Semi Professional Soccer and Athletic Development

As stated in an earlier post I ham going to use the team I am working with this year as a case study for everyone to view. The team completed the 2007 season in June and with the next season not starting until Feb 20/2008 you can see there is an extended off season. As in most instances with semi pro players they do not pay much attention to their physiological status during this time and thus pre season training becomes a large hill to climb. To combat this I had a testing date of October 16. At this stage (Phase 1) I give a report outlining results and than met with players to outline the following phases. At this stage I gave a a 6 week program that they were to complete at home. This program consisted of strength (3 x/week), speed (2 x/week), stability, agility and endurance (fartlek orientated) - if you want a detailed copy of this please email me. Every 2 weeks the players came in where they completed a session with me and the rest of the squad. This session was primarily focussed on speed with an emphasis on technique. At the completion of this 6 week period the players were tested again and Phase 2 begun on December 1. This phase consisted of 4 sessions/week in a team situation but strength sessions (3 x/week) were completed by the individual. This phase consisted of a combination of work with and without the ball for instance

• Group warm up
• Split squad into 2 groups (n-16)
• 1 group doing small sided games/group 2 doing speed and power (switch after 25 minutes)
• Squad comes together and completes longer intervals 9 4x4minutes@90-95%max H/Rate with 2 minute recovery)
• Group cool Down

Now if you know me you may ask those intervals seem quite long and I agree. It is a well published protocol that is reported to increase Vo2 by approx 10% after 8 weeks of 2 sessions/week. I do think it is long and I only used it for 4 weeks in combination with a shorter protocol that I developed. We used this shorter protocol 2 x/week thus Session 1 and 3 ws the longer protocol and session 2 and 4 the shorter.

DS Protocol

5 sets of (5 x 20m) 25s work 25 s recovery

2 min rest

6 sets (5 x 15m) 20s/20s

2 min rest

7 sts (5 x 10m) 15s/15s

These intervals are to be completed at 100% and are very specific because they involve the turns and are a sprint

These sessions were preceeded by agility work and ball mastery activities

Stabilty and co ordination were work on every session.

Again if you want detail please email me

At the completion of this 4 week block there was a 7.8% improvement in VO2 with the team average now being of 60 which is great for this time of year and also for a emi professional outfit