PFT’s INSIGHT INTO IN-SEASON TRAINING FOR FOOTBALL

What we have noticed in our time in the industry is that we have seen a lot of coaches give advice on training for certain sports, in particular the off or pre-season work.  However we have not seen a lot of articles on training whilst progressing through the season so we have decided to post an article relating to training of footballers.

First of all we have a certain amount of issues we have to address before we can periodize a programme for our athletes (that’s right for the slightly less intelligent, footballers are athletes too).  The main problem we have is to not cause our athlete to overtrain, cause a higher chance of injury through tiredness, altered motor control, stressed adrenals, decreasing ROM and functional flexibility and other contributing factors such as inappropriate movement patterns etc.  The main aim is to consistently improve on the athlete’s ability and trying to not sacrifice any other types of fitness due to the long season and the amount of games played throughout.

First of all what we don’t understand is that a lot of coaches talk about maintenance of strength.  Why should anyone maintain strength?   The time spent on maintaining would sure as hell be better spent on gaining as long as you don’t tax the body in a way it loses performance ability. 

Throughout the season players will tend to pick up niggles and small injuries here and there.  Us being coaches should notice and solve these problems by using our knowledge.  Most of the time footballers will develop compensatory movement patterns due to the fact that they will pick up knocks and they are probably weak in certain areas as well.  A lot of work should be focused on training muscular imbalances and weaknesses so this will reduce the chance of injury and further damage to those areas. One of the main reasons for injury outside of nasty challenges is the athlete’s inability to pull the joint out of a full ROM when they are moving at speed or they are changing direction.  Sometimes this might be down to structural imbalances and not necessarily motor control and muscular co-ordination.

Football is very dominant in flexion and adduction from the leg and spine so this is one of the fundamental reasons for hamstring injuries and glute inhibition (or it could be down to lack of strength) and It has to be addressed throughout the season.  As the adductors work in conjunction with the hamstrings if the athlete has a faulty movement pattern this can cause the muscles to “fuse together” in a way that whenever they move from the knee it can be caused to fall inwards also they will have flexibility issues within that region.  One of the ways to target this is to strengthen the hip stabilisers i.e gluteals, IT band.  This way it will help protect the hip and the knee better creating a structural balance and it should be high up in the training programme in terms of importance. Strengthening the hamstrings and adductors and teaching proper movement patterns of the body should be apparent but we will write this in anyway just so that trainers don’t jump on the “bandwagon” and neglect the obvious.

Ankle and foot strength is essential for any player trying to make his mark and have a successful playing career (I cant believe I had to say that).  In football the boots that the athletes wear tend to cause a loss of proprioception within the foot and tightness in the fascia underneath the foot.  Other things that it can contribute to is over pronation of the foot, weakness in the lateral chain sling system, possible glute inhibition, weak lower back etc (even by releasing the fascia under the foot it can increase movement in several joints by a number of degrees.)  Doing fascia release to the area will relax the muscles that have tightened up under stress (the tonic muscles) and the surrounding area, increasing proprioceptive awareness and better motor control.  A lot of supplemental exercises should be done to strengthen eversion and dorsiflexion of the foot so that the tibialis anterior and the peroneous muscles have adequate strength and gives a structure balance to the constant playing in boots.  Training in barefoot is also a very useful tool for the foot to strengthen itself and to teach it to fire the correct muscles everytime in the gym.

We at PFT refer to a lot of Westside training methods but during in-season training we don’t recommend using a lot of bands and eccentric work.  Reasons being eccentric movements are one of the main reasons for creating DOMS (delayed onset of muscle soreness) due to the fact that during downward phase of movement the non contractile elements of structures work harder to hold joints in place e.g tendons and ligaments would have to tighten to hold the shoulder in place if you were doing eccentric bench work. Although this is extremely important for any movements and developing strength we feel that this tends to cause soreness quickly and/or overtraining.  Bands also do not teach the body to eccentrically slow down because of the speed the downward phase generates to gather kinetic energy.  Although this is great for developing reactive and other types of strength, we feel it’s inappropriate during the season.  Also due to the amount of work players have to do during the in-season we would rather strengthen the body to move “eccentrically” through sports specific movements and that means to the personal training world, playing the damn sport and not balancing on a single leg while on a stability ball kicking a football to each other (you be surprised, some trout has probably tried this!).

Footballers need a lot of cervical strength.  This is extremely important as the athlete uses it to strike or header a ball under control.  Having adequate movement and strength in that area should be obvious and there should be some sort of incorporation into the programme.  Other things that should also be considered which are also important are thoracic flexibility and strength, accumulation of fatigue through assessing the adrenals, the fitness and conditioning of the athlete, agility, coordination and balance and to be honest the list could probably go on but as long as you address the main points and consider the others there is no point in overcomplicating it (even though what we have wrote might seem a little daunting, it isn’t!).