10 Secrets of Football Conditioning [PDF]

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10 SECRETS OF FOOTBALL CONDITIONING

The attitude of ‘I never did that stuff when I played’ is common among football coaches when referring to strength and conditioning. This attitude of ‘why change?’ has robbed countless teams and players of realising their true potential in football. The physical demands of the game have significantly advanced over recent years, and turning a blind eye to football specific strength and conditioning will not only limit the level of success one experiences, it can also path the way to early retirement as a result of injury. Today most footballers cover between 6 and 8.5 miles per game, compare this to the 1970’s English professional who averaged 5.5 miles per game, and you can begin to appreciate the problem. Not only has distance covered increased, the speed of the game has become so much more ballistic and powerful, and deciding to focus only on training with the ball will neglect some essential supplementary aspects of fitness which are so important in today’s game. With this in mind and to demonstrate just some of the advantages you could be benefiting from, below I have revealed my top 10 secrets to football conditioning!

1. STRENGTH Increased strength allows players to: run faster, resist challenges, be stronger in the tackle, jump higher, avoid fatigue and prevent injury. Despite a higher game load, players with greater levels of strength are better able to resist post-match fatigue as a result of being better equipped to handle the forces on the pitch and produce more efficient movements. The ability to repeatedly produce bursts and sprints is also positively correlated with lower body strength and power. Players who possess more strength and power are able to sprint faster and more frequently without experiencing decrements in speed, this is all thanks to strength training. Through strength training one is able to activate more motor units in the muscle and can therefore reduce the loss of power output and reduce levels of fatigue. If that wasn’t enough, strength training has been shown to reduce acute injuries by more than two thirds and halves the chance of developing an overuse injury!

2. SPEED Some athletes are gifted with a skeletal system that favours running at speed more than others. Genetics pre-determines the ratio of fast-slow twitch muscle fibres in our muscle fibre composition (fast twitch fibres needed for speed). Although improvements in speed are limited by nature and our genetic makeup, everyone can become faster than they currently are by implementing an effective speed programme into their training schedules. Speed training can increase the size of our fast twitch muscle fibres and lead to a more coordinated recruitment of these fibres to produce speed. Training fast movements with a ball at our feet slows the movements too much to produce the overload needed to increase speed.

3. STAMINA Stamina is the capacity of an individual to maintain a set work rate over a given period of time. In relation to football we are talking about the ability to continually produce short bursts of effort/ speed followed by spells of recovery for 90 minutes or longer dependant on extra time and the nature of the match. Building this type of endurance is completely different to the type of endurance an athlete will build to complete a marathon, making sure they are continually maintaining a 7-minute mile pace for example. Football places stress on a mixture of energy systems, but that does not mean to say that performing a 1000m row or a 100m sprint will be helpful in building football specific stamina. Through football specific stamina training, VO2 max can be improved by up to 20% in untrained players as well as lactate threshold (the point at which lactic acid begins to accumulate in the bloodstream), meaning you can run harder and for longer before feeling fatigued! A player with a high level of stamina has an enhanced ability to use fat as the fuel at any given work rate. This has a ‘sparing effect’ on supplies of carbohydrate, allowing the body to maintain a higher intensity for longer!

4. INJURY PREVENTION Injury is too often a factor which forces players to quit the game. When you feel 'a niggle' or a slight 'twinge' it's your body telling you that it's beginning to break down because of the training load and a lack of conditioning. Too many players ignore these signs only for the niggle to turn into an injury which stops them playing instead of addressing the problem straight away. Not only does injury lead to significant dips in performance level, it can also become very psychologically draining and ruin a player’s level of self-confidence and motivation to play as a result of the game no longer being fun and players losing their identity. Many players train around their existing injury problems, and avoid working on weak areas of their body all together in a fear of aggravating the problem. When you can't train to the best of your ability your progress will always be limited. Through injury reduction training, one is able to improve tissue quality, correct muscular imbalances and enhance joint mobility whilst gaining optimal levels of flexibility.

