Practicing on Your Own: The Manual

IV. Choosing the drills
Every drill that you select must directly aid your pre-defined, short-term training goal. There are two types of training drills: A) for improving your execution and B) for improving your application of a particular skill.

A. Execution

Observation
Observe the technique that you want to learn from as many other players as possible. Look at them from different angles and carefuly study where they plant their supporting foot, how they use their upper body, how they follow through... Study how different players executes the same technique. This will teach you clean mechanics that are not influenced by one person's style.
Repetition
The body must be "programmed" to learn a particular movement through repetition. If you want to improve your technique or mechanics, you have to work on one specific movement repetatively and continiously for an extended period of time. Design your drills so that there are as few interruptions as possible. If you're working on ball control, the ball should be served to you consistently; if you're taking shots on goal, you should have a number of balls that you can shoot consecutively. Making a bad touch or mis-kicking the ball must not delay your next repetition.
Fitness
Improving your ability to execute a specific skill is greatly affected by your physical condition. Think about it: unless you have strong legs, you can't blast an 80-yard goal kick; if you're inflexible, you'll have trouble pulling off complex dribbling/feinting sequences; if you have bad agility, you'll struggle while adjusting to trap uncomfortable passes...

B. Application
Since individual training is all about improving your match performance, every drill you work on should incorporate real-match characteristics. The more soccer-specific your training is, the better. For example, riding your bike for an extended period of time may help your stamina, but dribbling the ball or jogging will, in addition, improve other aspects of your game like dribbling technique and jogging stance.

Simulating pressure (the lack of time and/or space)
Since you're training individually and you have no real pressure, you need to create simulated pressure. In soccer, pressure means lacking time and/or space. Let's say that you're working on dribbling from point A to point B. To make this drill more realisitc, you can try and do it at your top pace (lack of time) or set up a sequence of cones or obstacles that you must zig-zag across (lack of space.)

Transition
Being able to effectively apply a specific skill, means that you can execute it at any given time. Let's say that you want to improve your shooting ability. In addition to shooting from a stationary position, you can also:

-	shoot while sprinting, without a preparation touch
-	shoot while dribbling at full speed
-	shoot as quickly as possible right after controlling the ball
-	shoot while turning
-	shoot after beating a defender in 1v1