Strengthen Your Stamina For Soccer
September 15, 2008
One the most important traits of a professional footballer is their stamina, which is their capability to sustain performance for 90 minutes. Since soccer is one of the most physical and mentally demanding sports there is, a player’s stamina plays a major role in their ability to succeed.
What Stamina Looks Like
In the last 10-15 minutes of a half is when many goals are scored and this is largely due to the fact that players are really being tested physically and mentally. When you don’t have sufficient stamina your opponent will take advantage of it and breakdown your defense. Players with strong stamina perform consistently well by out pacing and out thinking the competition especially when the match is at its most intense moments – when everything is on the line.
So how does one increase their stamina?
Improving Your Stamina
To improve your stamina you should invest time performing activities such as jogging, hill running, cycling, and using exercise equipment such as cross-trainers, stair climbers, treadmills and cross-country ski aerobic machines (if available of course). You should also perform sprint training activities like; shuttle runs, relay runs, and interval running exercises that require you to change speeds quickly i.e. sprint-walk-jog.
Get serious about improving you stamina by reviewing the following articles:
- Stamina Training
- Having Stamina is Important in Soccer
- How to Increase Stamina for Playing Soccer
- Soccer Conditioning Aerobic Drills
- Fitness For Football
5 Ideas for Action
1. Review each of the articles provided above.
2. Get a running partner and start on some of the recommended stamina exercises.
3. Sign-up to run a marathon and train for it.
4. Try running a couple of miles then go to practice.
5. Design a personal jump rope workout and do it at least 1 x a week.
What ideas, input, experiences or resources can you share about stamina training?
As part of FFC’s series on, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” we are discussing each key element in 24 successive blog posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday over an 8 week period inside the respective Game, Body and Mind sections. For more information about the 24 Key Elements get our Players Assessment Kit here.
