The Physical Demands of Football (Soccer) - Part I

I probably will cop a bit of flack for persisting to describe the round ball game as football whilst living in Australia. Heck, our national team is called the SOCCERoos. Yet I can't help myself. It just makes sense. Of all the footballs, it is the one in which you use your foot most.

Nomenclature nitpicking aside, I said I'd write about the physical demands of the game, so this leads off my two part series which will look at the physical demands of football. This first part will discuss the energy system demands of the game, as well as a suggestion on training for it, whilst the second part will discuss the motor skills required to make it big, or just make an impact at your local ground.

Analysis of World Cup play showed that players on average covered a distance of 10 km in a game, yet over 51% of the high intensity action lasted only 20 seconds or less. Actual sprinting occurred even less, at only 5.8% of the time spent running, Gambetta (2002).

Other analysis shows a total breakdown of movement as follows: It was found that during the 90 minutes players spent 17% (15 min.) standing, 42% (38 min.) walking, 16% (14 min.) jogging, 25% (22 min.) running with less than 2 minutes of this sprinting, dos Remedios (2010).

What does this mean though?

Well, before I read this, and before I knew much about physiology, I would have said soccer is an aerobic dominant sport. Yet now I realise that although it appears to be an aerobic sport, the game is played with a constantly elevated heart rate, with peaks and troughs as effort goes up and down. There are bursts of effort (anaerobic), and recovering from those bursts (aerobic).

With the breakdown of movement, you can see that the game is almost like a multi-directional, reactive, series of sub-maximal high intensity intervals, that last 90 minutes. So hopefully it is a bit clearer that football is much more anaerobic than it appears, and as such, training should be planned accordingly.

It was interesting to hear Sir Alex Ferguson comment on Manchester United's pre season training this summer. He mentioned how in years gone by, the players would perform longer distance running, which included 400 m runs, 800 m runs and often higher. This season he said most of the work was 200 m runs. This is is the change in thought process that parallels his comments I blogged about relating to improvements in sports science.

So ideally, an interval form of training would be used, that taxes high intensity efforts, moderate intensity efforts and low intensity recovery. Multi directional movement is well suited, as it mimics the game, as does incorporating both reactive and proactive ball work into the intervals - it is no good to have a player that can run all game, but can't control the ball when fatigued.

So a sample program could be:

Warm Up:

- Full Body Mobility Circuit (Rocking ankle mobilisations, split stance adductor mobilisations, squat to stand, high knee walks, forearm wall slides, lateral lunge walks)

- Some easy jumping drills

Intervals:

- Box to box runs (from 18 yd line to 18 yd line, at a high, but not flat out pace), perform 10 runs, resting as long as it takes to perform the run

- Multi directional ball drill (groups of 6, with 5 forming a circle holding balls and one in th middle, for 20 seconds, the player in the middle runs to whoever calls his name, and returns a pass played to him, at the end of the 20 seconds, the next player in the circle goes. Repeat 6 times)

- Set up cones/players in a zig-zagging fashion for about 30 metres. Players run from cone to cone and rest 4 times as long as it took them for a total of 5 rounds

- Suicide runs with a ball (From end line to 18 yd line jog, from 18 yd line to halfway line run, from halfway line to 18 yd line walk/very slow jog, sprint the last 18 yds and repeat. Begin at 6 minutes and add 30 seconds each time until 10 total minutes).

Now this isn't a perfect program by any stretch, but it emphasises high intensity repeated efforts alternated with recovery periods, in multiple directions, with and without the ball and in a reactive and proactive manner - just like in a game. Keep that in mind, and you will be well on your way to your best season yet.

References:

Gambetta, V., (2002), Gambetta Method - A Common Sense Guide to Functional Training for Athletic Performance, 2nd Ed., Gambetta Sports Training Systems, Sarasota, FL

dos Remedios, R., (2010), Soccer is an aerobic sport, isn't it?, accessed here

Nick Efthimiou is a Personal Trainer and Masters student of Osteopathy at Victoria University in Melbourne, Australia. He is interested in science, philosophy and psychology as it applies to health, fitness and sports performance. His blog can be found at http://nickefthimiou.blogspot.com