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Volume 1 – sample highlights (1995)
Peter Vermes U.S. National Team Reveals in V.1 #1:
“My weight work is done in a circuit, with three exercises per station. Each exercise in the station is performed for 30 seconds, with one minute rest between sets. A sample circuit would be bench press, 45-degree angle lunges with weights and lat pulldowns. During the minute rest I juggle a soccer ball. I do not rest between exercise stations. On a typical day I work through nine stations, then go to some abdominal work.”
John Duncan, Performance Tests for Soccer — What the World Cup Team Results Mean to You Reveals in V.1 #2:
Field tests the coach or athlete should consider measuring of soccer-specific running speed. Important factors are acceleration, stride length and frequency. Midfielders require a speed endurance component, whereas outside players need first step speed (see page on how to develop). One test to consider is a 120 yard run with a running start. Measure the first 40 yards for a good indication of acceleration, the second 40 for speed endurance, the third 40 for sustained speed endurance (conditioning). To measure stride length and frequency, mark off a set distance. While running the distance count the number of strides and divide into the time of the run to establish frequency, then measures the average length of stride in the dirt (length).
Volume 2 – sample highlights (1996)
Bjorn Ekblom’s European Trends in Soccer Conditioning Reveals in V.2#4:
Today’s elite players are better trained than 15 years ago. There is an overall trend to the physical aspect of the game. Areas of emphasis and advancement are nutrition, injury prevention, diagnosis of injury and testing to find individual strengths and weaknesses. In Sweden, we see trends toward individual training. This was uncommon 10 to 15 years ago.
Jens Bangsbo’s Yo Yo Tests — Practical Endurance and Recovery Tests for Soccer Reveals in V.2#9:
To provide useful information, a test, must be relevant to and resemble soccer. Cooper’s 12 min running test is frequently used in soccer. It is easily performed, if a track is available. However, the continuous intensive running in the test is not relevant to soccer.
New tests which evaluate performance in various sports, including soccer have recently been developed (Bangsbo, 1994). They are called the Yo-Yo tests. These tests include movement patterns, such as turning and accelerations, which occur in soccer. By using the Yo-Yo tests the fitness level of soccer players can be determined quickly and easily. Two markers are positioned at a distance of 20 meters. A CD controls the speed at which players run back and forth between the markers. The speed is increased until the player can no longer can maintain it, at which time the test ends. The test result is determined by the distance covered during the test.
The test can be used by players of any training status, since each of the tests has two levels. On one side of the tape is a test for less trained players. On the other side is one for well trained players.
Volume 3 – sample highlights (1997)
Ronald W. Quinn’s Response Conditioning Before Physical Conditioning, Part 1 Reading the Game and Focus Reveals in V.3#1:
Why does the young player dribbling the ball not respond to all of the sideline comments to PASS? Perhaps with the amount of energy, effort, and attention required by the primary task of dribbling leaves little capacity to attend to the secondary task of passing.
This concept of attention capacity also supports the small-sided game concept. Very young players, U-6 and U-8, must definitely play on smaller numbered teams, i.e., 3 v 3, 4 v 4. A field that is too large and/or too many players on the team (5 v 5 to 11 v 11) create information overload. Thus, with so much of a player’s attention capacity given to controlling the ball, a large field and inappropriate sized teams create such a large volume of additional information to be processed that reaction time and any “tactical” decision making ability is greatly inhibited.
Roby Stahl’s Speed Training with the Ball — Break Through Your Comfort Zone with Technique on Demand Reveals in V.3#7:
Place cones 20 yards apart. Player (X) starts the build-up run attaining full speed by the first cone. Coach serves ball into player’s path; player must control without losing speed, sprinting to the designated cone. Coach should give each player a few chances to perform the new exercise within their comfort zone. Start service on the ground, demanding that the player take the ball with left foot, right foot, etc. Build up to bouncing balls, air balls for thigh, foot, chest and head. Coach observes speed, technique and proper distance, and that the ball is played away from the receiver on first touch. It will be normal for players to lose control at the beginning of the activity.
