How to Build a Training Session Plan From Saved Plays

Why a List of Drills Isn't a Session Plan

Most training "plans" are a list of drill names scribbled the morning of practice — useful as a personal reminder, useless as something you could hand to an assistant coach and expect them to run unsupervised. A real session plan needs three things a list doesn't have: the tactical detail of each drill, the order they run in, and how long each one actually gets. Without the third part especially, sessions run long, the last two drills get cut, and players never get to the part of practice that mattered most.

Step 1 — Save Each Drill as Its Own Tactic

Before building a session, each individual drill or tactic needs to exist as a saved play in your library — the warm-up rondo, the possession drill, the shape work, the finishing exercise, whatever's on the plan for that day. Draw each one on the appropriate court, with player tokens and movement arrows, and save it with a name that'll make sense to whoever runs it later.

Step 2 — Chain Plays Into a Session

The Session Builder takes 3 to 8 saved plays and chains them into a single session, in the order you'll run them on the pitch. This is the part a folder of separate saved tactics can't do on its own — it turns individual plays into a sequence with a clear start and end point.

Step 3 — Attach a Duration to Each Drill

Every play in the session gets its own duration. This is the detail that actually makes a session plan usable by someone other than you: instead of "we'll do the rondo for a while," the plan says 10 minutes, and whoever's running the session — you, an assistant, a parent helper — knows exactly when to move to the next drill. Set realistic durations here rather than aspirational ones; a session plan that assumes everything runs perfectly on time will still run over.

Step 4 — Step Through It On the Pitch

Once built, you can step through each play in the session directly from your phone or tablet at the pitch — no need to flip between separate saved tactics mid-session. This matters most when you're coaching solo and don't have a spare hand to be scrolling through a folder of unrelated saved plays.

Step 5 — Export the Whole Session as a PDF

The finished session exports as a multi-page PDF — one page per drill, each showing the diagram and its duration. Hand this to an assistant coach, a parent helper running a station, or keep it as a written record of what a given week of training actually covered. Club accounts get their branding on every page automatically, so a handout from any coach on staff looks consistent.