Fitness help needed for soccer.

Danye

I play football (soccer) and despite being half way through the season I'm still struggling with my fitness and its effecting my game.

I find it extremely hard to finish out 90 minutes and even a couple of 10 / 20 yard sprints early in the game would leave me gasping.

I do train with the team ( twice a week) and twice on my own. It might be maybe 2 gym sessions, or 1 gym session and 1 session of sprints and hill sprints etc so its not as if I'm not training.

What can I do to make sure I can get through the 90 minutes with ease? What should I be doing?

Help me.

Alf Veedersane

Danye wrote: »

I play football (soccer) and despite being half way through the season I'm still struggling with my fitness and its effecting my game.

I find it extremely hard to finish out 90 minutes and even a couple of 10 / 20 yard sprints early in the game would leave me gasping.

I do train with the team ( twice a week) and twice on my own. It might be maybe 2 gym sessions, or 1 gym session and 1 session of sprints and hill sprints etc so its not as if I'm not training.

What can I do to make sure I can get through the 90 minutes with ease? What should I be doing?

Help me.

What position do you play?

What are the sprint training sessions like? Distances? Rests? Number of sprints?

What's your longer distance running like?

Danye

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

What position do you play?

What are the sprint training sessions like? Distances? Rests? Number of sprints?

What's your longer distance running like?

Defender.

Sprint session on Wednesday was a 25 minute session of 10 hill sprints, 6 x 40 yard sprints with 10 second rest after each sprint and other 10 hill sprints to finish.

Longer distance is poor and non existent. Last attempt at 5k ended at 3.5k with 25+ on the clock.

JayRoc

Danye wrote: »

Defender.

Sprint session on Wednesday was a 25 minute session of 10 hill sprints, 6 x 40 yard sprints with 10 second rest after each sprint and other 10 hill sprints to finish.

Longer distance is poor and non existent. Last attempt at 5k ended at 3.5k with 25+ on the clock.

Sprints are not what you need to worry about. Your endurance is not up to par, so train it before anything else; aerobic base first, then build on that.

Not the stuff that sells ebooks but there ya go.

Alf Veedersane

Danye wrote: »

Defender.

Sprint session on Wednesday was a 25 minute session of 10 hill sprints, 6 x 40 yard sprints with 10 second rest after each sprint and other 10 hill sprints to finish.

Longer distance is poor and non existent. Last attempt at 5k ended at 3.5k with 25+ on the clock.

Full back, yeah?

How do you fare on the sprints? Chalking them down is one thing? How you do is another.

I'd use a distance more like 2.5-3k for a distance endurance to improve your capacity. Work on dropping your time for a distance like that.

MD1990

No point in doing 5k runs without a football your not a distance runner. Whats your diet like?
Maybe head up to a soccer with 1 or 2 of your teammates & do some extra training. 1v1's,Shooting,Crossing & Dribbling drills.

Alf Veedersane

MD1990 wrote: »

No point in doing 5k runs without a football your not a distance runner. Whats your diet like?
Maybe head up to a soccer with 1 or 2 of your teammates & do some extra training. 1v1's,Shooting,Crossing & Dribbling drills.

Not all fitness training needs to be done with a ball. Building middle distance speed will help with his endurance. Won't make him a better player but that's not what he's saying the problem is.

Training with the ball is crucial in general but shooting, crossing and dribbling alone won't make him better equipped to see out the full 90

MD1990

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

Not all fitness training needs to be done with a ball. Building middle distance speed will help with his endurance. Won't make him a better player but that's not what he's saying the problem is.

Training with the ball is crucial in general but shooting, crossing and dribbling alone won't make him better equipped to see out the full 90

Yes but u can improve your endurance while doing drills with the ball. Bayern & Barca do everything with ball for example except at the start of training where they do sprints. No soccer player should be doing 3k runs thats old school training.

JayRoc

MD1990 wrote: »

No point in doing 5k runs without a football your not a distance runner. Whats your diet like?
Maybe head up to a soccer with 1 or 2 of your teammates & do some extra training. 1v1's,Shooting,Crossing & Dribbling drills.

