Energy System Development for Soccer

The following images are from my upcomming article. Altought I don’t buy that crap about ESD, I used this term beacause a lot of people are fammiliar with it…

I will put little comments under each picture. I hope your comments will help me to finish and improve this project/article.

Analysis of soccer performance
Soccer is a HIIE game. Altought great proportion of soccer acitivity is “aerobic” (low intensity) in nature, those small number of high intensity activity is the most important. The activity and intensity is changed every 4-6 sec, with sprints done on 15m on avarage done every 90sec (on average).

(Picture 1)

Power/Speed Development (alactic anaerobic work)
This is the MAIN goal of soccer physical training — to create more faster and more powerfull athletes. For this, we repeat short burst of maximal activity with full rest to recover CNS and replenish ATP/CP in muscles.

(Picture 2)

Speed endurance training (production & toleration) (lactic anaerobic training)
The goal of this training is to create the ability of the players to be able to keep the high-intensity for longer periods of time. If the recovery is complete we call it PRODUCTION TRAINIG. If the recovery is incomplete then it is TOLERATION training, aimed at increasing the ability to increase the duration of high-int activity under state of fatigue.
But, if you look at match analysis, we soon see that this kind of acitivity is not happening nor it is needed. Altought, this kind of training will improve lactica acid production, toleration and clearance (via indirect aerobic capacity increase) it if NEGATIVELLY AFFECT speed and power training with its greated rest that is needed to recover the athlete from it. Maybe some small proportion of this trainign is ok… but I doubt!
300yard Shuttles and other BS comes in this group.

(Picture 3: Production)


(Picture 4: Toleration)

Repeat Sprint Ability
The aim of this training is to increase the ability of the athlete to perform high-int activity with short rest without the drop in quality (intensity). The research is incomplete when it comes to RSA: some say that aerobic capacity (expressed as VO2max) is imprtant, some say that lactate buffering (beta m) is more important… Well, until the research is more precise I will include high intensity aerobic training (aimed at increasing aerobic capacity and lactate buffering at smaller proportions without negativelly affecting speed and power work and abailities) and RSA work.

(Picture 5)

Metabolic Conditioning (small sided games — skill-based conditioning games)
See the graph…
This training is presented since day one of our preparatory period.

(Picture 6)

Aerobic training — TEMPO and submax SHUTTLES
Tempo is considered as high-intesity intermitent aerobic work, which includes greater hip movements, accelerations and deccelartions and sometimes change of direction without negativelly affecting speed work and FT fibers as speed endurance work or LSD runs. It form a BASE for metabolic conditoning and RSA, plus it forms a “support” for speed work and sometimes is used for recovery purposes.

(Picture 7)

Effects of various actions in a game
The high-intensity activity is the most important in a game altought it represent very little percentage of a game time or distance covered. We want our athletes to be able to performa high-int activity when needed without the drop in quality. Unofrtunally other soccer activities may negativelly affect sprints and other high-int activities (jumps, tackles, shots etc). The preceding submax activities, like tactical movements, filling spaces and marking opponents may negativelly affect high-int activities, along with high-int activity negativelly affecting high-int activities (RSA). We should seek for the trainig means to reduce this phenomena.

(Picture 8 )