The pre-season physical preparation is a key element for every soccer player. As a coach, it is your responsibility to offer exercises suited to your players to prevent injuries and ensure optimal physical condition throughout the season.
Lifestyle: a key factor for success in your physical preparation
Summer is over. No more barbecues, family meals, and evenings with friends. The season is starting soon, and your lifestyle must follow. The difference between players who overindulged during the holidays and those who managed to stay reasonable will quickly become apparent.
We advise you to emphasize to your players that they should quickly return to a lifestyle more suited to senior soccer. This obviously involves diet, but also sleep. Rest is a crucial element for any soccer player, regardless of their level. Nothing beats a good night's sleep after an intense physical session consisting of jogging, interval training, or core exercises.
How to prepare a senior physical session?
First of all, it is essential that you follow a specific order when planning your senior physical preparation sessions. The warm-up is even more important as the muscles have generally been at rest for a long period.
Next, you can implement muscle strengthening exercises: hamstrings, calves, quadriceps, etc. These exercises will help prevent injuries during preparation and later in the season.
Finally, we advise you to use physical work exercises more adapted to soccer players, such as fartlek. Instead of doing 50 minutes of jogging at a constant pace, you can do 20 minutes of jogging, then focus on fartlek runs. You will perform these runs at different paces (slow, moderate, fast) with varying recovery times.
Finally, you can finish with core exercises with the whole group, focusing on certain body parts, like the obliques, which are heavily used by soccer players.
