My six week personal training programme for football.

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My six week personal training programme for football

   

   By William Oliver

My six week personal training programme for football

I have been asked to plan a training programme for a particular sport over a period of six weeks.  I decided to design the training programme for football.  The training programme would improve my cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance and a little work on basic skills. Cardiovascular refers to the heart and blood vessels. Cardiovascular fitness is improved by regular training and a little bit on my agility and flexibility.

Football is a sport that requires strength in all major body parts with particular emphasis on the shoulder girdle, back, hips, and legs. It is also a sport where most injuries are caused by too-tight and inflexible muscles, so stretching and flexibility routines are extremely important, not only to help avoid those injuries, but also to improve agility and speed. A football player, whatever position he plays, needs quickness and power. Also you need a good fitness level to keep up your work rate for the full 90 minutes.

I will try to include all the training methods in my training programme

Circuit Training

Circuit training is a method of training. A circuit usually has 8 to 15 stations, where at each station a different exercise is carried out for a certain amount of time. Circuit training can improve muscular endurance, cardiovascular endurance, aerobic fitness, muscular strength, speed and agility.

A circuit-training program may also be designed for a certain sport. Circuits for this purpose will include exercises to improve all the muscles and skills associated with the sport.  Example: A circuit training programme for football should include skills, like jumping, kicking or dribbling.

For continuous training we exercise without intervals for resting. There are two types of continuous training:

Long, slow distance training.  For this type of training we work at between 60-80% of our maximum heart rate.

High intensity continuous training.  For this type of training we work at between 85-95% of our maximum heart rate.

Fartlek Training

Fartlek training involves training over distances far greater than our actual competition distance.  It is a method of training in which we vary our pace and training conditions.  It is a very good method for games players as they are involved in short intense activities followed by brief periods of recovery.

Interval Training

Fixed patterns of slow and fast exercises are used in interval training. It means alternating between strenuous exercise and rest.  The rest time give us time to recover from each period of exercise.  Each repetition of a pattern is called a ‘rep’ and you have to finish a ‘set’ before a rest.

Weight training

Weight training improves muscle strength and tone. There are three types of weight training: Isometric training in this type of training, the muscles contract but there is no movement. Isotonic training in this type of training, Muscles contract and shorten producing movement.  Kinetic training in this type of training, muscles contract and shorten at a constant speed.

                                                                                                

I will try to include all the principles of training in my training programme.

Principles of training

Specificity

My training programme is for football and it is based over a six-week period. The exercises are specifically suited to what is needed to play football. The training program is specified for an outfield player, as there are no goalkeeping skills involved in this circuit.

My training programme is aimed to improve only muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance a six-week period. But all of these are needed for an outfield football player:

Muscular endurance

Muscular strength

Speed,

Agility

Cardiovascular fitness (endurance)

Ball skills

Muscular Endurance is needed in football to keep the muscles contracting for the full length of the match without them becoming tired or weak.

Muscular Strength is the force your muscles exert when they contract. This is an important part of football as it is a contact sport and it is also very physical, players need to be able to guard the ball and hold other players off when they are challenging for the ball. Also muscular strength is useful when taking a throw-in, good muscular strength in the abdominal muscles is required to throw the ball higher and further to reach a player that is a long distance away from the touch-line.

Speed is the ability to perform a movement in a short period of time. This is essential in football, for example to be able to sprint after a through ball or tackle an opponent who is through on goal.

Agility is the ability to change direction quickly and control movements of the whole body. This is needed to be able to change direction quickly while dribbling or to collect a loose ball.

Cardiovascular Endurance is the ability of the heart, lungs and circulation to deliver oxygen and remove waste during exercise. This is essential for the player to keep a constant pace all the way through the match. It would be better to improve this by running long distances or cycling.

Ball Skills, the skills in football are all open skills. This means that the movement will change in a different environment. A skill is a particular action or set of actions. These are essential for football as they cover everything from a simple pass to more complicated skills of dribbling the ball in different directions. These are all motor skills as they are skills involving movement.

Overload

To improve the fitness of a part of the body, you need to overload it. That means you need to make it work harder than usual. Over time, it adapts to meet the increased demand by getting fitter.

You can overload your body in three ways: By increasing the frequency of the exercise. In other words how often you do the exercise. For example start by exercising twice a week, then move up to three or four times a week. By increasing the intensity of the exercise. In other words how hard you work. For example run faster or lift heavier weights or by increasing the time you spend on the exercise. If you are very unfit you might start off jogging just for 5 minutes a session, and work your way up week by week to 30 minutes a session.

Progression

Your body takes time to adapt to the increased demands on it. So you should build up your exercise level gradually. But once it reaches a certain level when it can comfortably deal with the level of exercise, it will not improve anymore. To prevent this from happening the exercises must be made progressively harder to ensure that the body continues to improve.

Reversibility

Your fitness level changes all the time and it will go down if you stop training.  It takes much longer to gain fitness than to lose fitness.  Therefore it is essential that exercise be carried out regularly to keep your fitness level up to scratch.  I have made sure of this in my training programme by doing it on a regular basis.

The F.I.T.T Principle

 

Training programme

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My training programme will cover a period of six weeks.  My training programme takes into account all of the training methods and the principles of training.  The training programme should be for three days a week. Each of those three days should cover at least 45 minutes of exercise. If the exercise is less than 45 minutes, it should be repeated until the 45 minutes are complete. 5 minutes of this will be for the warm up and five minutes will be for the warm down.  The exercise done on the first day of the week will be ...

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