5. MINDSET Your mindset is shaped by your thoughts, and the way that you talk to yourself can change your perception of the player that you really are. Unfortunately, your mind is brilliant at focusing on the negative things: the chances you’ve missed, the height that you lack, the times you were indecisive in possession and gave the ball away. All of these thoughts have a negative impact on your self-image, and hardly fill you with energy when you’re about to step out onto the pitch. Luckily there’s a way to get around this, and it’s by talking to yourself every day and asking the right questions – the more you do this, the more time you spend focusing on the brilliant elements of your game, your self-image will start to shift day to day and you will begin to try things that you’ve pulled off in your imagination. By developing a champions mindset, you will overcome challenges with confidence and ease and really take your performance to the next level as you gain the ability to only focus on the things you can control in a match, and the only thing you can control is you. This clears your mind of worrying about things that you can’t control such as the referee.

6. SPECIFICITY Being specific with your training means resembling the game as closely as possible, but this does not mean the ball must be involved. Many fitness exercises look nothing like the actions you will perform on a football pitch, but they mimic the muscular contractions and energy systems which are required in football or add another dimension to your movement which will decrease the risk of injury occurring. This is the key to specificity, many coaches take this too literally and believe that the ball must always be involved – in fact if you want to increase the speed of your dribble, having the ball involved will hinder this, you will not produce the speed overload required in order to produce improvements. The answer in this situation is to train without the ball, and then add the ball in later once gains have been made and to fine tune the skill.

7. NUTRITION I’ve lost count of the number of players who believe they can eat rubbish before and after training and get away with it. This is both true and false. Yes you can get away with it in the short term at a certain level, but you will just be ‘getting through’ training sessions and matches and will not be reaching your maximal level of performance. Overtime you begin to see your body struggle with the demands of training as it lacks the nutrition to recover properly, leading to tissue breakdown and a lack of energy. Nutrition really can be the difference between winning and losing and eating poorly will hold you back from playing at a higher level. Football has its own nutritional demands; a weight loss diet is not appropriate for a footballer nor is the nutritional habits of an Olympic swimmer. Food consumption must be cleverly thought out, tracked and timed well in order to get the best results. One of the biggest issues especially in youth players is actually not eating enough, it can take up to 7 days for a player to replenish muscle glycogen stores post-match.

8. RECOVERY Recovery is so important for the modern-day footballer. It’s actually during the recovery days that one’s body adapts to the training it has been doing. So, if you never have a day off and your only recovery time is literally when you sleep, you are likely to experience the effects of overtraining – rarely seeing improvements in performance and actually going backwards as well as feeling tired and increasing your risk of injury. Key recovery techniques include: self-massage, hot and cold baths, low intensity movements in the pool and even just rewarding your body with a complete day off!

9. CONSISTENCY Consistency is by far one of the most important factors in your training. It’s not one killer session that’s going to make the difference, it’s those good habits you do consistently every day which add up to make a huge difference over time. Anything that is worthwhile achieving requires determination and commitment. Indeed, one of the main reasons players don’t achieve their goals is not because they don’t have the ability, it’s because they have failed to stick with something and see it through. It’s doing the things that are easy not to do every day that will make the biggest difference. Finding your optimal performance is a process and requires dedication, which is why only very few make it to the top, and many talk about how they had the ability to get there but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. Anything you can imagine in your mind is absolutely possible, otherwise your brain wouldn’t waste your time putting the vision in your head in the first place!

10. SUPPORT Being around the right people is vital in order to be successful. Surrounding yourself with like-minded people who are on the same wavelength, positive and push you to be a better player and person will make all the difference. Many premier league players tell of how their mates used to make sure they didn’t come on a night with them as a youth player because they knew they had an important match or intense period of training, it’s this type of support which is invaluable to be around, people who get you and what you want to achieve. Our matchfit community was built exactly with this in mind, it’s a way that likeminded players from around the world can share experiences and check in with each other every day to stay motivated whilst being tutored by me throughout their football career.

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