Ask the Experts - Fitness

Answers from John Shepherd:

Q.Due to the length of a football season it is not possible to be at your peak fitness at all times. What type of fitness training would you suggest to do in the off-season to prepare and during the course of the season to ensure that fitness performance is maximised? Tony

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Answer:

Tony, preparing for a sport with multiple competitions like football is complex! Most football conditioners use the pre-season as a means to develop speed, endurance and power and the in-season to maintain these qualities. You may have heard of periodisation. This is simply a structured way of planning training. Athletes use it to prepare for major competitions and go through training phases that gradually build fitness to peak levels for the main ‘peak’. As noted football does not allow this, however, there is a periodisation model that can be applied, this is known as undulating periodisation (UP). UP requires the coach to select from all the relevant training variables, speed, endurance, skill, agility and so on and to employ them ‘at the right times’ in-season. Thus you could be sprinting over 20m one day and doing a 30 minute anaerobic various distance running session the next and weights the next. UP relies on the skill of the coach and having tests in place and crucially a specific understanding of each player’s fitness levels and needs.

The latter is important as it could mean that different players are doing different training at any one time, due to their specific needs. Limitations on space prevent a detailed training consideration for in-season and pre-season. However, the main aim of pre-season should be to develop power and speed. These are football’s main requirements. More general training is less relevant, like 5 mile runs. Football is a power/anaerobic sport and not a slow endurance/aerobic one. Give yourself 10-12 weeks to develop primarily speed and power pre-season and then maintain it in-season. If you look through PP’s on-line archives you should find articles on periodisation and speed and power training preparation.