How do you perform a Simplified Scissor, Double Scissors, and Swerve-and-Go?

“How do you perform a Simplified Scissor, Double Scissors, and Swerve-and-Go?”

This is the seventh in a series of questions regarding the best solo practice for improving your footskills for soccer.  Today, I will be discussing the third set of 1v1 moves from the  “Seven minute drill”.   Unfortunately, I still have not yet been able to gather the videos for this posting.  However, I will be updating this post in a couple of weeks with the videos once they are available.

For the Seven minute drill you are supposed to select between 1 and 4 of the available 1v1 moves and do a total of 20 moves per foot.

Simplified Scissors:

In the last post, there were two ways of practicing a regular scissors move.  In this post, I will be describing an even simpler version of the scissors move.

Start dribbling forward with the laces of one foot making sure to use good body position (low to the ground with knees bent).
After a few touches, take the foot you are dribbling with and bring it across your body and behind the ball (move it towards your other foot).
1. When you get close to your other foot, move the foot back to the other side of the ball but keeping it behind the ball.
2. Plant your foot and push off toward the other foot
3. Play the ball with the outside of the other foot diagonally away from the way you are facing.
4. Repeat.

Keys:

• Focus on keeping your foot close to the ground, keeping your toes down, and selling the fake by dipping your shoulders.
• The initial movement of your foot behind the ball should be at regular speed.  However, when moving it back to the outside you should move it as fast as possible.
• Make sure to keep good body position throughout – Bent knees, Low to the ground, Leaning slightly forward on the balls of your feet.

This move is a simplified version of the scissors but can still be used successfully.  If you are having trouble learning the normal version of the scissors move, you should definitely focus on this move for a while.  Then, after you feel comfortable using this simplified version in a game, you can move on to the regular version.

Double Scissors:

1. Start dribbling forward with the laces of one foot making sure to use good body position (low to the ground with knees bent).
2. After a few touches, take the foot you are dribbling with and bring it across your body and behind the ball (move it towards your other foot).
3. When your foot gets past the inside of the ball, quickly and smoothly circle the ball with your foot ensuring to follow these rules:
   1.  Some part of your foot should always be in contact with the grass (almost always your toes)
   2. Your toes should be pointed downwards
   3. Your foot goes completely around the ball without ever passing over any part of the ball at any time.
4. When you complete the circle, put the balls of your foot down.
5. Now take your other foot and bring it across your body and behind the ball (moving it towards your other foot)
6. When this foot gets past the inside of the ball, quickly and smoothly circle the ball with your foot ensuring to follow the same rules listed above.
7. When you complete this second circle, plant this foot and push off toward your other foot.
8. Play the ball with the outside of the foot you were originally dribbling with and take off diagonally from the way you are facing.
9. Repeat. 

Keys:

• Focus on following the three rules listed above.
• Foot speed is critical as is making sure to keep good body positioning to stay balanced.

This move is pretty straight-forward after you learn the normal scissors move.  So, you should focus on making sure you are capable of performing the scissors move first and then move on to this once you are extremely comfortable performing a scissors move in a game situation.

Swerve-and-Go:

1. Start dribbling forward with the laces of one foot.
2. Fake a move with the outside of your dribbling foot making sure to dip your shoulder.
3. Plant the dribbling foot and push off in the opposite direction.
4. Play the ball with the outside of your other foot.
5. Dribble away with the laces of one foot.
6. Repeat 

Keys:

• Make sure you really sell the fake with your entire body.
• The first move should be at normal speed but once you plant your foot you must make the final cut extremely quickly.
• As the name suggests, your body should make a swerving motion.

This move is a great, simple move for getting past a defender with minimal effort.  If you have any question as to which move to work on first, this is it.

This was the third set of 1v1 moves in the “Seven Minute Drill”.  As I said above, I will hopefully be getting videos to go with each of these posts shortly which should make it much easier to understand exactly how each move should be performed.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 29th, 2009 at 7:44 pm and is filed under Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.