He has admitted his aerobic capacity is ****e.
So there's "no point" in training said aerobic capacity? Hmmm.

Alf Veedersane

MD1990 wrote: »

Yes but u can improve your endurance while doing drills with the ball. Bayern & Barca do everything with ball for example except at the start of training where they do sprints. No soccer player should be doing 3k runs thats old school training.

In fairness, we're not talking about players who are playing for Bayern and Barca. Their fitness isn't an issue when they arrive at the point where they do all that ball training.

And their training is for how they play. There is no one size fits all in professional football.

If you don't think increasing middle distance speed will help the OP, an amateur full back, we'll agree to disagree.

It's a given he gets enough ball practice in training.

braddun

try swimming twice a week


warm up before a game


drink lots water

tastyt

MD1990 wrote: »

Yes but u can improve your endurance while doing drills with the ball. Bayern & Barca do everything with ball for example except at the start of training where they do sprints. No soccer player should be doing 3k runs thats old school training.

Barca and bayern will certainly be doing runs without the ball for 4 maybe 5 weeks in pre season to build a base , therefore not having to do any thing but soccer specific training in season.

That and regular matches are enough to maintain their fitness.

The op needs to build the base as other posters have said

MD1990

Alf Veedersane wrote: »

In fairness, we're not talking about players who are playing for Bayern and Barca. Their fitness isn't an issue when they arrive at the point where they do all that ball training.

And their training is for how they play. There is no one size fits all in professional football.

If you don't think increasing middle distance speed will help the OP, an amateur full back, we'll agree to disagree.

It's a given he gets enough ball practice in training.

I believe he can achieve the fitness required by doing drills with the ball. For instance he could do 1v1 training with a teammate or 4 v 6 defensive drill with both would be very tiring.I leave it there now though.

Jimmy Iovine

Danye wrote: »

I play football (soccer) and despite being half way through the season I'm still struggling with my fitness and its effecting my game.

I find it extremely hard to finish out 90 minutes and even a couple of 10 / 20 yard sprints early in the game would leave me gasping.

I do train with the team ( twice a week) and twice on my own. It might be maybe 2 gym sessions, or 1 gym session and 1 session of sprints and hill sprints etc so its not as if I'm not training.

What can I do to make sure I can get through the 90 minutes with ease? What should I be doing?

Help me.

This sums me up completely.

I'm trying to cycle to work as often as possible. I'm hoping that will help.

Everyone has told me to do sprints. From reading here, I think I need to get working on middle distance as well.

JayRoc

MD1990 wrote: »

I believe he can achieve the fitness required by doing drills with the ball. For instance he could do 1v1 training with a teammate or 4 v 6 defensive drill with both would be very tiring.I leave it there now though.

He could do burpees for 3 minutes.
That would also be "very tiring".

People need to get over this nonsense of how everything must be 100% for 12 seconds or it's not worth doing.
Any athlete who might be asked to perform for 90+ minutes needs to have a significant aerobic base.

Alf Veedersane

MD1990 wrote: »

I believe he can achieve the fitness required by doing drills with the ball. For instance he could do 1v1 training with a teammate or 4 v 6 defensive drill with both would be very tiring.I leave it there now though.

They can be. I'm not saying ball work can't be tiring nor am I saying they won't help him as a player. They absolutely would. But just because it's tiring doesn't mean it will address his particular issue.

MD1990

JayRoc wrote: »

He has admitted his aerobic capacity is ****e.
So there's "no point" in training said aerobic capacity? Hmmm.

tastyt wrote: »

Barca and bayern will certainly be doing runs without the ball for 4 maybe 5 weeks in pre season to build a base , therefore not having to do any thing but soccer specific training in season.

That and regular matches are enough to maintain their fitness.

