Soccer Fitness?

Coach David Tenney.  He looks kinda stern.

Source:  http://www.soundersfc.com/

Our buddy Dave who's gonna help us understand soccer fitness.

Source: David Tenney

David Tenney is the Fitness Coach for Sounders FC.  As noted on their website, David is "... one of Major League Soccer's most respected and highly-regarded fitness coaches..."  His better half, Allison Tenney, is one of Eastside's own.  Allison coaches the Girls U11 Blue (G98B) team.

I asked Dave if he'd be interested in authoring a series of fitness tips for the club and he graciously agreed.  Here's his introduction to the topic.... 

-----

I'm often asked by coaches and players for recommendations on the best methods, exercises, and drills to improve fitness. Players want to become faster, stronger, and fitter. Coaches want a team that can challenge, press, and cover a lot of ground over the course of the game. How can they achieve this?

One of the benefits of joining the Sounders staff is that I've been able to spend time this summer and fall doing more youth coaching for the first time in about three years. Spending an afternoon at a youth complex, you will see any number of different “conditioning” drills going on. You’ll see a myriad of different types of shuttles, sprints, 120’s, and long distance runs being performed by kids of all ages.

But what is soccer fitness? Are there any exercises or methods that can guarantee a player or team will become more fit? I think the most important thing to first consider is to define what soccer fitness actually is. Then create a set of exercises based on that.

Let’s be honest… Most of us soccer coaches aren’t the most imaginative or creative creatures when it comes to fitness. We’ll ask ourselves what we think worked for us. Then, guess what? If it was good enough to make me fit, it’s good enough for my team!!

From an analysis standpoint, sports scientists have defined soccer conditioning as:

1. The ability to perform soccer activities (sprinting, kicking, tackling, shooting, etc.) with speed and power (most sprints are about 20yds in length in a game)

2. Be able to recover from these activities quickly (recovery is done while walking, jogging, or backwards running).

3. Be able to perform these activities over the course of a match.

Does performing a 120yd sprint make us a fitter soccer player? How many times in a season does anyone actually sprint 120yds? If science tells us that most games are decided by the quality of our 20-40yd sprints, shouldn’t we prioritize that? There are lots of interesting and great activities that we can do to really help us become fitter in a soccer-specific way.

In future blog posts I'll discuss some things players can do, both on the training field as well as at home, to improve their fitness for playing soccer.
Good Luck!!

More on Health-Fitness

Zackery Lystedt Law
Nutrition for the Soccer Athlete
Preventing ACL Injury
The Importance of Hydration
Sniffle sniffle cough cough