When did you start playing soccer? What sort of athletic experience did you have up to this point? Compared to other guys your age that you’ve played with, do you consider yourself better, worse or about the same when it comes to foot skills with the ball? Answer these questions and it’ll make it a little easier to advise you on how you should structure your workouts. You can make your life on the field easier by having good quality foot skills as was mentioned already. I would focus primarily on general fitness first so that you’re able to last physically, and try to incorporate as much passing/receiving into your training as possible. You could be the fastest guy out there, but if every time you go to receive a ball it bangs off your shin into touch or you pass it to the opposition, it doesn’t matter HOW fast you are!
As for your question about food, everyone reacts differently. If you can eat a full breakfast and then go train without any adverse effects, go for it. That being said, you might have better luck eating a smaller light meal before and then follow it up with a more protein rich food after your workouts in the morning. I know I was never able to eat anything more than a small bowl of cereal or a bit of toast before a tough Saturday morning workout.
I’d approach these questions based on your actual Soccer training & development age - how many years have you played? How much coaching have you received?
As mentioned in a post above:- the fitness aspects should be supplementary to your technical development.
I’d suggest seeking out a club/team where you will be coached and can learn and develop your skills and knowledge of the game…you can comfortably build up your sport specific fitness over the coming months but it takes many months/years to develop excellent technique, situational awareness and movement. (I’ve played/coached for over 20 years and would always promote skill development as soon as possible, for example:- you’ll stand out if your the quickest player on the team but will look foolish if you cannot pass a ball 10yds, whereas a solid technical player can dictate a game with only the basic levels of conditioning).
Once you have developed your skill and integrated into a team you can work on maximising specific ares of your game, such as speed, agility etc.
However, if you are stuck and cannot get coaching/join a team - i would suggest you determine what position you want to play. Then read up on coaching/drill manuals for that position, you can pick up some useful information and it’ll help point you in the right direction. There is a wealth of fitness/conditioning training knowledge on this site from some great coaches, alot of this can be utilised when training soccer players.
If you want some ideas of individual sessions integrating ball & fitness work feel free to message me and i’ll try to help.
I play a forward/winger position that likes to play on the right side usually. As for me I just turned 18 and I’ve been playing soccer since I was nine. Technically, i am better at some things and I am not good at others. I am a decent dribbler and a passer and a shooter, but my ball trapping skill is not good. Since skill development takes such a long time to develop that is why I was thinking if I am physically better than others I will have an edge and I will continue on improving my skill work everyday, but it’s hard to when you only have access to playing twice a week in pickup games. That is the only solution for now and doing drills on my own. Practicing against a wall does not really work out for me either because i will be at the park.
I was thinking my recovery days would be those tempo days. Do you really need to fully rest once a week or that just broscience? Can’t you adapt to having no full rest day if your diet and sleep is in check?
But if recovery day is a must where you take a day off in a week… Monday would probably be a good day to take an off day and treat some knocks I might have gotten in the 2 pickup games I played and let my body rest. Then Tuesday and Thursday try do speed and strength work along with high intensity soccer drills incorporated in the sprinting in the morning. Wednesday and Friday I can do less intense ballwork and tempo running, but I’m not sure about the distance. Would 2000-2500 be enough? I’m playing 2 days a week also. I am going to count running with the ball as part of my tempo work too or should I not do that? I was thinking maybe I should focus on technical drills in the beginning and then whatever I have left I will do some tempo and end the session but follow the general rule of not letting my speed slow down? Or should I just focus on making my technical skills of high quality daily (except my off day) and everything else is supplementary. I really am not sure how to set it up.
I am also really concerned abut how much volume of work should I do so that I don’t lead myself to overtrain again.
Btw what is your guys opinion about all this cns needs recovery for you to train to your best ? From your experience how much of this is true cause whenever I play on weekends and I do nothing for the week and just go play on Saturday and Sunday (both days are intense, prolly not as intense as heavy lifting or sprinting but still), I usually play better on Sunday than Saturday. I have tried this before. I mean if your mind says you are recovered and your body can handle it do you still need to worry about if CNS recovery or whatever? Cause sometimes I feel like training is not all about science, there are too many variables in the real world. Thus, training is more art than anything else. For example, ever since as a kid guys like Raw Lewis trained every single day, but I suppose genetics play a part in that as well, but is htere something we can learn from that/ I’m just saying some ideas… what do you guys think?
