"5 Tips for the physical preparation in football" by Jordi Jodar (former fitness coach at Gimnastic de Tarragona, Spanish 2n B division team)

As a sport lover, I have concentrated my training in football, especially in terms of fitness preparation. If we want to be a part of the training staff at a high level, we must know all of the different aspects of this sport; everyone has to be specialist in their own field.

The objective which we want to achieve is that all our players have the best fitness level possible and to keep this level for all of the season.

You may think that is easy to say but difficult to achieve, right?

  

Now, I am going to explain 5 easy steps to get these goals.

1. Do as much research as possible about fitness preparation and in your specific sport. For example, read books, magazines, articles, and blogs... this will help give you the necessary information to apply the different concepts.

2.  Once we have started the preseason with our team, we should have made a plan of which skills we want to work with and how we want to incorporate them at different stages.

3. Duration and intensity. The different skills have to follow a simple program. We start with training of a long duration but a low intensity. With time we adapt our fitness, we start to reverse this process, this is to say that we are looking for a constant evolution to arrive at the first match capable of playing for a short time with a very high intensity. 

4. Flexibility is another important aspect to think about in our plan. The more we plan the better the result. But, we have to be very observant and adapt ourselves to the fitness level of our players, for this reason, it is basic to follow our feelings. We have to observe this in practice during the different parts, how are the players feeling and why not ask them directly how are their sensations at that moment.

5. Analysing the match. We have to focus our attention on how the players respond at any given moment of the game and to make the necessary conclusions:

- Do we start the games with a good level of fitness, are we active?

- Are we fast enough at beginning of the match?

-…

During the match, we can look for other aspects such as…

- Who is wining the aerial balls?

- Who wins the loose balls?

-…

As the end of the match is approaching, we must analyse the fitness form:

- Are we tired?

- Are we scoring goals during the final minutes?

- Do we let in goals?

-…

Following these steps we will be able to design and apply good and consistent training methodology for any team.

Written by Jordi Jódar (Fitness coach)