Volume 4 – sample highlights
Joseph Luxbacher’s The 7 Speeds of Soccer — Action Speed with the Ball Reveals in V.4#5:
The following sequence of exercises is designed to improve a player’s action speed with the ball. The exercises place players in situations that replicate, to some extent, the time and space constraints encountered in the game. Towards that aim a variety of game-simulated pressures are incorporated into the practice. Such pressures include:
- repetition of the skill
- speed of movement
- player movement coupled with speed of skill execution
- restricted space coupled with speed of execution and player movement
- diminishing space and challenging opponents
Greg Andrulis’s The Crew Approach — the Soccer Conditioning Specialists and the Performance Resource Team Reveals in V.4#6:
A twelve week program was initiated at our first scheduled pre season practice. The program was divided into three phases. The first phase was designed to develop a strong aerobic base. Activities included cross country runs of various durations, typically from two to five miles. The second phase included the introduction of interval training as well agility training. The third phase was the introduction of anaerobic training as well as plyometrics. Due to the length of the program various training methods and sport specific aids were incorporated to keep the players fresh and the training progressive. These included parachutes, resistance cords, circuit training and the REACTION COACH.
During this twelve week pre season period, sport specific training and pre season games took place. The games were used to compliment the training program as well as serve as an informal measuring device to assess the effectiveness of the program.
Volume 5 — sample highlights (1999)
Neil Sedgwick’s Periodization/Planning: Practical Coaching Suggestions Reveals in V.5#1:
If we look at the Annual Training Plan (or Yearly Planning Instrument), it is meant to make planning and implementation easy for us. All the information is sitting in front of us and it is clear that during certain periods we must emphasize specific performance factors. However, it is sometimes difficult to determine how much to train these performance factors for development or for maintenance. How much do we change the volume and intensity each week, each month and each year? What is the percentage of volume and intensity that should be used at any one time? During a game or a practice, it is very difficult to measure the distance and intensities used because soccer is intermittent. Players will run, walk, jog and change directions with and without the ball. How do we measure this? It seems soccer training is not always straight forward in its quantification.
Paul Driesen Interval Exercises for Improved Endurance and Soccer Skills Reveals in V.5#7:
Obviously, a 90 minute soccer game cannot be solely an anaerobic or aerobic acitivity Of the 90 minutes the average soccer player walks for 40 minutes and stands still for 3-4 minutes. During the remainder of the game (approximately 46-47 minutes) they jog about 35 minutes and sprint 7 to 16 minutes depending on their position. Every 30 seconds they have to run and every 90 seconds they have to perform a full sprint. Once every two minutes a player gets a three second rest. All and all soccer can be a fairly intense activity which contains many interval-moments.
This soccer game reality should be copied and trained. The coach should create an environment in which the game is emulated during practice. Interval training is the ideal way to prepare players for the “real thing”.
Volume 6 – sample highlights (2000)
April Heinrichs Conditioning Interview Reveals in V.6#2:
“All of our programs are designed specifically for the female soccer player. The team’s divided into forwards, midfielders and defenders. This is not to be confused with the belief that the forwards have to lift differently than the defenders do, but rather to keep them rotating off of different machines, so they don’t wait. For example, if you’re trying to get 22 girls through the bench press, on any one given day, that’s a lot of waiting. So, they divide into three different days, rotating their days.”
Sam Snow’s The KOVAC Test — Measuring with Ball Speed/Endurance and Shooting Accuracy Reveals in V.6#7:
We use this in our ODP program. This test is also a good indicator of anaerobic power, because after about 6 to 8 seconds you are no longer generating power but using the momentum you built up in the first 4 seconds.
How to do: Use a starting cone. Depending on the age group, set the next cone 26 to 28 yards away, with cones one yard apart up to 35 yards. You need two coaches to administer the test;one to watch the clock, yell start and stop after 4 seconds, the other to watch the athlete to measure how far they get. The first coach is at the starting cone. From a standing position the coach yells GO to see how many yards the player gets in 4 seconds. The second coach measures which cone the athlete gets to.
Volume 7 – sample highlights (2001)
Don Kirkendall’s Soccer Medicine and Science- Acute and Chronic Tendon Injuries
Reveals in V.7#4:
Patellar tendonitis can be a painful and frustrating injury. Prevention is the key. One exercise that can be done on a leg extension machine or by manual resistance is the short arc leg extension. If doing by manual resistance sit on a bench as if doing a leg extension as instructed below. Have your partner place their hands above the ankles and apply resistance in both directions. Here is the description if you are doing it on a leg extension machine. Position yourself properly on a leg extension machine according to the manufacturer’s instructions. Start with the knees at locked (extended) position. Lower the resistance to approximately 10° from full extension and return to starting position. This creates a short arc motion. Do two to three sets of 10 repetitions. This exercise is best performed throughout the year for injury prevention purposes.
