Slowing down in the second half?

Feeling like your technical ability is struggling by your fitness levels?

It’s common issues we find with football players at all levels.

Whilst around 70% of a match is played at low-intensity the high intensity moments are the match winning opportunities so if you can maintain your high intensity running throughout the 90 minutes you have far more chance of influencing the game.

won't my football training take care of this?

We’d love it to but it appears that adding some specific repeat sprint training (RSA) in addition to your training will improve your ability to sprint repeatedly and also improve your score on the popular Yo-Yo endurance fitness test rather than relying on football training alone

A study in 2015 (Nedrehagen and Saeterbakken) showed that the players who completed the repeated sprint training in addition to their training regime improved the Yo-Yo score by over 200m whilst also decreasing increasing their sprint times.

The players who completed football training only improved their Yo-Yo score by 30m and their RSA barely changed at all.

What does this mean?

Two birds with one stone.

In a nutshell, if you want to be able to sprint as fast you can, recover from it quickly and then be able to do it again then you will need to train repeated sprint ability. Additionally, if you want to be able to last the 90 minutes and be considered fit enough to play the game then you will need to improve your score on the Yo-Yo test.

Based on the study it appears the 8-week training program below incorporated weekly on top of your normal training will give you some good improvements in both the Yo-Yo test and your RSA testing.