The op needs to build the base as other posters have said

They will be doing some running. But no way they would be doing 5k runs. Tempo runs 8x100. Playing games in small sided pitches too.

cc87

MD1990 wrote: »

I believe he can achieve the fitness required by doing drills with the ball. For instance he could do 1v1 training with a teammate or 4 v 6 defensive drill with both would be very tiring.I leave it there now though.

Both can be tiring.
Small sided games like that are incredibly difficult to control with regards to intensity and training effect. There are so many different variables (pitch size, player number, coach encourage, goalkeepers etc) which influence them that getting the OP to do some specific fitness training (intervals, runs, whatever works for him) would be much more likely to be effective in the long run.

Alf Veedersane

The OP isn't playing for Barca or Bayern.

He's playing as a full back at an amateur level and his endurance isn't up to scratch.

Improving his speed over 2.5-3km will absolutely help his endurance.

Is it the only way? No. Is it going to be effective? Yes.

nice_guy80

Find a field, run around it for 40mins at a steady pace. Once or twice a week won't affect your other training.

ixus

Shuttle sprints; 5/10/15/20m back and forth, totalling 100m. For time if possible. Aiming for sub 40seconds. Or, 30seconds on 30 off for distance trying to maintain a good average. Replicates game play.

Other; 1km run over a 100m shuttle back and forth for time. Work out your average speed. Average speed = distance/time.
Next session, 15 sec sprints 15 off for distance by 10. Retest in a month.

These replicate the stop start nature of the game. I know rugby and intercounty football teams that do these drills.

nice_guy80

ixus wrote: »

Shuttle sprints; 5/10/15/20m back and forth, totalling 100m. For time if possible. Aiming for sub 40seconds. Or, 30seconds on 30 off for distance trying to maintain a good average. Replicates game play.

Other; 1km run over a 100m shuttle back and forth for time. Work out your average speed. Average speed = distance/time.
Next session, 15 sec sprints 15 off for distance by 10. Retest in a month.

These replicate the stop start nature of the game. I know rugby and intercounty football teams that do these drills.

they are already doing this type of training

ixus

nice_guy80 wrote: »

they are already doing this type of training

In the spirit of Christmas: "OH NO THEY'RE NOT!"

Vast vast difference. Try it yourself.

ford2600

Of all the things needed to be good at field sports endurance fitness is the easiest to get right. Compared to developing technical skills, tactial awareness, team work etc endurance fitness is very straightforward with easily measurable and quantifiable results.

OP I'd listen to Alf Verdasanes advice if I was you

Jimmy Iovine

I ran 3km today after work. My legs felt heavy, especially around the knees. I managed it in 14"40. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. It needs to be improved upon. 3km every second day and then mix it with some sprint training. It's about five weeks before I'll be able to play another game with my team, so I'm hoping to see a huge improvement by then.

Oregano_State

Weight could be another issue. If you're carrying a bit of extra weight, losing 5kg would make an absolutely huge difference over 90 minutes.

Alf Veedersane

Just be sure it is actually extra weight, mind, if that's considered.

Though in many cases it can be. You just need to be aware of when.

If that makes sense.

Jimmy Iovine

I just weighed myself - 78kg. I won't be going dropping weight any time soon. I'm trying to put muscle on. Trying bring the key word lol.

I think I'll move towards doing Insanity soon. I just need to structure my day a little bit differently before then.

comeoniu

Begin in a standing position is important. Your feet should be shoulder-width apart. Now, lower your body into a squatting position, placing your hands on the floor in front of you.

power pants

hi I need advice

barca/ Bayern barca/ Bayern blah blah

Chancer3001

I was at my fittest for soccer when I was training soccer 4 nights a week.

I trained twice with the club and then twice indoor soccer.

I also found mma training to be hugely beneficial. It's loads of body weight exercises, squats, boots trippers, push offs, jumps, running up and down stairs etc etc

Alf Veedersane

Just a useful aside to the whole anaerobic/aerobic training buzz:

http://www.jtsstrength.com/articles/2013/04/09/conditioning-youre-doing-it-wrong/