Huey O’Malley’s Assessing National Team Conditioning Reveals in V.7#6:
In a perfect world (and it’s getting better for us) we educate the player. We can’t educate the club coaches, but we do try to give them some guidelines at their request. Players who have been invited into camp, upon their departure, receive an explaination from the coaches and medical staff, such as “you are not at this level yet,” or “you’re at a certain level where you need to improve and there are the things you need to improve on.” So the players’ awareness is there. It is starting to work. I can gage this by the fact that the injury levels of players coming in have been lower the past few years. This speaks for itself for the conditioning levels.
Volume 8 – sample highlights (2002)
Anson Dorrance’s Seasonal Conditioning at the University of North Carolina Reveals in V.8#1:
The reason we do all this type of testing is that we want to hold our players accountable for their own development. We test in order to have the players review where they are and to find out where they are at with their peer group, other soccer players here at UNC. What we are guaranteed is a group of players that are working hard. And you are going to see the harder working players succeeding in all the different test areas. We do this for motivation and to have an idea that they are training properly and with the correct intensity. We have two ways for the players to look at their results. The first is against the team they are playing on. But we also have them look at the results against themselves over time. There are two matrixes going on. One is a matrix versus everyone on the team. We call this a competitive caldron.
Bob Warming’s Favorite Exercises of the Coaches Reveals in V.8#5:
Interval Ball Sprints
Two player partner up and stand next to each other. The coach steps out 5-10 yards, the distance can vary during the same exercise. I might start at 10 yards, and after several repetitions, I might step in and take it to 5 yards, depending on what it is I’m looking for from the players at the time. Let’s say I’m 10 yards away from the players, who are lined up on the midfield stripe. They have partners, and the partner passes the ball out. The pace of the ball should take it out approximately where the coach is, 10 yards out. The working player on the midfield stripe sprints out to that point, where the ball is, stops the ball by stepping on it, turns, takes a dribble, and returns the ball back to the passer. The passer immediately puts the ball back out on the first, or no more than on a second, touch. The working player turns, and again, sprints out to the area where the coach is, about 10 yards out. This is repeated. Generally I like to go 20-30 seconds in the early season. The recovery period at the start is 60 seconds. As the player become more fit we reduce the time to 30 second for a one-to-one, 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off work-to-rest ratio. The players then switch roles. The passer becomes the working player. In order for the exercise to work properly, the passer needs to give accurate passes that have good pace. The “resting” players, must remain on their toes and fight off the physical and mental fatigue they are feeling from having just completed the exercise in order to be able to deliver passes quickly and accurately. Quality passing is a very important part of the exercise. If they don’t give a quality pass, they incur the wrath of the player who is sprinting out to get the ball.
Volume 9 – sample highlights (2003)
Ken Pollard’s New Conditioning Concepts in Soccer Reveals in V.9#2:
Coaches frequently and comfortably manipulate training sessions to emphasize certain techniques, tactics and psychological elements. Some adventurous and progressive coaches have on fitness days attempted to manipulate game related situations to work players. More commonly the players are sent to a conditioning specialist prior to or post session for fitness work. Both scenarios can and do work; however the factors utilized in many training sessions may be manipulated to control the training load on a daily basis.
John K. DeWitt and Lee Hancock’s Making Soccer Sport Science Work for You: The Psychological Aspect Reveals in V.9#4:
Another critical area that involves psychology is the effectiveness of rehabilitation after an injury. There are many players who have been injured and have not been able to recover, or after they have recovered they fail to return to the ability level prior to injury. While the methods used to rehab surely will affect the recovery, so will the motivation of the individual to recover, and the individuals mental ability to play after injury without fear.
Volume 10 – sample highlights (2004)
Larry Gardner’s a Coaches Guide — Preventing Injuries in the Soccer Player through Posture and Muscle Balance Reveals in V.10#1:
The possible injuries that may occur are plantar fascitis pain (under the heel), posterior tibialis tendonitis (ship splints), and patell tendonitis (jumpers knee).
This is the corrective strategy for the pronation distortion syndrome: increase flexibility by using the foam roll and stretching the gastrocenemius, soleus, peroneals, adductors, IT band, psoas and rectus femoris.
Band walking, floor bridging, iso ab progressions can accomplish core stability, and crunches on the ball can increase the core stability.
Balance can be enhanced by the single leg balance progression; single leg (SL) to opposite arm/toe touch, SL squat touch, single leg slide, SL Romanian dead lift (RDL), SL RDL overhead press.
