup without a ball

• Jog
• Side Shuffle – Switch directions at half field
• Backpedal halfway to half field, then turn and sprint the rest of the way. Repeat on the way back
• Grapevines/Karaoke – Like a side shuffle, but I cross my feet over each other, alternating which foot is in front
• High Knees down to half field, buttkickers on the way back

After I finish the warmups above, I do a little warmup with a ball just to get my feet moving and get my feet used to touching the ball. My ball warmup is as follows (again, these drills are done from the end line to the half field line and back)

Dribbling Warmup

• 2 touch alternating dribble – Touch the ball twice with your right foot then twice with your left foot. This helps you work on dribbling the ball with both feet. Go slow – this is a warmup – there’s no rush
• Sole rolls to half field and back
• Sole rolls – Inside to outside with a Tap – To half field and back (this is actually out of order in the video, but do this with the two drills above)

After I’m done with these warmups, if I’m working on ball control, I always try to juggle for a while. Juggling is one of the best possible soccer drills for ball control development you can do. In this case, my juggling looked like the following.

Juggling Drills

• Free juggle – juggle the ball however you’d like – with your feet, your knees, your head, anything. You can do this either for time (i.e. “Free Juggle for 2 minutes”) or for number of touches (i.e “Free juggle for 200 touches”)
• Right foot only juggle – Using only your right foot, juggle the ball for a certain number of touches.
• Left foot only juggle – Using only your left foot, juggle the ball for a certain number of touches. Don’t worry if you drop the ball, just pick it right back up and keep going
• Ladder juggling – Juggle the ball once with your right foot, once with your left foot, then twice with your right foot, twice with your left foot. Continue up to a certain number of touches (in this case, I was going to five with each foot). This is a fairly difficult soccer juggling drill, but even if you start off not doing very well, keep at it and you’ll get better. If you drop the ball, pick it up and keep going. Don’t give up!

After juggling, I do some ball control drills. A lot of these drills have been covered in previous posts, but I just wanted to show you that I’m actually doing them to train because they are very effective soccer drills for developing your ball control skills. The ball control drills I did were as follows –

Soccer Ball Control Drills

• Toe Taps – 100 touches
• Inside to outside sole rolls – 50 with each foot – Note: One inside to outside sole roll is actually two touches – one when you pull the ball across your body and one when you push it back to the outside of your body
• Inside Outside Inside sole rolls – 50 with each foot – Note: One inside outside inside sole roll is actually three touches, so you’re actually getting about 150 touches with each foot.

Finally, I wrap up by doing some moves at full speed while dribbling. This allows you to practice your moves at game speed to see how they’d work against real defenders. When you first start off, you may find that you trip over the ball a lot or lose control of it. That’s ok! The purpose of this practice is to help you get used to doing these moves at high speed. It’s better you trip now in training than later when you’re in a game trying to beat real defenders.

This is just one of many workouts that I do to develop my soccer ball control skills. What do you think? Leave a comment and let me know!

Finally, if you’re looking for more great workouts like this, I just released an ebook called “Getting Ready for Tryouts – A Complete 30 Day Soccer Training Guide.” This guide contains 30 days of workouts and preparation designed to help you develop all of your soccer abilities to help you maximize your chance of making a team.

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If you’re looking for some great resources to get you started on your soccer training journey, check out our individual soccer drills page. These drills are all free and are intended to help you grow as a player.

For something a little more in-depth, check out our soccer training guides section. There are both free and paid guides in this section that contain actual soccer workouts that will show you step by step how to become a better soccer player.