If you’re someone who has just completed a full season of competitive football then the chances are you managed to reach a respectable level of conditioning.

Now that the season is over it’s a common dilemma for players to be caught between getting their rest in but also ensuring they don’t fall too far off their base levels and have a mountain to climb to prepare for the new season.

When to Start

As you would have probably read in previous blogs here, if you have played regularly for the whole season you definitely require a brief period of full recovery and free nutritional behaviours.

However, if you haven’t played as often as you’d have liked or you are perhaps at a higher body fat percentage then you may have less time for recovering and have to get back into training a little quicker than the others.

Decision Made

Once you know which category you fall into you will either be recovered and ready to keep yourself ticking over until pre-season or you will be ready to put the work in to get yourself in the managers thoughts come pre-season.

During the off-season there are various components of fitness you can work on, depending on your weaknesses (can be found via testing – check out this article for more insight how).

One area that most players do well to at least start with is their aerobic fitness. This is the type of fitness that will keep you competitive for 90 minutes of sport. It will help you recover quicker from your sprints. It will help you recover quicker from your sessions, and it will help you continue to play at your best possible level as the season goes into the later stages.

Aerobic Fitness

There are a long list of methods you can use to develop your aerobic system.

In the off-season it’s a good time to gradually build up some volume of lower intensities or using lower impact methods as opposed to going straight into the deep end.

To keep the decision making to a minimum for you and give you a place to start I have provided three examples below.

Remember when using the below methods we want it to be aerobic training, therefore if you are using a heart rate be sure that your average heart rate between start and end of the workout is in the aerobic zone of training.

Running

Go to a football pitch and run from corner flag to corner flag diagonally at around 70-75% of your maximum speed.

Walk the width of the pitch towards the corner flag opposite you.

Repeat 15-30x

Do 2-3x per week.

First time you try it start at 15 repetitions. Add 2 repetitions every session until you reach 30 repetitions.

Cycling

Using a bike or spin bike, cycle:

30 seconds Standing Cycle

Easy Sitting Cycle for 30 seconds.

Repeat 20-30x.

Repeat 2-3x per week.

No Equipment Circuit

Burpee 10 seconds

Rest 20 seconds

Inverted Row 10 Reps

Rest 10 seconds

Squat Jump 10 seconds

Rest 20 seconds

Push Up 10 Reps

Rest 10 seconds

Repeat for 20-40 minutes

*Feel free to substitute the bodyweight exercises out for something else to keep it interesting. Just follow same format of bodyweight explosive movement followed by basic bodyweight strength movement.

Repeat 2-3x per week

Alternatively, you can do a mixture of all three sessions. The goal is to gradually increase the volume session by session, week by week. After a 3-8 week block of this type of training (depending on beginning fitness levels) you will be in a really good place to begin more intense conditioning sessions.

If you are looking for personalised and monitored conditioning training to take your football performance to a new level then check out the training we offer HERE or get in touch via email at conditioning@kikoff.com.au

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