Cones CAN be used to teach dribbling skills

 When I took my National Youth License back in 1999, one of the big revelations I had was the concept of 100% participation. As a coach, I was comfortable having players wait their turn to participate in an activity. What I learned was that waiting reduces opportunity and breeds misbehavior. Players who are not participating in an activity are losing opportunities to learn and they are far more likely to engage in misbehaviors that distract others or get themselves into trouble. We learned the motto "no lines, no laps, no lectures." While each of these deserves it's own essay, this essay is focused on one area of coaching practice that I have always found particularly disappointing, the dribbling through cones activity. 

It is a staple of practices throughout the U.S. and it features rows of beautifully spaced cones and players waiting in line to dribble around the cones and then back. It has so many features that I find disdainful, but I do have to acknowledge that it does force players to change directions with the ball and the player can you different surfaces of the foot to change direction of the ball. 

Let's look at why it doesn't work from two different perspectives: soccer and behavior/ fitness. I'll start with the soccer first:

• defenders are never aligned in a row, especially one that is equally spaced between. 
• defenders are moving and not static. 
• defenders pressure from different directions, distances and speeds. 
• using the same move over and over again helps to gain confidence with that move, but in a game, it makes it easier for the defender to defend. 
• players dribble with their heads down trying to make sure they don't touch the cones as they maneuver around them. 

Now the behavior/ fitness part: 

• Even in the graphic above, a player is engaged for only 25-33% of the time. The rest of the time is standing around. 
• Soccer is a sprint/ recovery activity and most players dribble slowly around the cones never getting their heart rate up. 
• While waiting in line, their HR drops to near resting and their body cools down. 
• the activity is repetitious and boring, other than keeping control of the ball, there is no other stimulus. 
• While the players are waiting for their turn, there is ample opportunity to misbehave. 

So this activity fails from a soccer perspective in that we don't get players who can dribble with their heads, time their moves to avoid defenders or employ a variety of moves to get past more than one defender. It fails from a fitness perspective because the players are only working when they are dribbling and they are not working at a pace that would be consistent with them on the field dribbling the ball. Finally, it fails from a behavior perspective because the players spend long amounts of time not engaged and are likely to use that time for other reasons that may take away from the intensity of the practice for the whole team. 

So the big takeaway is that cones are bad.... or can we rethink how to use them to make them more effective and address many of the concerns identified? I think we can. In my practice, I deal with large groups of players (between 20-50) and so the scale of my practices is bigger, but it still works with any team size. Here is the cone setup that I use: 

The cones are distributed randomly inside the grid. Now, instead of only a couple of players participating while the others watch, we can achieve 100% participation by having all the players dribbling within the grid. Just this change means that we can increase the number of touches each player gets in a practice. 

To introduce the players to the activity, I just ask them to keep the ball moving and avoid the cones and the other players. Then we can begin to focus on the key elements of dribbling that we want them to develop: heads up, space, move, accelerate. 

Heads up- novice players look at the ball, they do this because they aren't sure where it is and what it will do next when they touch it. 

Space- players need room to make the move before the defender takes that space. Some moves need more space than others. 

Move- the actual change of direction that the player employs to get past or away from the defender. 

Accelerate- what the player needs to do after the move to exploit the space created by the move. Many players are excellent at making dribbling moves, but then fail to exploit the space created and have to repeatedly beat the same defender as a result. 

Here are some challenges that you can give the players to make it more game-like and work on the goals listed above:  

• Dribble with your head up and choose the cone you want to make a move around. 
• Have players work on different kinds of moves like a pull back or step over to vary their practice and prepare for different situations. 
• Have players accelerate into open space once they have dribbled past a cone to simulate how they would behave in a game. 

Here is the progression I used with the U5/6 age group: 

1. Dribble with head up and avoiding the cones (we pretended the cones represented dog poo)
2. Number dribble- same concept, but not parents/coaches walk around holding up numbers with their fingers and players have to see and then shout out the number as they continue dribbling. 
3. Choose a cone and make a move around or away from the cone (depending on what moves we were working on). How many can you do in 30-60 seconds? 
4. Add coaches/parents to increase intensity. Adults either try to tag players on the shoulder (which forces players to drop their shoulder as they move the ball away) or try to take their ball away (if successful, they return it immediately to the player). 

I have used this with every age group up to U14 and the results are excellent. Some players will try to hide by hanging out on the periphery of the grid or not making any attempts to dribble as if they are in a game, but having coach attention on these players is usually sufficient to help get them more involved. 

The biggest issue with the activity is players dribbling at little more than walking speed. For the younger players, getting them to imagine that they are going down hill or that the ground is turning into "hot lava," or starting a countdown is often sufficient to get them to speed up. Part of the reason they dribble so slowly is that they are not confident dribblers, so if you do this activity multiple times throughout a season, you should see them making progress and getting more confident. Following this activity up with something like Sharks and Minnows is a great way to test the skills you have been working on. 

Finally, use the scrimmage and the game to see whether the players are using dribbling moves to get past an opponent. Regardless of the age of the player, you can get them to focus on dribbling by setting in game goals like - I want you to try dribbling past an opponent 3 times in the first half. Keeping track of that while you are coaching the game can help you focus on what you are doing to help your players become more successful and keep you from getting caught up in the game and just focusing on the results of the game as the only measure of success. 

Related topics: 

• Eliminating games of elimination
• Taking a snapshot
• The two minute technique
• Getting started on the right foot, the 3 core skills
• The "show my skills" pinkie promise