But Monday would probably be a good day to take an off day and treat some knocks I might have gotten in the 2 pickup games I played and let my body rest. Then Tuesday and Thursday try do speed and strength work along with high intensity soccer drills incorporated in the sprinting in the morning. Wednesday and Friday I can do less intense ballwork and tempo running, but I’m not sure about the distance. Would 2000-2500 be enough? I’m playing 2 days a week also. I am going to count running with the ball as part of my tempo work too or should I not do that? I was thinking maybe I should focus on technical drills in the beginning and then whatever I have left I will do some tempo and end the session but follow the general rule of not letting my speed slow down?
I am really concerned abut how much volume of work should I do so that I don’t get led to overtraining again.
Btw what is your guys opinion about all this cns needs recovery for you to train to your best ? From your experience how much of this is true cause whenever I play on weekends and I do nothing for the week and just go play on Saturday and Sunday (both days are intense, prolly not as intense as heavy lifting or sprinting but still), I usually play better on Sunday than Saturday. I have tried this before. I mean if your mind says you are recovered and your body can handle it do you still need to worry about if CNS recovery or whatever? Cause sometimes I feel like training is not science, there are too many variables in the real world. Thus, training is more art than anything else. I’m just saying some ideas… what do you think
Originally Posted by duxx
First off: Thanks for the reply Charlie! (great infor about speed reserve)
Altought I agree with you almost completely and I had implemented/modified your system for my needs working with soccer players (hills, short-to-short, no or very small SE etc) I have couple of comments to put:
It seems that you solve all problems with team athletes by prescribing tempo and speed, which is actually your sprinters do. Thus you basically copy the sprinters workouts to team athletes with little or no modification which I dislike. Please correct me if I am wrong here Charlie - not to critique you but to learn from you.
We do not have off-season here as defined by westerns. We have a pause of 1month during the june, and we have a 20days break during the winter. Our preparatory period starts with team practices and thus I must implement speed/tempo/weigths/plyos into team practices and arrange with a head coaches and menagers. Thus western concept of off-season where you have athtletes free of team practice when they are able to do athletic/sprinter like training is of little use in Serbia (except maybe that 1 month, but during that time athletes goes home and their trining is not organized nor controled - its their year vacation).
So how to modify tempo and speed in this situations?
In my last post I was reffering to the research of Jens Bangsbo in which he demostrated that players who did performed SE training (mainly with a ball: 2on2 small sided duel games; hunting a ball; repeated shooting at the goal with a sprint around the cone) greatelly improved his ‘field test’ than players who didn’t.
Bangsbo states that: ‘analysis of the matches has shown that the higher level of soccer, the more high-speed running is performed. The capacity to produce lactate and to repeately perform high-intensity excercise should therefore be specifically trained. This can be achieved trough speed endrance training’
But tat the same time Bangsbo writes: ‘However, it is recommended that this type of training is only used with top-class players, as the training is very demanding, both physically and mentally. When there is a limited amount of time aviable for training, time can be better utilized for other forms of training.’
‘Speed endurance training should have low priority and may be complitely omited for non-elite players’
‘Speed endurance training should not be used with players under 16 years of age.’
The quotes are from ‘Aerobic and anaerobic training in soccer’ by Jens Bangsbo (2005/06) pp150-151.
Looking forward to futher discussion!
( below was posted by Charlie Francis)
You CAN’T copy the sprint program directly because the sprints have Special Endurance while the soccer does not, relying instead on short bursts. Additionally, soccer requires a larger aerobic component. for example short sprints might include 6000 to 6600 meters per week of tempo, 400m might include 9000 to 10,000 meters per week, while soccer might require approx 12,000 meters per week.
As for moving to speed endurance training for the top athletes. this is directly in reverse of the direction seen with top level sprinters, where all general fitness avenues are exhausted, leaving more max speed as the only remaining means to better performance. Perhaps the testing is on those who are not totally aerobically fit (back to the bla discussion you pointed to earlier?)
