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''

Leaving the defence behind!

Drill #4 is here, the last one of the individual dribbling drills.So make sure you like it.

I made up this drill a bit after I attended the London ''Win a pro-contract'' trials by Samsung. At the trials we were asked to do a similar drill and I was not satisfied by the result I got on it, so after the trials I made this progression of the drill to practice on.

Neymar dribbling past multiple defenders

The drill concentrates on beating a defender after a defender, again and again, the distances are varying, so you don't only practice at 1m or 2m or 1.5m etc. I think this drill has helped me a lot and in the beginning for me it was hard to perform it, but now its one of my favourites.

As always it's made on paint, respect my efforts haha

Drill #4

The drill is nothing out of this world, but as you can guess you need to cover it on full speed.
The cones are as many as you can decide, with a minimum of 10.
As you can see the space between the cones decreases as you move on to the middle and then increases again at the end.
I recommend beginning distance to be around 2 m and to decrease it by 20cm by each cone.


The rules are that you need to do a skill to beat the defender (cone)  and go around it, after that you move on to the next one, I'm not gonna lie, it can get frustrating especially when you do it at full speed, but in a game it would be useful for any position.

A good progression of the drill, like the one I said last time is trying to juggle past the cones and do an air skill after each one, for example Around the world or Elastico.


Difficulty Level: 9.5/10


Links to last drills:
Drill #1
Drill #2
Drill #3

''Confidence comes from discipline and training.''
-Robert Kiyosaki

 

Agility+BallCTRL

Hey guys!
Firstly I've got an extension/challenge for Drill #2, which I posted on Tuesday, if you haven't seen it, link will be at the end of the post.

Extension:
The extension I thought of is simple, its doing the whole drill, but instead of dribbling you need to kick the ball up in the air and do kick ups throughout the whole course.
If you can throw in a trick or a skill.But that's about it, feel free to message me and we can compare our best times or comment on how you found it.

Eusebio juggling a football (1971) 

Secondly, I've prepared Drill #3!

Lavezzi, Lucas, Messi, Giovinco and Inui are one of the most agile players according to FIFA 14, I personally am not a massive fan of the game and I don't blindly believe in the players ratings, but one thing is indisputable, that agility is important in football.

So the drill I picked for today is to an extend similar to the Arrowhead test with football, which Ronaldo performs here. It is similar, in a way, because it has the same turns and high speed involved as in the arrowhead  agility drill.

Drill#3

This drill is really simple and needs to be performed 3 to 5 sets if you want to improve your agility while on the ball.

You can use any markers as cones as I said in the last post I blogged, so you don't need to worry about that. You would need 5 cones, but you are welcome to add more if you don't feel like its good enough, but I ensure you the drill is hard enough with only 5 cones.Set up the 4 peripheral cones 3m apart from each other.

Stage 1: You start from any cone at stage one and you need to be with the ball throughout the whole time.The first thing you do is dribble to the central cone and turn as quick as possible back to the cone you started off from.

Stage 2: After you have finished with the first cone you need to dribble to the next cone, try and throw in a trick, while keeping a full speed on, this replicates more of the real game.

You need to repeat stage 1 and 2 until you end up at the cone you started from, that's one set complete.
Good luck with the drill and don't put anything less then 100% !

Marco Reus is know to be a skilful and agile player at the same time.

Difficulty level: 8/10


I will post again tomorrow, oh and here are the links to the previous drills:

Drill#1
Drill#2

''I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.'' 

-Muhammad Ali 

Tuesday Drill

Continuing from where I left off yesterday today I've researched and prepared Drill #2.

This drill is my personal drill (well it's not the most original) and it concentrates on turning, dribbling past obstacles and change of direction, after a few sets of it, you really begin to feel the ball and be comfortable with it.

A proper execution of the drill will definitely help any player improve on their speed with the ball, its particularly useful for wide players, because they have more space to attack and to accelerate.

Messi, changing direction in a game situation.

