How to Get Match Fit for Football/Soccer | Tips to Build Stamina

Many players are starting their seasons again in the Spring, which means those intense matches are just around the corner.

As a player, it's your responsibility to make sure that you're ready for those matches physically, and that you're able to last 90 minutes and able to still play sharp when your legs are heavy with fatigue.

The fitter you are, the better you will be able to stay concentrated during the final moments of the game, and the more you can be an asset to your team when trying to break that deadlock in the closing stages of the match.

However many players don't know or understand how to build the fitness and the conditioning they need in order to be able to last a full match. They simply rely on their team fitness training sessions to get them through.

Don't get me wrong. Team fitness is great, especially if your team is doing fitness 2-4 times a week. If that's the case for you, then you most likely don't need to worry too much about individual fitness.

That is... if you want to remain average.

If you want to be a step ahead of your opponents and your own teammates, being that extra bit fitter will be a huge advantage on the pitch.

So if you're looking to step up your game and get match fit, then follow the steps in this blog post to make sure that you're correctly conditioning your body to handle the loads of a football match.

How to Build Fitness for Football

Replicate Match Scenarios in Your Trainings

In a football match, you're constantly changing directions, changing speeds, running with and without the ball, sliding and going up for headers, etc.

It's important that you are replicating these actions in your own individual fitness sessions so that your body can adapt to these type of actions so that you can perform them more efficiently on gameday.

Too many players make the mistake of training their fitness by going on long runs at a constant pace. This type of training is called Low-Intensity-Steady-State Cardio (LISS), and the problem with this type of training is that it's not football specific.

In a football match, you're never running at a constant pace for an extended period of time. Football is a very high-intensity sport, and you're going to have to go from a jog, to a sprint, to a recovery walk, to then immediately another sprint, then another jog, etc.

If you're looking to get match fit quickly, it's important that you are performing high intensity bursts of energy during your training sessions, and improving the efficiency at which you are able to perform game-specific actions with less rest.

Does that mean you should stop doing LISS or long runs as a footballer? No, not at all. Long distance runs can be helpful for improving your Lung capacity and for preventing any injuries associated with running. It can also be an efficient recovery method if done at low intensity.

However, as a footballer, your priority in your fitness training should be game-specific HIIT workouts, since this is the best replication of what you will encounter in a football match.

Improve By Decreasing Rest Time

When training for sports-specific fitness, it's important that you are progressing in difficulty over time in order to make sure you are pushing your body past what it has adapted to.

For example, if you perform one type of fitness drill every week 2-4 times a week, with the exact number of reps, sets, rest, work time, etc., you will definitely see improvements in the first few weeks from doing it, since your body has not yet adapted to that load of work.

Over time, that exercise will become easier and easier, which is a good sign, since it's demonstrating that you're getting fitter and what was hard before is now manageable. However, if your goal is to continuously build fitness and be able to last 90 minutes, then you need to make sure that you are building off of that one drill.

Our bodies are amazing, in a way where they can adapt to their surroundings and change their capacities based on the stimuli they are put through. That is why we are able to build strength, muscle and fitness when we put in the work. It's because our bodies are able to adapt to handle the loads we place on them.

Because of this, if you expose your body to the exact same drill over the course of a few weeks, and never change the difficulty of the drill, you won't be seeing any changes in your fitness in the later stages, and you will hit a plateau. This is where you are not improving your fitness because your body has already learned to deal with that previous difficulty.

That is why it's important to increase the difficulty of the training in order to continuously push your body past what it is able to handle so that it can adapt to higher loads.

The best way to increase the difficulty of a fitness drill, is by decreasing the rest time, and working for the same amount of time, or even more if you want to challenge yourself extra.

By decreasing the rest time, you are stripping your body from the time it uses to recover from the exercise, and forcing it to have to recover quicker from the intensity of the drill.

For example, if you performed a sprint for 20 seconds, and rested for 40 seconds initially, decreasing the the rest time to 35 or even 40 seconds pushes your body to have to rebuild it's energy and oxygen stores quicker before the next sprint.

