Advice on Fitness for Football

Syke

Hi,

Long time reader, first time poster

I've a fairly good level of fitness, I'm a little heavier than I'd like to be but I'm quite stocky so it seems hard to look thin for me anyway. I can run 7 minute mile or 3 miles in about 25 minutes. I can cover (the one time I tried) 5 miles in about 43 minutes. I go to the gym maybe 3-4 hours a week and focus mostly on cardio and upper body weights (mostly chest and shoulders).

To get to the point, I joined a soccer team thats a good deal better than the level I normally play at and despite my thoughts that I was fairly fit I was really struggling. Granted the game was played in heat I'm not used to (30 degrees) but I stayed hydrated and thought I'd last the 90.

So I'm thinking my fitness isn't really up to scratch. I'm going to be playing a competitive and a training match every week but I'm wondering what I should be doing in between.

Up to now I've been doing 3 miles on a treadmill, sit ups, upper body weights, 20 minutes on a eliptical trainer and then sit ups and crunches.

I've been told that ideally I should do leg weights to increase speed (although I think now I'm fairly fast in the sprint) and that I should do runs that cover repetitions of 15 meter sprints followed by cool downs.

Any advice on what sort of training I should be doing would be greatly appreciated.

dv6

Hi Syke, try HIIT training, as this is similar to the type of running you'll be doing during a match. I train with a Gaelic team 3 times a week and once we have our initial fitness work done at the start of the year that is the end of the long running, everything else is match driven, so train in short sharp bursts with small rests in between to best simulate a match scenario.
As you will be twisting turning etc in games set this up in your training too, so not just straight sprints, set up cones, or any sort of marker and see how fast you can negotiate these obstacles throwing in some backwards and sideways movements, do this, time yourself and then try to improve on the time.

joker77

As dv6 said - you need to be doing stuff that's going to simulate what your body goes through in a match. Most soccers teams train twice a week with a match at the weekend - how come your team doesn't?

If your match is on a Saturday, the 'hard' training session should be on a Tuesday, giving you Thursday to have a lighter type session - more ball work / skills than running.

For example, Tuesday could be 1 - 1.5 hours of warmup, stretching, short sprint drills, zig-zagging around cones / poles, in-out ladders, some ab conditioning, finished off with a match.

Thursday would be warmup, stretching, some short drills, ball work (passing / heading / shooting drills), finish with a match

To do all this though you need a team, if you're training on your own it's a bit more difficult. For this I'd suggest doing the 'hard' day - a couple of days after your competitive match. Do some sprint drills, zig-zag stuff and as dv6 said try to do stuff that you'd do in a match, running between obstacles, backwards etc. Rest in between each exercise by walking around, again this will simulate what happens in a match. Try to push yourself as hard as you can in each exercise if you're training on your own, a football team would have a coach there roaring at you, but seeing you don't have this it's up to you to get the most out of it.

Syke

Thanks guys that seems to be doing the job