Jeff Tipping’s Power vs. Endurance Training: Understanding the Complexity of Soccer Conditioning Reveals in V.10#2:
We have always tried to push the concept of “economical training.” It is training players in such a fashion that the four components of the game are addressed in the training sessions. You have your players for 90 minutes, say from 6:00-7:30 twice a week. What can you do in those three hours that will address all the needs of the players? That is where economical training comes in. Soccer training is constantly changing. As humans become more sophisticated, training has become much more specific to soccer. In the old days, training involved having the players run around the field five times before they played. That has changed as coaches have become more sophisticated. We are getting more soccer-specific training. Everything is related to the game and to the position that you play, which I think is a good thing.
Volume 11 – sample highlights (2005)
Chochi Valenzuela’s Technique Based Speed Training for Soccer — The Three Principle and Practical Training Considerations Reveals in V.11#2:
In soccer you have different types of speed, but we are going to focus on physical speed for now. In my clinics, I break it into two sections. One is quickness, which I define in soccer as moving in short spaces. We work on the speed ladder in 10-15 yard spaces where you never really get the chance of a full stride before you must turn direction. For quickness, it’s all about how quickly you get your feet back to the ground and how explosive are the first 3 steps. In soccer, in the first 15 yards, players are rarely making runs in a straight line. From 20 to 60 yards, you will make a sweeping run or maybe suddenly change the angle of the run. We call that pure speed. The first concept in mechanics is that you want your athletes to be up on the balls of their feet so they are elevating their body. Most coaches say they want athletes to run on their toes, which is misleading because it slows them down. You actually want them to run on the balls of their feet. They should drive their knees towards the target and pump their arms.
Chris Kranjc’s the Basics of Goalkeeper Conditioning — What to Do with the Time You Have Reveals in V.11#3:
If we are looking at an 8-week schedule, I would probably spend the first 3-4 weeks on core strength and stability, balance and coordination, and basic technical work to get their skills, catching and diving cleaned up. The next 3-4 weeks would be devoted to quick reactions and explosive power, footwork, and agility. We can include the ball here. Hopefully, the whole time they are finishing games because they must get out there, from both a psychological and tactical standpoint. If we are looking at a 4-week schedule, the first 2 weeks are going to be balance and coordination, and the next 2 weeks will be quick reactions.
Volume 12 – sample highlights (2006)
Tracy Ducar’s Bridging the Gap: From Speed and Agility Training to Positional Training — Improving Lateral Footwork for Goalkeepers Reveals in V.12#1:
The recommended footwork into a dive is to step with the foot closest to the ball, at an attacking angle to intersect the path of the ball, as the arms extend to catch the ball. The upper body stays forward over the front knee as the knee bends (similar to a long lunge), to either ease the body to the ground for a collapse dive or explode up and out for an extension dive. Therefore, if the ball is on the right, the step is with the right leg. However, the movement is actually initiated from the push off the back (left in this case) foot. Then once the body is moving in the direction of the ball, the power and drive comes from pushing off the lead plant leg (goalkeepers must have good hip and leg extensor strength) and the drive of the arms to the ball, as well as the drive of the back leg across the body.
Brian Goodstein’s The DC United Conditioning Program — Surviving and Thriving during the 10 Month Season – Part 1 Program Overview Reveals in V.12#3:
Speed endurance is accomplished by doing alternates or six flags running. The field is divided by six flags, one at each corner of the field and two at each end of the midline. The players perform laps going from one flag to the next varying the type of running they do. For example, we could do alternates, which includes sprint to the first flag then jog to the second and continue repeating the sprint/jog pattern around the field. The length of the alternates also changes starting with alternate of 50 yards, then 100 yards, 150, 200, 250 and finally 300 yards. We do each one of these alternates four times at each distance with a three-minute rest before moving to the next distance. We also use this as an endurance test to see where the players are.
Volume 13 – sample highlights (2007-08)
Ian Jeffreys’s Soccer Speed Development System Based on the Movements of the Game Reveals in V.13#2:
Just as in strength training, where seven fundamental movement patterns can be identified, a similar approach can be applied to agility. Soccer speed and agility can then be broken down into a number of basic movements patterns, which can be efficiently linked together to form the soccer based movement we see on the pitch. Optimum performance in soccer based agility is then based upon the efficient and effective combination of these movements.
Katie Reisbig Cordery’s Seven Things Soccer Coaches Should Know About ACL Injury Rehabilitation Reveals in V.13#4:
In recent years, there has been a large emphasis on preventing ACL injuries through specific “ACL Prevention Programs.” These programs support the theory that with proprioceptive training, strength training, flexibility, and instruction on proper landing techniques 2-3 time per week, ACL injuries will be prevented. These components are definitely important in providing stability and reaction time to one’s knee; however, these programs are not always effective.
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