WOLI — A Training Session Format and Teaching Structure

A way for coaches to structure their training sessions and teach players by replicating realistic match scenarios

The United States Soccer Federation (USSF) revamped their C License a few years ago, centering it around a training format called WOLI — which stands for Warm-up, Orientation, Learning, Implementation. Similar to Play-Practice-Play, its name describes the phases within a training session, but it’s also much more.

Age Applicability of WOLI

WOLI is a training format that creates problems for the team to solve. It’s best used with older teams (U14+) when players are specializing in specific field positions.

The USSF presents WOLI as a training session format for older players, but it’s also a teaching tool that develops on-field problem-solving skills and presents practical information. While the WOLI training format is best suited for older players, the teaching technique embedded within it can be applied to teams of all ages.

Description of Each Phase: Warm-up

The warm-up phase is the first component in the WOLI training format. A good warm-up should develop physical skills that are appropriate for the age group (proprioception, balance, injury prevention, etc.) and incorporate soccer-specific skill work as well. The best Warm-up achieves these objectives while still pertaining to the session’s teaching topic as well.

Orientation

After the Warm-up, players begin their first exercise. The exercise should be game-realistic and create conditions that bring out the session’s topic (however, the fewer constraints used the better).

The team is then divided into two separate groups called the Target team and the Non-Target team. The Target team is the focus of the session’s topic, while the Non-Target team creates the problem to be solved.

An example: The topic for the session is possessing the ball in the midfield third. An exercise is created where midfield players will struggle to maintain possession in the midfield (since that’s what happens on game days).

The Target team will be the team with the ball that is attempting to possess through midfield. It will be comprised of players who play in midfield and those who play in relevant supporting positions.

The Non-Target team will be the pressuring team that creates the problem to be solved i.e. they need to keep the Target team from possessing the ball in midfield.

This component of training is called the Orientation phase because it orients the team to the specific problem to be solved. In this example, if the Target team begins by successfully possessing the ball in midfield then there’s no driving force that makes them improve. Without a meaningful problem for them to solve, there will be no meaningful learning.

The coach must produce a significant problem that matches (or exceeds) what the team will encounter on game days. Coaches can achieve this using a few different methods:

Coaching in the Orientation Phase

The goal for the Orientation phase is to re-create the problem enough times that a clear trend emerges. It’s best to count aloud how many times the problem has occurred. This draws player attention to the moment, shows it is recurring, creates emotional investment in what needs to be fixed and establishes a benchmark that future progress can be measured against.

Continuing the above example, when the Target team (red team) loses the ball, the coach may say something akin to:

“Four! That’s the fourth time the red team has lost the ball in the midfield third!”

The quicker the Target team gets oriented to the problem, the more time can be spent on crafting solutions. This means during the Orientation phase, the coach’s coaching points need to be directed at the Non-Target team to help create the problem.

Because time is of the essence (you don’t want to spend the whole session orienting to the problem instead of fixing it), the coach should use the Command tool to direct players to solutions, as opposed to employing question-driven coaching techniques which require more time.

Learning Phase

After the Non-Target team has successfully created the problem, and the Target team has become attuned to it, the training session moves into the Learning phase.

There is no set rule for when to transition from Orientation to Learning. If the problem occurs six times in four minutes then the problem-density is high enough to identify a trend. If the problem only occurs six times in fifteen minutes then something is wrong. The Non-Target team is not having enough success and the coach will either have to Stack the Dice another way, or continue coaching the Non-Target team and use the next training session to focus on the Target team’s objectives.

Once a trend is established it can be good to give a water break (provided enough time has passed), share the tally count with the team to highlight the problem, and begin coaching the Target team.

To be clear, the exercise remains the same between the Orientation and Learning phases. The only change is that the coach now focuses on the Target team’s play.

Coaching in the Learning Phase

Because the coach is now focused on the Target team, the first step is to re-orient their coaching position to better communicate with Target team players.

The goal of the Learning phase is to help the Target team produce solutions that are transferable to matches. The bulk of the learning should occur during this phase, which means coaches need to use more engaging and thought-provoking coaching tools than before; this includes Knowledge Questions, Leading Questions, and Pull Asides to guide players’ thinking.

A coaching Freeze should be used during the Learning phase. There should be a specific moment that coaches look for and their freeze language must be planned accordingly that incorporates principles of play, patterns from their game model, and highlights a technical skill.

Coaches should still keep a tally of how many times the problem occurs during the Learning phase. At the end of the exercise, the coach can compare the quantitative data from the Orientation and Learning phases to show the players how they’ve improved. This reinforces what they’ve learned and increases their confidence in their abilities and the coach.

Implementation Phase

The Implementation phase is just a fancy way of saying scrimmage. This is where both teams play against each other with normal rules, equal numbers, regular field dimensions, etc., and implement what has been taught during the session. During this phase, coaches can use whatever coaching tools best fit the situation, as long as they abide by Good Coaching Principles.

Psychological Components of WOLI

It’s worth recalling that the Orientation/Learning exercise is designed to create a problem. It should not be a fair exercise because the game of soccer is not fair. No teams enter game day on completely equal footing; they have different training schedules, recovery times, player abilities, etc. The University of Connecticut Women’s Basketball coach Geno Auriemma has talked specifically about the usefulness of this approach:

In team sports, there are times when a player will get stuck with the dirty work to help their teammates improve. Whenever a team participates in an unfair activity, the coach needs to be prescient about how that mental pressure is applied and communicate to players how it will contribute to their development. In short, any psychological demand placed on or against a player needs to be used purposefully and positively acknowledged following the exercise.

WOLI as a Teaching Tool

Hearkening back to the overview, WOLI is not just a training session format. At its core it is a teaching method. The problem-framing mechanism within WOLI can be applied across any exercise or age group, regardless of where they are in their development (broadly speaking of course).

By constantly creating and solving problems, players on both sides of the ball are always being coached and (ideally) elevating their play. It is the coaching equivalent to playing chess against yourself, and there is no requirement for exercises to be designed unfairly.

For example, if running a numbers-even possession game, the coach can still focus their interventions on one team before switching their attention to the other. In this light, the format of a training session doesn’t matter as much as how the coach gives information and helps both teams raise the standard of play.

There are limitations within this as well. As another example, during a traditional rondo the players are continually rotating through the two defensive positions. A coach cannot coach a “defensive team” because the players on it change after every repetition. If the coaches switches between coaching the two defensive players in the middle and the attacking players on the outside, players will become overloaded with information and as a result, instead of focusing on both teams, there won’t be a true focus on any team.

Wrapping up WOLI

WOLI is a helpful training session format and conceptual teaching tool. It’s great at creating difficult problems for players to solve and keeping training sessions flowing. By understanding its strengths and inherent limitations, coaches have greater flexibility in presenting information and structuring training sessions that best suits their team. While the format itself may be best for older players who are position specialists, the mechanisms behind it — that increase difficulty and foster problem-solving — can be used across all age levels.