The drill is simulating the way Messi dribbles, in particularly the change of direction in rather then to a skill to beat a player.


Now, I'm warning you, you'll have to put up with my bad Paint skills, because that was the most convenient way for me to present the drill, since there is not a video to show it.

Drill #2

I tried to make it as clear as possible -
The red circles represent a cone
The white circle is the ball
The black lines represent the movement 
The gray lines and rectangles represent each stage of the drill.

Now back to the drill, for a start its not necessary to actually use cones, you can use shoes (if you've got enough pairs), bottles, rocks, anything really that can be used as a marker.

Stage 1: For this stage you either need to kick the ball against a wall and receive it or pass to a partner and receive it. After receiving the ball you turn and proceed to stage 2, it's crucial to learn to turn properly, I advise you to spend some time learning how to turn, if you are not on a reasonable level already. Try not to only turn with your legs but your body too, later when you're comfortable with a standard turn you can get creative and try to turn with a chop or maybe faint before a turn.


Stage 2: After you've covered stage one, you need to go in and out of the cones, the number of cones is by your choice, but for me 5 is the minimum you should cover, but not too many, try to put them on a distance of around 1 feet between each other, similar to any drill, before you try to do it as quick as possible, you first would want to be confident with doing it. So try it slowly and when you are confident you can start progressing. Also try out different dribbles, for example only inside, only outside, inside and outside, roll, one foot and so on.


Stage 3: While stage 2 was concentrating on close ball control, stage 3 is more about body faints and change of direction, this part you should try to cover quickly, the ball and you must go around the cone, concentrate on the way you change the direction, imagine the cone is a defender and do your best to beat him.The distance between each cone should be around 5 feet, throw in a skill if you want to make it harder.You can use between 5 and 8 cones.

Stage 4: Together with stage 5 at this point you need to start hitting full speed with the ball and turn as quick as you can and accelerate towards the next cone. For the setup, place the cone 7 or 8 feet away from the last cone from stage 3.

Stage 5&6: It 's by far the simplest part of the drill, you need to make a full circle around the cone and accelerate to the finish line which is where you started from.The cone should be around 7 feet away from the previous one.


This drill is quite simple and you can easily vary it by putting a goal to shoot at at the finish like to practice finishing as well or try with a different size ball. Time it to try and beat your previous score, which is guaranteed to help you take the most out of training. Remember put thought into how you do everything you do, imagine how it applies to a real game and think how a defender would act.

Good luck and see you tomorrow!

Difficulty : 7/10

''Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.''

-Aristotle 


> Drill #1

Dribbling drill #1

Messi, Ronaldo, Bale, Suarez, Neymar, Hazard and many more footballers... what's in common in between them is dribbling, Messi has dribbled past almost twice as many players for the last 5 years then anyone else in La Liga, Hazard has the most successful dribbles for this season in the EPL and Suarez has the most attempted dribbles for last year's EPL season. All key players... Now I'm not saying dribbling is the only aspect of the game helping them but from the statistics a clear image is arising, hence my article on dribbling today.

I'm going to discuss a few ways I'm planning to start training ball control and technique these days, I will assume you are training mostly alone, but I do have drills that require a partner.

For this week I have chosen 4 drills to do alone and 1 with a partner to work on your dribbling soon I am going to write on defending, shooting & scoring, passing & crossing and also fitness drills.

Bale dribbling in a game for Wales

Drill #1

-The basics,
I think this is not really a drill rather then a repetition of the basic moves in football, nevertheless it's a great way to get quicker feet, improve ball control and that combined with creativity can produce miracles.

It's really just a video of a guy showing you what moves to do, I think if you spend 30/40 min. two days a week doing this drill you will almost immediately see results. Don't bother about the speed you execute the drill at, just try to get it right for a start.

Difficulty level: 6/10

I'll leave you with this drill to practice, I'm going to post the next drill tomorrow! Don't forget to subscribe, thank you.

I leave you with this quote from Bruce Lee:

"I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times."