Kick ups are fundamental to every young child wanting to develop their football skills. They help to teach children how to strike the football cleanly, how to control the power of each strike and helps their overall ball control.
Some top tips on how to improve your kick ups:
- Bounce Kick Ups
Children can practise their football skills by learning how to do bounce kick ups. This should be as simple as the little one dropping the football on the floor and aiming to kick it back up to a catch. After mastering this, children can practise by aiming to do multiple bounce kick ups to a catch without dropping the football.
- Bounce Kick Ups with no catch
After developing the above skills, children learning football should move on to trying to keep the ball up with their laces without dropping the ball, with a bounce inbetween each kick.
- Thigh kick ups
When children go to football classes, they will need to learn to control the football with various parts of their body. Because of this, we recommend practising again with the football in the hands and dropping it on to their thigh to a catch. Again, after mastering this, the children learning football will want to practise doing this multiple times without dropping the ball.
- Kick Ups
After mastering the above, the children will need to try and learn how to do normal kick ups. Football classes and children should always implement kick ups into their sessions, but it is vital that you are practising with them at home. Start with the football in hand, dropping it to their feet with the aim of juggling the ball up in the air for as long as possible without dropping the football.
Top tip, keep your toe pointed to the sky, your foot nice and strong and aim to make contact with the laces.