Can you remember the last time you had to get in shape for an event? Remember the hard work, the extra time, and the aches and pains of pushing yourself past what at first you thought you couldn't do?
Most of us are not able to do it on our own we need a coach or at least a partner. When it comes to conditioning for football, it's no exception. And for the first two weeks of practice we always strive to get our players into game ready condition. There are basically two aspects that we want to condition and train our players for at this level.
The first one is recovery time. We need to be able to go all out for 8 to 20 seconds and then be able recover within 35 seconds before we have to go all out again. We're trying to simulate this type of activity by running sprints that are timed and then allow for a set recovery time. We time the sprints so that we can keep of standard of effort and time the recovery period to encourage the body to get used to using that rest as effectively and efficiently as possible. And then when that recovery time is over we have to run a certain distance again in a set time. As the season progresses we will decrease the amount of time allowed to complete the distance as well as decrease the amount of recovery time until we get down to 35 seconds.
The second one is physical stamina. We need to be able to play consistently for 60 minutes with the maximum amount of strength, speed and mental toughness that we have. Therefore we structure our conditioning times for 1 hour. During that one hour we have 3, 3 minute breaks where we encourage the players to rest and get plenty of water. We also set our exercises to last for 12-15 minutes at a time to simulate a quarter's worth of play. During our conditioning we're focused on increasing the amount of stamina we have by pushing our body to work harder than it's used to for longer than it's used to. Over the course of the season we will push ourselves to be the best conditioned team in the league so that in the fourth quarter when the other team is out of gas we've got plenty left and are running at top speed.
We know that most if not all of the players are not going to like conditioning. It's a tough assignment to ask anyone to run harder than they want to for longer than they want to and do it in such a way that they love it and want to do it better the next time. But conditioning is part of learning the game of football, and it's an important lesson about life. Woe to us when we find ourselves with not enough stamina to complete an obstacle that life hands us, or no ability to recover from a hard day's work knowing that tomorrow holds more of the same.
As a parent please encourage your child to see the value in getting into shape. No one can be a champion at a sport without finding a way to put forth effort they didn't know they had to accomplish a task they didn't know they could accomplish. When you can learn to do that while having the courage and tenacity to face these obstacles with great expectations and an iron will you will find that you've succeeded at more than just a game you've become a true winner in life.
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