How to Lead the Preparation Period and Make Your Players Match Fit?

In order for athletes to achieve a state in which they are unequivocally fit to play at a top-level – “match fitness”, which differs from the simple readiness to play – we’ll bring certain segments of the reality of training closer.

In terms of a large number of injuries, most of the problems for athletes can be caused by unadjusted training and preparations of the team for the new season, i.e. the inability of coaches to adequately prepare the team. Especially now, when athletes made a significant break due to coronavirus pandemic.

Duration of Preparation

Before the start of the season, the management will generally ask the coaching staff how long they want their preparations to last. It will offer you 4, 5, and 6 weeks.

Speaking with Betway, Richard Collinge, Head of Medical Services at England’s football club West Ham United, explained “We have benchmarks and training data over several seasons so that we know what each player has got to achieve. How fast he needs to sprint, the number of accelerations and decelerations he makes, the distance he covers,”. 

If you have players with weak natural fitness, or your championship starts later, the usual method is shorter preparations because they will need more time to rest in order to be ready for the next season. If they don’t rest well, you risk getting them injured at the start of preparations or getting them tired in the middle of the season. 

If your championship starts earlier than the others, the right choice would be longer preparations. Your players will return from vacation sooner, but you’ll prepare them for their duties on time.

How to Conduct Preparations and Schedule Friendlies

Week 1: No friendly matches, work on general fitness training, make very high intensity. By the end of the week, the condition of your players will be around 80% – 90%. You can put match training on tactics only.

Week 2: Schedule a couple of games, every 3-4 days, with weaker teams than you because that reduces the possibility of injuries to a minimum since the opposing players are most likely with weaker natural fitness than your players. Rotate as many players as possible. General training is still fitness, but reduce the intensity at high or average.

Week 3: General training should be a tactic, high intensity. Put the match training on the teamwork so that the team can play in parallel with the tactics. The focus is on friendly matches. Keep rotating players in matches. 

Not all players are thrilled with friendly (warm-up) matches and they won’t do their best on them. Especially, players that have already went through preparations numerous times. The cricketer Kevin Pietersen, England’s third-highest run-scorer of all time, felt that intense practice sessions were far more valuable for his match fitness than friendlies.

“I didn’t need to feel that match scenario. I hated practice games, I hated trial games, I hated all that. I think, if you calculated my average from all of the warm-up games that we played, it would be terrible. I didn’t want to play in them, I had no interest in them because they never made me feel like I felt when I practiced,” he said.

Week 4: Just like in Week 3, you can only start with somewhat more serious opponents, approximately your rank. Start giving more minutes to players you plan to rely most on or even use them all the time.

Week 5: If you have selected this number of weeks to prepare, the team refreshment is now underway. You can only schedule one game but with a strong rival (general rehearsal). After that, it would be ideal to have one week left until the start of the first competitive match. During this period, your team will take a break from hard preparations.

During this week: general training tactics, intensity average. In the remaining 7 days, you can work on team cohesion while the intensity is average or low. Adjust the match training according to the weaknesses that your team showed in the preparations or according to your next opponent in the competitive match. 

Match Fit for Main Players

Players like Pietersen embark on a personal process that would enable them to be ready for every match.

“Confidence is closely related to being match fit. No player is free of niggles or little injuries, but I never ever went into an England match without being confident that I had put in the perfect preparation for it. Perfection in my practice was the reason for my consistent performances,” he stressed.

This proves that, as preparations are getting closer to the end, your main players will be more match fit. 

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