In Sweden there’s been kind of a trend to do a lot of long distance running during the first part of the pre-season, and then as you progress towards the regular season you start to decrease the distance the players are running.
When you first think about it, it looks like a pretty decent idea, right?
Well, it isn’t. I am so tired of hearing coaches talk about “creating a conditioning foundation for the players so they have base to stand on” when the season starts. But here’s where it gets weird in my opinion.
Every pre-season you do a lot of conditioning, and then when the season starts you stop doing all intense-related work because you are afraid the players might get sore or tired during the in-season period. So when the season is over the players have a few weeks (months?) off from training, and then when they start the pre-season again, you start doing all the conditioning all over again.
I have seen this happen for the last 10 years and experienced it myself as a player. At the end of the pre-season, you feel like you are unbeatable, but somewhere during the season you lose that feeling, and when the next pre-season starts again, it feels like you’re starting again from square one. I like to sum this up and give you my idea and explanation on how YOU should set it up. To sum it up, I’d like to quote Will Smith:
“If you stay ready, you ain’t gotta get ready”
With that being said, if you work on maintaining a good level of conditioning all year round you don’t have to build it back up when the pre-season starts again, you can either take it to the next level or plain and simple just work on what soccer really is all about – playing soccer!
My players have a really great level of conditioning and therefore I am able to really work on developing their ability to play soccer, and develop their ability to play it at a high speed and a high level.
Stall. Again, this is precisely what it sound like: You’re “stalling” the footbag with various parts of your body, in order to exert more control over it. Think of it as catching the bag with the inside or outside of your foot, or your toe. There’s also a move called a “clipper stall,” which is an inside stall made while your foot is behind the opposite leg.
Arm Stall. You might think this move is a bit odd, since it involves arms instead of feet and legs. But many of the best footbag artists use whatever body parts make for the best maneuvers. To initiate this move, it’s important to kick the footbag high enough that you can reach it with your elbow. Then catch the bag in the crook of your elbow, and immediately straighten your arm to “bump” the footbag back into the game.
I was simply a trainer back then as I had little knowledge of either how to coach or indeed what to coach so we simply did drills that I had seen in books or on the television. It was all ‘old skool’ stuff but very effective for the level we were performing at, and it served me well for my future career. I was fastidious about being able to catch the ball and this was possibly the strongest forte of my game. I attempted to catch absolutely everything possible in training, there are always the inevitable shots that require a palm or a tip away but anything in my proximity I would strive to get hold of, again this is something that I have taken into my coaching – I want to see an attempt to catch the ball in the first instance. It doesn’t overly worry me if you drop it in training as long as you react to the fumble, but if you didn’t try to catch then how would you know what was possible in a game? There are many mantras that I adopt for each and every session and the goalkeepers that I work with quickly become aware of the levels expected of them, I find that by setting not just targets but achievable targets, motivates the goalkeeper into upping their performance and development quicker than a simple pat on the back and a “well done”.
You need to be able to perform a lot of high intensity runs and recover quickly, and maintain you mental state and make good decisions when you are tired!
So by doing a lot of small-sided games where you play for instance 4 vs 4, you can make the drill more intense and demanding by having the players play man-to-man defense, meaning when they lose the ball, they have one player they should mark and follow all over the field, no matter what!
That’s a great conditioning drill, and best of all – it’s fun!
To sum it up – conditioning should be done on the soccer field (at the end of the practice) and it should be maintained all year round, even during in-season
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