Fitness 1 – Incorporating lots of running into a session.

4 yellow poles set up in ‘full back’ positions.  5 orange poles or mannequins set out as blocking defenders.

4 teams of 4 start out on the edge of the 18 yard box, the size of the pitch and number of players can be altered in accordance to age and ability.  GKs have plenty of balls in their goals.  The Gks roll out to the two blue teams on ‘right back’ poles, simultaneously.  Each team has 10/12/15 seconds to score; EVERY player must touch the ball before they can score.  After they shoot, the GKs then roll out to the reds on the ‘left back’ poles, they repeat the sequence.

Conditions

Each player must be in the 18 yard box to score (past the start poles)

If the team does not score, they must sprint to the nearest mannequin (or orange pole)

1 touch finish

This should give you lots of running, with and without ball, plus a little technical work, but most importantly, the players will enjoy it.

Fitness 2 – Continuous circuit incorporating anaerobic and aerobic endurance

The circuit is set out at as in the diagram, with 2 teams, 1 serving and the other taking part in the circuit.  One team are split around the circuit as follows:

Station 1 – Serve Side-foot volleys, left and right

Station 2 – Serve Laces volleys, left and right

Station 3 – Serve for Header to next station

Station 4 – Control and pass back to runner

Station 5 – Play 1-2 pass with runner

Station 6 – Receive pass and play through ball

GK

These can be adjusted to be whatever you want and have as many as you want.

The active team then set out on the circuit, dribble through the slalom cones, pass the ball around the poles and sidestep through them, pass to station1, then to station 2, then station 3, then station 4, then station 5 and finally station 6.  The player then runs onto the through ball and either takes a touch or executes a first time finish in the goal.  The player then rejoins the start and continues the circuit; hopefully the circuit will be repeated with no waiting around.  In order to do this, it is important to let the players go after the player in front has cleared the slalom.

Finish this session by challenging the players to compete against each other, the most goals wins or catch the player in front.

This should give you continuous work over a set period; your players will feel the effect of this one.

Fitness 3 – High intensity, short and sharp sprint work

Set up enough squares to accommodate half of your players, either 2v2 or 3v3 as shown.  Half the players work, whilst the other half are in active rest, passing the ball between themselves.  The Blue team are attacking the top and bottom sides of the square and the Red team are attacking the left and right sides of the square.  To score the team must dribble the ball over the line at either side they are attacking, once over they are safe and can restart to attack the other side quickly.  Have some spare balls close in case the balls go out to keep the intensity high.  Play for around 3 minutes and switch with resting players.

This will give your players a high intensity practice with lots of stop and start sprinting.

For all of these exercises, you can adjust the size of the area, the time that is played, the number of the players and the amount of rest to affect the intensity of the training.  Remember to check on your players and ask them how hard it was and take a heart rate reading.

LET THE PRACTICE PUSH THE PLAYERS THROUGH THE SET-UP, NOT THROUGH YOUR SHOUTING!!

More to come . . .

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Pre-season time is not a player’s favourite time of year, just ask them!  It is important that players are prepared physically and mentally for the season, so they must be pushed in order to obtain the physical outcomes needed.  Does this mean that we have to send our players to the beach to run sand dunes and climb steps, run up hills and do laps of the field?  Simply answered, NO.  Can we as a coach, not provide our players with sessions that involve footballs and real football situations?  Simply answered, YES.
Whether you are training young players or adults, there should be a ball involved wherever possible, this will maximise the time you have and gain multiple outcomes.  The majority of coaches that I have had experience with in the adult game say, you need a good base of fitness to build from, to do that you need to run first.  There is some basis for this argument, but what does running achieve?  Running increases your heart rate over a sustained period of time, improving your aerobic fitness.  Do we continuously run in a real match, or do we see players stop and start and use varying movements over varying distances and speeds?  The latter seems more realistic to a game to me.  This is still aerobic fitness but it also incorporates anaerobic fitness for the short and intensive sprint periods, making football a very complex game when thinking about training for fitness.  If we can highlight what we need from the players, then we can build a pre-season training regime that can incorporate all the aspects required for the upcoming season.

Shun The Run

Please please please, ditch the pre-season laps and think of some way of using a ball at some point, you can gain the same results if you plan ahead and be creative.  Try to disguise the work that they will be doing by involving balls and/or goals, trick them into having some enjoyment along with the work.  Stealing a phrase from another coach friend of mine ‘this session is still running, but I have just put a hat and a moustache on it’.  If you can use this kind of approach when planning your sessions, your players will react positively and ‘want’ to attend pre-season.
Be SpecificLook at a football match and identify the movements used, then replicate them in training.  Incorporate sprints, runs, walks, jogs, jumps and backwards movements, whatever you see as football specific.  This also applies to the ball work involved in these sessions, identify key techniques and use them.  During your pre-season regime, the primary aim is the physical aspect of the session, the technical side is second.  Use later sessions to nail down your technical aspects but keep these pre-season sessions to a high intensity by focusing on the physical aspect, keep the tempo high.

