Thoughts on Charlie Francis and soccer

[nanny69]

@NumberTwo

Here is a question - what do the top goalkeepers do for training? Do they lift weights? Do they perform significant aerobic training? Do they do jump training? Or, are they simply sticking to game specific drills and game play?

Perhaps the top keepers only stick to the game specific work. Does this make it correct? Could they be optimizing their training? It goes back to the same old question of:

• Are the top players in sports simply so talented, that training outside of the game can be very general and infrequent - because their skill is so much more important?

Or,

• Could the top players even be better if they were following an optimized training plan that included all of the critical training elements (including recovery and regeneration work)?

Just as a side note… A friend of mine was working with one of the top baseball players in Major League Baseball. This player was injured when he came to him. He didn’t actually follow a training regime in previous off-seasons. But he was still one of the top players. The simple fact that this player actually engaged in a training plan eliminated the injury issue and has allowed him to be even better this season. This is not an isolated case, particularly in skill-intensive sports.

A basketball analogy would be say, Kobe Bryant versus Alan Iverson. I met Kobe’s trainer when Charlie and I did a seminar back in LA in 2003. Kobe trained hard. Iverson didn’t train.

aussie keeper mark schwarzer rated by many as one of the worlds best keepers is a workaholic doing a minimum of 3-4 sessions a week in his own time…

mark paston who had a fantastic WC in goals for then kiwis does gym 3 times a week…