Tips on Creating Pressure in Practice

Creating pressure on players in practice is important for your team. It helps the team increase the level of intensity at practice. Doing things with speed and purpose helps teams and players see what happens when they challenge themselves and also focus on the mechanics of a specific technique. 

Imagine during a game that your team is down by 1 with 5 minutes left. They have been practicing for this situation all season. They are ready to go and believe in themselves. They have the confidence as individual players and as a team to win. That’s the feeling you want going into a big game. 

Here are 5 ways to create pressure at practice. 

Push off Players

During your typical warm up, put pressure like pushing off of players. Players love this. I do this for older middle school and high school players. They like the idea of it and often want to do the pushing. It helps during a game that can be physical as the intensity level rises. 

Distractions During Drills

Warm-Up Drills Competition

We often talk about coming against yourself. During warm-ups, a great way to increase pressure is to time and count passes or a certain skill. When warming up with activities like partner passing or a specific skill, have the pair count reps. Once they have a baseline, then increase the next goal by a certain amount. Those that beat their goal get something or if you don’t beat it, you have to do push ups.

Creating Chaos

An idea for practice if you coach an invasion sport is a build up where things change quickly. Start out with a 1v1, to a 2v1 to a 3v2 and so on. Depending on your sport and the number of players you have, you can modify it easily. 

Game Play Pressure

Create pressure in practice when you are doing game play.  That pressure can come in the form of creating situations such as players being down by 1 with 5 minutes left in a game.  See the intensity increase when they know that they have a short period of time to try to tie up the score. The speed of play will increase. Doing this over and over again will help your team be ready when that situation arises. 

About iSport360:

For youth sports players, club administrators, coaches and parents, iSport360 is the leading sports technology platform that helps your players be the best they can be. With over 185,000 coaches and players on our platforms, our clubs rely on iSport360 to manage player development both on and off the field, court, pitch and ice. 

About the author: 

Amy Masters is a sports mom, coach and club administrator. She has been coaching youth sports for more than 10 years. She started Jr Lions Field Hockey, the youth recreation program for the Hunterdon County community growing it from 40 players in year 1 to 150 players by year 3. A few years later, she saw the love and competitiveness grow then started Omega Field Hockey Club serving NJ and PA players. Prior to coaching, she was a collegiate field hockey player for Lock Haven University. In her spare time (lol), she is head of marketing for iSport360, where she brings her love of sports to a bigger audience.