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Ever watched a football match? Ever wondered how they get in such good shape? Ever wanted to emulate this? Well you’re not alone. Time and time again the issue is raised, but never do we hear how footballers actually train – until now.
The Key Ingredients
It is important to get the correct amount of skills training and gym work, whilst nutrition is just as important in building fitness, providing you with the energy needed to propel yourself in your sport. Be aware that all three must go hand-in-hand, whatever your sport.
AFCB’s skills training is set at a modest 2 hours per day – yet of this only roughly 90 minutes is spent actually training. The rest, as Bradders puts it, is time spent “getting your water breaks and your coaching in.”
Gym work is also essential, and typically features during the afternoon in an AFCB player’s schedule. This will consist of core strength and conditioning training for 40 minutes, and will be tailored to different players’ strengths. Depending on your position, or sport trained for, certain physical attributes will require more work than others. Importantly, “every player is different, everyone performs well at different things”, and it is these fields in particular that should be enhanced more.
Come Wednesday, reward yourself with a weekly rest-day. This helps recoup from the previous day’s exercise as well as building stamina for the rest of the week leading up to match day.
Adapting Your Game
Thursdays and Fridays are devoted to tactics, with all training drills being specifically created to build resistance against upcoming opponent’s tactics – this may include set-piece defence, possession games or counter-attacking drills.
Adapting your game is of huge importance; after March’s 2-0 loss at Exeter, Lee recalled “we didn’t keep the ball very well, so we concentrated on keep ball sessions afterwards”, showing flexibility is often needed in training.
It is also important to realise that no one drill is ‘better’ than another. Lee was quick to mention “you need to coach your team regarding the weaknesses you see within them in order to make them stronger – that’s what training is for.” Finally, training shouldn’t be thought of as a chore but something beneficial for your fitness – but this isn’t to say training is long-winded, boring, or monotonous. Sprint training, for example, is only ever over 30yds or less, with “explosive, short, sharp bursts” being the key ingredient in successful training drills – “we’ll do three drills at70%, three at 80% and three at full potential of only 20 or so metres.”
Food for Thought
Nutrition is fundamental in maintaining good health, with firm favourites at AFCB being chicken, pasta, salad, yoghurts, fruit and rice pudding. Whilst snacking on unhealthy foods is discouraged, as always in moderation it can be fine – so don’t punish yourself too much! As Lee puts it though, “you have to want to maintain correct nutrition yourself to get the best out of yourself”.
One stumbling block many of us will find, especially with student prices so low, is drinking restrictions. Lee enforces a 72-hour no-drinking policy before a match day, with drinking otherwise dissuaded appropriately, so if you’re serious about your fitness, knock the booze for a bit too!