Intensity

After identifying the aspects and movements you need to replicate, make sure that you plan a session that will have an appropriate intensity to the action.  For example, if sprints are the aim, it is unreasonable to expect players to complete sprint after sprint after sprint with no rest.  Players must be allowed to build and be pushed, but with appropriate methods.  Sprints require rest or active rest, the timing of these can vary and keep the intensity of your session high, the benefits can be aerobic, anaerobic and speed endurance.  Sessions can be effective even if they are not completed at full pace, a half pace exercise that is continuous and involved football movements and technique will incur aerobic work and endurance because of the period of time sustained, not the speed of the work.  Be sure to know prior to your session, which way you are trying to achieve the stress on the player.  It can be the period of time you play, the speed it is played, the size of the area or the number of players.

Are my players working hard enough?

There are two ways of checking on your players work rate and whether your session is having an effect on their fitness.  Ask them how hard something was, they will tell you, this can give you an idea on how hard they perceive the exercise to be.  You can ask them to take their heart rate, if you are lucky enough to have electronic monitor’s great, otherwise just ask them to count over 30 seconds which you time and double it.  This quick method will give you an idea of what you have done to change their heart rates.  If it is too low, then change the parameters to affect the players, if it is high enough then your session works!!

Heart rate guidelines

Anything above these numbers for the relevant ages will prove that your pre-season sessions are working, and you are using footballs, who would have thought it!

CHECK OUT FUTURE POSTS FOR SOME BALL RELATED FITNESS FOCUSED SESSIONS

Photos: Normanvogel, Jarrett Campbell

The period before the football (soccer) season starts, is often looked upon by the coach as the time to run their players and get them fit for the upcoming season.  The players often look upon this time as the most boring and the most difficult.  As a coach, the challenge is to achieve the physical benefits needed for pre-season, while keeping the players alert and motivated.

Junior teams under the age of 14 do not have a need for fitness specific training during pre-season, as long as the coach provides good football specific, high intensity training.  Those younger age groups have natural fitness and the effects of fitness only training for them has been proven negligible in various studies.

For the older junior age groups and adult players, there are certain areas which must be factored into training to affect the player’s physical performance.  An emphasis on improving and maintaining a general aerobic fitness is at the forefront of most coaches thoughts.  Then the coach may look at improving strength and power in the players, concluding with improving speed, agility and quickness.  This is a general path taken by a lot of football teams across the world.  There is nothing wrong with this kind of approach, I am sure there are a lot more qualified sports scientists who can give the in-depth analysis of the ideal components of pre-season.  As a coach however, I am more interested in the way in which we go about this training.

Maintaining the attention of the squad is vital at this time, as sessions are physically and mentally demanding.  Coaches must be aware of the player’s perspective when designing a training plan.  Teams that continually use long runs and other non ball related exercises are in danger of losing the motivation of the players, but more importantly they may not be improving their squad to the extent that they think.  Football is a very dynamic and physically demanding sport.  When a coach trains their team, they train in conditions that replicate a match.  Fitness training should be approached in the same manner; it must be specific to football.

Football players cover large distances over the period of a match, does this mean that a long distance run is effective training for the upcoming season?  This will have some benefits, but will they be football specific? The answer is simply, no.  On average a Premier League midfielder covers 12km per game, ProZone studies show that this distance is covered at differing speeds.

Footballers tend to work in short, high intensity bursts with small and intermediate periods of rest or active rest.  Active rest refers to an athlete recovering from an initial burst by lowering the intensity of an activity but without stopping.  Through this knowledge we should be able to formulate the fitness training to replicate these match conditions.  Players rarely work at high intensity for distances over 20 metres and use a combination of aerobic and anaerobic fitness during the game.  Football fitness sessions must therefore use both systems and recognise the parameters of distance and time used in a match.

Interval and Fartlek training are great ways of providing a team with similar running/resting experiences to that of a game.  By planning in advance, the coach can design sessions that can include these kinds of methods, mixed with football specific ball, power or SAQ work.  This kind of combination can ensure that the players are being pushed physically, technically and mentally.  The inclusion of a ball can improve the motivation of the team, while achieving the technique work from an early stage.  Coaches should look to ‘multi task’ through sessions and introduce the ball as soon as possible.

There are many ways to achieve physical results; they do not have to be isolated exercises.  The key words are TIME – INTENSITY – SIZE.  Almost all football specific sessions can be adapted to achieve a physical goal by adjusting one or more of these parameters.  This kind of adjustment will allow a coach to achieve physical results, possibly without the players realising that this is the main goal.

Sample session; an area approximately 20×25 yards with small goals/targets at either end.  Play 3v3 in the middle with 6 supporting players, 3 for each team.  The size of the pitch can be altered depending on the fitness/age level of the team.  The pitch must be big enough to incorporate short bursts of work, but not big enough that a player can ‘hide’ and not be involved in the play – SIZE.  The outside players are used to keep the ball ‘alive’ and in play so that the rest period is minimal for the inside players – INTENSITY.  The coach can play 2 – 4 minute games depending on the age and fitness levels – TIME.  The inside and outside players then switch, this can be repeated a number of times, depending on the desired outcome by the coach.