If you're looking to get match fit for football as quick as possible, utilizing this change in work/rest rate will push your body past its limits and help you quickly condition it to be able to recover quicker and perform.

Maintain Consistency

Another big mistake people make when training their fitness is not training enough, or they're not consistently progressing overtime.

Some players train their fitness one day a week, and think that's enough to quickly build the conditioning they need to last 90 minutes on the pitch. Other players do a fitness session one week, skip it the next week, and then do it again the following week.

In order to force your body to adapt to the load you are placing on it, you must train your stamina at least twice a week, and progress over time. Training one day a week, or not having a good plan when training your stamina will hinder your progression, and you won't build enough stamina quickly to sustain you for 90 minutes when the games roll around.

If you're struggling with maintaining consistency with your stamina workouts, then I suggest you keep a journal or create a note using the app in your phone to keep track of your fitness sessions and make sure you are progressing over time.

I recommend that you plan your weeks ahead of time and plan out your fitness sessions throughout the week so that you can have a better idea of when and how much you will be training.

For example, maybe you have a fitness session every Tuesday and Thursday, or maybe every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, etc. The important thing is that you are creating a plan for your fitness training and ensuring that you are progressing in difficulty over time in order to overload your body's capacity and force it to adapt to higher demands.

Incorporate On-the-ball Fitness

Another great way to build match fitness and make sure you are physically prepared to last 90 minutes on the pitch is by incorporating ball work into your fitness sessions.

When you are overcome with fatigue and your body starts to get heavy from constant running, your touch and your focus on the ball begins to drop, which makes it a lot harder to keep control of the ball and be able to play sharply.

This is known as 'fatigue touch,' and it's something that can play a huge role on the outcome of the scoreline at the end of the match.

The team who has the fittest players who are able to keep sharp control of the ball even when they are extremely fatigued, have the best chance in exploiting the open spaces and mistakes committed by their opponents.

This is why sometimes the first, game winning goal can be scored late in the match when two teams are neck and neck. It's because one team was able to utilize the fatigue of their opponents to break the lines with the sharpness of their passes and find a way to squeeze the ball into the back of the net.

By including technical drills in the midst of your fitness sessions, you are placing heavy emphasis and stress on keeping control of the ball even when you're legs feel heavy, which is an excellent way to improve your technical ability, and your ability to maintain control and focus on the ball when you're tired.

This focus on controlling the ball while under fatigue also places your body under even more stress as it fights to maintain sharpness and coordination while performing the technical drills which can further help you build your anaerobic capacity and perform at higher loads.

Here is a great drill you can do to improve your fitness with and without the ball:

Takeaway

Having an amazing technical ability will definitely help you in a football match...

But only for the first 10 minutes of the game.

Once the athlete is exposed to the high intensity demands of a football match, such as repeated sprints, changes of direction, changes in speed, and constantly having to track back and mark an opponent, that technical skill will drop in quality in the duration of the match, and the player will be rendered useless.

That is why it is critical for all players to work on their physical side just as much as the technical side, especially when they're in season.

In order to get match fit and be able to last a full 90 minutes on the pitch, fitness sessions must be game specific, where the player replicates the type of actions they encounter in a football match, such as quick sprints, accelerations, changes of direction, etc.

Training for stamina also requires consistency, where the player follows a well-structured training plan to help them push their bodies to adapt to higher loads often. By training your stamina 2-4 times a week, and progressing over time in difficulty, you are on track for quickly building stamina and match fitness.

The best way to increase the difficulty of a stamina session, is by decreasing the rest time allowed between sets in order to force your body to have to adapt to recovering quicker in shorter amounts of time. This will help build your anaerobic capacity which will help you perform repeated high intensity actions in a football match.

Lastly, training your stamina with the ball will also help replicate the type of things you would encounter in a football match, and will help improve technical ability, as well as your ability to maintain sharp control of the ball in the late stages of the match.

Training for stamina is a GRIND, and it's up to you to Get Up and out of bed, to go and improve it.

Thanks for reading! Alex from GoGrind Soccer signing off...

Get Up. Go GRIND.