How to Head a Soccer Ball

Video Transcript

"Hi my name is Guillermo Gomez. I coach youth soccer and today I'll be talking to you about how to head the soccer ball. We head the soccer ball for different reasons throughout the game. You can head the ball defensively or offensively. To start with just a simple header, we want to concentrate on the ball. We want to hit it right towards the middle with the front part of our face, the forehead so right above the eye line and before the hair line. It is important to remember not to hit the ball with your head because that could be dangerous. As the ball comes to you, you want to keep your eyes open. That is the most important thing. Keep your eyes open. Then you want to put one foot in front and one foot back to keep your balance, keep your arms out, be careful with that so that as the ball comes down or a player comes around you don't commit a foul. You want to look at the ball and do back motion moving forward starting from the trunk of your body so not just with your neck. It starts with your trunk of your body coming forward in this motion. Again keep a good eye on the ball as the ball comes down, get on the line of the ball, the line where it is traveling so you are right on the ball and head it in a good direction. It is important as you hit the ball to watch how you are landing. You can actually hit the ball standing or jumping so again be careful how you land to avoid any injury. To hit the ball offensively you actually want to hit the ball with the upper part of the ball and actually hit it going down and again you use the same motion, come back, arms out and hit the ball down. Why down? Because that makes it more complicated for goalies to stop a ball going down then a ball going in a straight line. So you want to again use your forehead, open your eyes, look at the ball and hit it down. Defensively you actually want to hit the ball out of the way, far away. You want to do that so that the other team doesn't get possession of the ball and then cause a counterattack that could be dangerous for you. So for that you actually want to get the ball high on the air, jump, use the trunk of your body, keep an eye on the ball, hit it and instead of the high section which is how we distinguish offensively versus defensively you are actually hitting the lower part of the ball to make it go up away from the goal and with a lot of power. That is how you hit a soccer ball."