 Do you need to improve your shooting? Do you want to score more goals and help your team win more games? You can improve your shooting skills and the time to do it is right now. In this video I'm going to show you how to shoot a soccer ball with power and accuracy. Shooting used to be one of my biggest weaknesses. I had no accuracy or power in my shots. I would miss easy chances and I even remember passing up on shooting opportunities because I was afraid to embarrass myself. Finally, I made a commitment to figure out the science of shooting. I practiced every day, studied professional players, analyzed my own technique, and improvements quickly came. Now shooting is one of my strengths. I'm usually one of the top goal scorers in my league and I'm extremely confident in front of goal. Watch this entire video and I'll show you how to get the same results. In this video I'll break down how to shoot a ball with five easy to follow steps that every player can use. I'll go into detail about shooting with power and with accuracy. I'll address the most common mistakes that players make and give you a step-by-step action plan you can use to improve your shooting as fast as possible. Step number one, attack the ball. You can usually tell if someone's going to have a good shot simply by the way they approach the ball. Before the opportunity comes you have to be ready for it. The quality of your movement into the ball will translate into the quality of your shot. Think about being light on your toes moving towards the ball and attacking it with purpose. Step number two, focus. It seems obvious, but the truth is most players are already looking at the back of the net before they even make contact with the ball. When it's time to shoot you need to lock on to the ball. Focus on the ball until you follow through towards your target. Even more so focus on a specific point on the ball that you want to hit. Hitting the ball even a fraction to the left or to the right will produce a different result than you want. Pick your spot on the ball and keep your focus until the shot is complete. Step number three, control your body. Most players only focus on their shooting leg and foot. You want to focus on your body positioning. There are two things specifically I want you to focus on. First is your planting leg. As you approach the ball make a strong plant and stabilize yourself with your non-shooting leg. Second is your upper body. Place your upper body over the ball and lean forward towards the net. Step four is a strong impact. To produce a strong shot you must have a strong foot. More so you must keep a strong foot through impact. Many players will lock their ankle and make their foot strong, but as they strike the ball their ankle goes weak. Flex your foot, point your toes down to the ground, make your ankle strong and tighten your leg. Keep that strong impact as you make contact with the exact point on the ball that you were focusing on in step number two. Step five, follow through. As you push through the ball keep your foot flexed and follow through towards your target. Follow through with your foot, but also your leg and your shoulders. The natural tendency is for right footers to pull their shots across their body to the left and left footers to pull their shots across their body to the right. Focus on a straight follow through and you will produce a straight shot. You now have a five-step formula to improve your shooting, but none of this matters if you don't actually use it. You can go back to your old habits or you can use these tips to analyze your shots when you're practicing and when you're playing in games. So to quickly recap, step number one, attack the ball with purpose. Step number two, focus on a specific point on the ball and keep your focus until the end of the day. Focus on a specific point on the ball and keep your focus until you follow through towards your target. Step three, control your body. Make a strong plant beside the ball to ground yourself, stabilize yourself and get your upper body over the ball to keep your shot on target. Step number four, make a strong impact. Flex your foot, make your ankle strong, your foot strong and keep it strong while you push through the ball. Step number five, follow through towards your target with your foot, your leg and your shoulders. With those ideas in mind, let's take a closer look at shooting with accuracy. Now, obviously you should be trying to be accurate even if you're striking a ball with your laces, but personally for me, if I'm trying to pick a spot, I will usually use my instep or the inside of my foot. When I'm taking this shot, I'm trying to visualize the path the ball is going to take. So what I mean by that is if I'm trying to curl it around the keeper, I might start the ball outside of the net and have it curl back at the last second. In some situations, you don't have the luxury of shooting with accuracy. So you're still trying to get your shots on target. You're still trying to pick probably a left or right side of the net, but sometimes you have to go for power. And when I'm shooting for power, I'm using my laces. I'm focusing on all those principles that we talked about at the beginning, but most importantly, focus on getting your shots on target. You can't score if you don't hit the net. So try to hit your shots with about 80% of your top power. When you try to hit the ball as hard as you can, you'll find it's very difficult to be consistent. I think it's very important that you see these types of shots. Although it's great to see a ball rip into the back of the net or nestle up into the top corner. These are the types of shots that score goals. So if you can start to hit these shots consistently, low, a bit of pace in the corners, accurate, you're going to score more goals. So don't worry if your shots aren't putting holes in the back of the net. What's most important is that you are consistently hitting the target. If you do that, you are going to become a goal scorer. Let's address some of the most common mistakes and these are directly related to the five steps you learned earlier. So this is a great opportunity to recap, to admit some of your current mistakes and fix them as quickly as possible. Mistake number one, you're not ready for the shot. This could be due to a lack of focus or you could be tired. Whatever the situation you need to develop the skill to switch on when there is an opportunity to shoot. Even if you're tired, you need to find two seconds of composure to get yourself ready and focus on the sharpness of your movement. Mistake number two, not focusing on the ball. As I said, most players are already looking at the net or defender before they make contact with the ball. Focus on the ball. In this mistake, you can see that although my technique may have been good, I didn't focus on the proper point of the ball and I hit the wrong spot which resulted in a bad shot. Take number three, no control of your body. Most players just focus on the shooting leg and not their body control. If you're leaning back or too relaxed and loose with your upper body, it will be difficult to control your shot. In this example, I didn't place my body over the ball. I was behind it when I made contact and that resulted in the ball going over the net. In this example, I'm not controlling my body. I'm just swinging wildly at the ball instead of stabilizing myself, placing my upper body over the ball and directing my shoulders towards the net. Mistake number four, you have a weak foot. The most common reason players have a weak shot is because they kick the ball with a weak foot. Here you can see the difference between a strong flex foot and a weak limp foot. You may also approach the ball with a strong foot, but let your foot go weak as you make contact with the ball. Whether you're using the inside or laces, focus on keeping a strong foot with locked ankles as you push through the ball. Mistake number five, inaccurate follow through. When you start to analyze your shots, you may see that you often swing across your body or slice your shots away from goal. If you're struggling with this, focus on your follow through. Follow through with your foot, legs and shoulders towards your target. After your shot, stop and analyze. The ball usually ends up where your follow through points. With the ideas in this video, you can improve your shooting significantly in a short period of time, but you have to take action on these ideas. So here's what I want you to do. Number one, shoot daily. Now that can mean going to the field with a big bag of balls or it could be shooting against a wall or even practicing your technique against your couch in the living room. Find a way to make shooting part of your daily routine. It has to become a habit. Number two, analyze every shot. So it's great that you're shooting, but are you thinking about why was it a good shot? Why was it a bad shot and what do I need to change next time? Number three, you are the player who is getting there early to do some shooting before practice and staying late to work on your shooting skills. Number four, take your shots in a game. Now that you're practicing these skills, you have to actually have the confidence to implement them in the game. You will never regret taking a shot. You will always regret being too afraid to take on the shot. So in matches, make sure you take the shots when you have your opportunities. And number five, use this video as a resource. If you want to get more out of it, you can keep coming back to it, watching it again and again, making sure that you're taking all these actions, doing these steps and correcting those mistakes.