A Pro's stamina!

Hey guys,
Today I'll dive straight into it and start by saying that playing football can be tiring,  at any level, football never looses it's intensity, so one of the main attributes that professional athletes posses is stamina, the stamina needed to play an intense game of minimum 90 minutes in which, through sprinting, jogging, walking etc players on average can cover around 11km of  distance.

Keep in mind these values are really an average distance for ALL  players, including goalkeepers who as well can cover around 5 km a game, for midfielders the value goes up to 13 km, David Beckham for example covered 16.1 km in the match England VS Greece to eventually take England to the World Cup.

Nike trials, Stockholm Yo-yo test (beep/bleep test)

I think the point is quite clear by now, that the professional players have... like mad stamina. Hence my topic for today is going to be stamina. Personally I don't think you should just do VO2Max training and never touch a football, that's why I always incorporate the football in the training, I feel like it makes the training more football orientated and I sort of kill two birds with one stone - Stamina + Dribbling.

I remember last year on Christmas I went on a holiday in a certain country which ended up being covered with snow, so I was forced to stay indoors most of the time and had little training to keep my condition, so after 3 weeks of holiday food, lazy life and relaxation I found myself, no not fat, but out of shape. I had 3 weeks until my trials and I needed to act quick so I went out and did the most hardcore training I could think of and to my surprise its still quite hard even when I'm in top condition.

Soo prepare for Paint Skills!

Drill to improve stamina

So if the picture is not clear enough, you need to start from the cone on the bottom right hand side and sprint full speed to the next cone (40m away), next pick the ball and dribble it slowly to the bottom right hand side cone and again sprint up and down. And that's one set done. For a start try doing 5 sets and increase with time & experience of course. 

As well as this drill you can try the beep test which is a standard way of measuring your VO2Max for the Nike Academy. What I also like doing is an untimed variation of the beep test with a ball in my feet where the rest time between each sprint is 10 seconds. 

Hopefully you try the drill out, and maybe get one step closer to that pro contract or Nike academy contract. I will soon be back with a new post, till then work hard and play harder!  

''Become indispensable. Be the player who is prepared to do the dirty work and keep your team ticking over in difficult games''