We have been on a never ending search for excellent training for our GK from u10-u16. I agree with a lot of the above advice. I will add that I have discovered a lot of GK trainers will spend the majority of a session diving. Just repeatedly diving. Of course, early on this is important but there is so much more to the position than diving. To this day, I haven’t found anyone i can recommend without reservation for providing private training for GKs. DS worked with Laurie from Pells in groups. She’s amazing but it’s groups. He worked with Ed Brown. Again in groups. He has really upped his game with Ed so we are sticking with him. Yet neither of these are private so you can’t zero in on your personal agenda each week which sometimes is an issue. The best I can recommend is John Hollinger for individual sessions but he’s not perfect. Plus, his rates have become very high and even he seems to be moving away from individual sessions towards group. But at the younger ages, he really made a huge difference for my GK getting down the diving.

Thanks for this. What are good resources for finding trainers?

I would also love to see a dedicated thread on private training - thank you!

My DD has two main 1:1 trainers.

One, a female former national team player turned excellent trainer, works with her primarily on general technique and field play.

The other, a male, former pro and former head pro coach, works with her on finishing and shooting and mindset / mental.

Neither of them focus on only weaknesses, they both focus on whatever the medium term and long term development needs are, and occasionally tweaking things when they need more work or to get cleaned up.

The gen / field coach comes to watch her matches when she can, and watches the video when she can as and adjusts the training IDP as needed.

I played through college, and played HS soccer and travel ball in NOVA. Soccer is drastically different - I wouldn’t make my HS team today, the kids are just so much better. But so is the knowledge and expectations we have of good trainers and coaches (which weren’t nearly as available until the mid 2000s).

I’d suggest that the prerequisites you should look for in a trainer to your DCs are:

1) some higher level of play history (doesn’t have to have been the best, but needs to know what it takes to be very good - even if they fell short of their own potential - the knowledge of why they fell short is often the feed stock of amazing coaches)
2) individualized the training for your DC - yes many drills and skills are developed similarly and many session outlines are similar - but the training overall should be tailored to your player.
3) should communicate with you, the parent / payer - but realizes that the customer is the player!
4) should watch / ask about matches - this should be a red flag if they don’t
5) have a coaching / training history of success - don’t be the crash-test dummy - also many recently former players and many current college players can be great practice buddies, or role models, but they’re awful coaches. Well intentioned, but they are still very focused on their own soccer and don’t have time (or maturity) to focus on your DC’s long term development! There is a place in your DCs life for these role models, but a trainer isn’t the one.
6) your DC has to be able to listen to them. If your DC, for one reason or another, isn’t coachable by the trainer, it’s a waste of everyone’s time (and money).
7) the trainers need to give “homework” AND the trainer has to have a regular schedule for your DC. It can’t be bouncing around, day to day / week to week based on availability etc. Nothing good in development comes without stability and regularity.
8) have the ability to add other players to a future session or series of sessions in order to focus on specifics such as 1v1 or 2v1s etc for your DC.
9) warm up and cool down. If the trainer says “take a lap” to start the session, the trainer is lazy.
10) the trainer calls out you DC for shitty effort, attitude or focus. All kids have low energy practices from time to time. But your trainer better have and keep your DC to a high standard! (And coach your DC to keep the level of what they will accept of themselves as high as their potential).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
This actually has me thinking a dedicated thread that goes deeper into how private training works as an industry and more details on how to make it worthwhile, maybe even with a AMA component, might be helpful for parents. (Any takers?)

I think this would be very helpful for this board. Everything you said rings true from a recent (excellent) experience we had. He was expensive...but because he's getting back into it after a short break, we were fortunate to be able to get a slot. He wanted to know her primary position and big picture ideas of what she wanted to work on...but from there, the first session was designed as an "evaluation via training" session so he could begin customizing her sessions going forward (if we were to continue). Drills were progressive. Every touch was evaluated and very specific corrections made/practiced. Between drills, he asked if she liked the previous drill. I think that helped pull her into the training even more. It was very easy to see how what was being taught would translate into game day. And last, to some degree I feel like he was evaluating whether she was the type of player that he could help and wanted to work with.

I contrast this to several sessions we had with a former collegiate soccer player. Those sessions were absolutely personable, well-intentioned, and very good overall. But now in retrospect, they looked more like "practicing" vs. "training" (perhaps a subtle but very important distinction). I have no doubt that this is going to truly elevate her game and now makes me wonder if some of the truly great players we see out there have the benefit of this kind of training.

Trainer here.

This is spot on and being able to identify the difference as a parent/player is critical.

Coaching is focused on a team, training is focused on the individual player(s).

Coaching teams and large groups is about keeping all the players involved and engaged. I think years of complaints about kids standing in lines at practice is part of where the obsession with “needing more reps” has come from. A lot of private training I see is just more of the exact same exercises the kid ran in practice (more or less) without adding anything else of any real substance. Sometimes with just more yelling at the kid.

I'll go deeper into this when I make the dedicated thread.

Stay tuned.