How to Build Your Football Exercise Library
Most coaches own their exercises in their head or scattered across notebooks, PDFs, and phone photos. A library is not a collection — it is a system that lets you find the right exercise at the right moment and assemble a session in minutes rather than hours.
Why organisation matters
The problem with most coaches' exercise collections is not a shortage of drills — it is retrieval. When you sit down to plan next Thursday's MD-3 session focused on defensive transition and need a high-intensity exercise for 14 players in the midfield third, can you find one in under 30 seconds? If the answer is no, your collection is not a library yet.
An organised exercise library has two functions: retrieval and assembly. Retrieval means finding the right exercise for a specific need. Assembly means combining exercises into a coherent session that serves a tactical theme and hits the right load targets. Both depend on a consistent tagging system.
The essential tags
You do not need to tag every conceivable attribute — you need to tag the attributes you will actually filter by when planning. These six cover nearly every planning scenario.
Phase of play
The most important tag. It connects the exercise directly to your game model — attacking organisation, defensive organisation, offensive transition, or defensive transition. Without this tag, you have a collection of drills. With it, you have a system.
Examples: Attacking organisation, Defensive transition, Offensive transition, Defensive organisation, Set piece (attack), Set piece (defence)
Area / space
Where on the pitch does this exercise primarily take place? This lets you filter by spatial theme — building out from the back, progressing through the midfield third, or creating and finishing in the final third.
Examples: Own half, Midfield third, Final third, Wide channels, Central zone, Full pitch
Number of players
Essential for planning. If your squad has 18 available players and you want a rondo as a warm-up, you need to know which rondos work with that number. Filtering by player count prevents you from discovering mid-session that a drill requires more players than you have.
Examples: 4v4, 6v4+GK, 8v8, 11v11, 4+2 rondo
Microcycle day
Each exercise has an ideal microcycle day — some are appropriate for MD-4 high-volume sessions, others for MD-2 precision work, others only for activation on MD-1. Tagging by intended day lets you filter your library by where you are in the week.
Examples: MD-4, MD-3, MD-2, MD-1, Any
RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion)
A 1–10 scale indicating the physical intensity of the exercise. Combined with the microcycle day tag, this is what lets you manage cumulative weekly load. A session on MD-3 should have a higher average RPE than one on MD-2.
Examples: Low (1–4), Medium (5–6), High (7–8), Very high (9–10)
Duration
How long does the exercise typically run, including setup? This is a practical planning tag — when you are assembling a 90-minute session, you need to know at a glance how much time each exercise occupies.
Examples: 5–10 min, 10–15 min, 15–20 min, 20–30 min
How to write an exercise entry
Each exercise in your library should include enough information that any coach on your staff could run it without asking you. A minimal entry contains:
Name: 4v4+2 possession game — central zone
Phase: Attacking organisation
Setup: 30x30m grid. 2 teams of 4 + 2 neutrals always play with the team in possession.
Objective: Maintain possession using width and quick combinations. Neutrals force players to play through rather than around.
Coaching points: Body shape before receiving; third-man runs; switching the point of attack when pressing triggers.
Duration: 15 min (3 x 4-min rounds, 1-min rest)
RPE: Medium (5–6)
The tactical board diagram lives alongside this entry — so anyone coaching the exercise can see the setup visually, not just read about it.
Building playbooks from your library
Once your library contains 40–60 well-tagged exercises, you can begin building playbooks — themed collections assembled for a specific purpose. A playbook is not a session plan; it is a curated shortlist that you draw from when planning sessions in that theme.
Examples of useful playbooks:
- — Pressing exercises — high intensity, MD-3 suitability
- — Build-up play from the goalkeeper — possession, MD-4
- — Finishing sequences — final third, MD-2
- — Set piece routines — attacking corners, free kicks, MD-1/MD-2
- — Defensive transition SSGs — high RPE, 6–14 players
When you open your session planner for a specific day, the playbook for that theme is already assembled. You select from the shortlist rather than searching the full library — which saves significant time when planning multiple sessions per week.
Starting from zero
The hardest part of building a library is the first 20 entries. The recommendation is to start with your highest-frequency exercises — the ones you use every two or three weeks regardless of theme. Tag them, write them up, draw the diagram. Once those are in, the library is already useful.
After that, add exercises at the moment of creation — when you design a new drill for next week's session, put it in the library before you use it. The library grows naturally without requiring a dedicated cataloguing session that never happens.
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