Yes I’ve read these before… but how can you do so much tempo work if you are playing 2 games in a row so it has to be reduced obviously and skill training should be done in the beginning and everything added to it in the end, but if I’m doing speed training (hill work) wouldn’t it make sense to do hills first when you are fresh and skills later. same with lifting as can’t you just do your strength training workout and practice 10-15 minutes against the wall after your lifts are done? It’s not like I’m lifting to failure or get a pump or soreness in my legs.
Elasticity will come as a by product of how you train and what you do in your training.
Are you able to feel how elastic your muscles are now? Are you able to notice when you are not as elastic?
You mentioned feeling best on your Sunday games…, I am guessing you might be going into your game Saturday a bit flat? I wonder if you do a small warm up Saturday morning if this can be " fixed"? The idea with the warm up on game day would be breaking a sweat and adding a few light drills. Total duration would be less than a normal warm up.
Can dribbling fast be done on my tempo or “light days” as well? Can I not judge how my body and mind feels and train according to it? Like how would I even know if my cns was not optimal… if you say to yourself you need rest or your cns is not recovered then your brain will think that way which will influence your body so I think changing your thinking and not being stressful can help you train more as well. Thoughts?
Yes that makes sense I will just do my regular training and not worry about it then.
You see I have been a bit lazy recently and only been playing weekend games and I have been busy with school work so I have had a hard time following a schedule of training, but will definitely start soon so once I start training regularly again with the ball I think that won’t be a problem. My school is 5 minutes from my house and on the mornings of my weekend games would it be okay to do some wall drills and I guess it can be a sort of warm ups in the mornings of game days for me. How long should it last btw?
I think you are mixing things up. What Charlie suggests is obviously very fine, but it’s there to be adjusted depending on your needs. The volume given for tempo is for professional players, from what I remember. But overall, tempo volume should be higher vs. a short/long sprinter, that’s the point.
If you are in doubt regarding intensity, keep it either very low or very high. Don’t expect your body to dictate your mind -it’s the other way around…
Place those things first that are of priority depending on your plan. E.g., if speed is your number one priority for that day, do it first. If skill comes first, place it before tempo. In any case, technique should come first, generally speaking.
On more practical matters, I think Angela was referring to your Saturday match and the need for a short warm-up in the morning of that day. Try this first and see how you feel on both weekend days. Then you decide.
Sounds awesome. So since I do soccer skill work in the beginning I am doing some aerobic fitness so can my tempo work be less? And for some parts of the tempo I think I should dribble the ball at around 70-75% percent intensity as well.
Yes warming up in the morning prolly would be good. I’ll try it… maybe I’ll go to my school and do some wall drills as well with the ball to keep my coordination and awareness of the ball sharp, but will keep in mind that it’s a warm up. I’m going on vacation on Friday for a couple of days so when I return I will prioritize my training and be strict about it
70-75% of what? Of your dribbling skill max or of your grass-speed max? Ha. Re-read that thread -I think there is a talk with regards to bringing the ball into your conditioning or not. It’s probably up to you to make up your mind on this…
Skill training is a priority for me. Tbh I am already physically good enough to play the sport except my endurance but its my skill that lacks behind but if I can improve my speed and strength as well while I’m improving my skill it will make really stand up and help me take to the next level I believe. I meant 70-75% of grass speed max. If I am dribbling at my fastest would that still be 70-75% max of my sprint speed or what? I’ve read the thread many times but can’t really find info about ball incorporation except duxx saying there are high and low cns soccer activities which I’m not sure I even learned from that thread I think it was from a different source (his soccerspecific powerpoint has it). He says dribbling is a low cns activity but I’m not sure if it is easy going dribbling or match speed dribbling.
OK then, there is a discussion with regards to whether conditioning training should be done with or without the ball. Both can work or has worked. This forum’s opinion by those with some experience at the highest level was that conditioning would be better achieved without the ball. Search the forum as best as you can (via google, too).
Conditioning is better achieved without the ball for those at the highest level because they don’t need the extra ball work. For those not at the highest level, if you can incorporate the ball into some of your conditioning, the extra touches will be helpful. Some conditioning should also probably be done without the ball.
(joke)