Fitness is the bane of my existence. Not that I don’t like doing fitness activities… It’s just that I think coaches way overdo fitness, especially in the USA. We seem to always have physical specimens on the pitch but lack in the technical side of the game. Here’s my two cents on cardio based fitness…
Story Time: I used to coach at a high level academy that allowed me the opportunity to try out different ideas that I had. I was coaching an under 16 group of players that had a high ceiling. We always did the beep test at the beginning of the year and then periodically through the rest of the year to see our players improvements. I had some disagreements with some coaches regarding fitness, but the director of the program trusted me and allowed me to try out things that I believed in even when I was hot-headed about my ideas. (Thanks, you know who you are!)
At the beginning of the year our beep test scores were average compared to the other teams in the program. I set up a plan to get my teams fitness to a higher level as well as improve their technical ability by not wasting any time doing generic fitness, like running. The plan was simple and based off of the High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) idea.
I would set up my practice session and then use a stopwatch for every exercise I was doing. For example, I would do a simple passing square just as many coaches do. However, I would do it for 1-3 minutes at a time while holding the players to a very high standard for effort. To keep the players effort level high I just positively motivated them. Think terms like, good pass, great touch, etc. At the end of the 1-3 minutes, I would let them rest while I made pointed coaching points. Think things like, hit the center of the ball with your foot, your first touch can put you in a good position to pass, check your shoulder before turning, etc.
After several months of doing each and every practice session with the same fitness idea, our team retook the beep test and absolutely crushed it. If my memory serves me correctly, the team I coached had the highest overall fitness scores. The first thing I learned is that the fitness levels of the players increased drastically due to the way I was coaching. The second, and even more interesting, thing I learned is that the players were so used to pushing themselves through physical work that the beep test didn’t even bother them.
That under 16 team I coached ended up producing the following: 5 collegiate and then professional athletes, and 13 collegiate athletes.
In my opinion, the USA lacks players that have the technical ability to make it to the next level, not the physical side of things. Please don’t waste time during training sessions to run your players… build a training session that gets fitness in while improving their technical ability.
forwardthinkingsoccer.com