Essay Sample on Pre-Season Football Training Program

Introduction

Football is among the most common games globally which requires much physical involvement of the athletes, especially in periodical runs. Being such a demanding game calls for the relative training sessions in the effort of achieving fitness. In psychology, football can be characterized among the running based sports that require much of technicality. In addition, the sport merges both high intensity and low-intensity activities in the training program in order to prepare the participants for the forthcoming season. In a given period of mostly six months, the teams participating in the league are given the period off in order to develop the physical as well as other skills of the footballers. This is sore as a result of the limited time that is mostly present during the season which might not give the players and the teams enough time to focus upon the above-named skills. During the season, the teams mostly focus upon preparing for the forthcoming games and the technical approaches needed by the teams.

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Problem Statement

The following is, therefore, a presentation of the schedule for the preseason for a semi-professional team which has got eight weeks to prepare for the competition. The main activities for the phase will be the provision of friendly matches against other teams in order to test the team's strengths and weaknesses and fill up the loops before the start of the season.

Pre-Season Periodization

In the periodization of the season calendar, there are various phases which are majorly categorized as competitive as well as the non-competitive period. The pre-season is therefore considered to be the offseason part of the calendar where there are the comprehensive training activities within the issued time for the phase. In this phase, there is much emphasis upon building the individual athlete attributes through the presence of a training program and the presentation of friendly matches which are supposed to be used as evaluators to the team's form. In this phase of the season, the teams are allowed to sign in or release players to other clubs following relevant talks. Since this period of time will involve the technical, tactical as well as the physical aspects of the game, the coaching staff is supposed to administer a comprehensive program which is supposed to cover the whole six weeks of training. In this program, the levels of training intensity will increase with the period of time. This type will give the players time to slowly build themselves without much pressure from competitive matches. During the pre-season, the program will set heavy training loads in order to maximize the player's potential on the pitch during the start of the season. However, the training loads should bring about the relative recovery time and approaches which can cause a high risk of acquiring injury during play.

Fitness Assessments

In order to begin the pre-season phase of training, there are various factors about the players as well as the coaching team which need to be accessed. Thanks to the technology present in the training facilities, the attributes of the players are measured which gives the prompt to the next stage of the phase. It is important to understand that the physical fitness of the players includes the health of the player and needs to be the first attribute to be examined ("Warm Up, Cool Down", 2019). This is also the first requirement made of the player during the signing in into a new club. Once the player passes the medical stage of examination, then they can proceed to sign the relevant admission forms. Secondly, the athlete's age needs to be verified in order to know their career length. The age of the player might not necessarily determine their pitch performance but in most cases, the age of the player influences the form of a player. This is because the older a player gets, the more they decrease their performance on the pitch and this is the continuous process up to the point of retirement. In this program, the players are full-time workers and students which therefore imply that there will be four days of training a week with the friendly matches being on the weekends. In addition, the player's signing condition must be included in order to depict on the time needed for the player to get to the good form. In addition, the returning condition might help in the player's signing in or out as well as the relevant costs for the player. Another very important attribute of player's fitness is the playing level of the footballer which is mostly influenced by the club itself. This program is meant for the semi-professional footballers and therefore the activities might not be as intense as those of the professionally playing footballers.

Figure 1: Player/ pre-season characteristics while considering Fitness Assessment ("Planning a Pre-season in Football - Part I - Football Medicine", 2019)

Warm Ups and Cool Downs

As players may come back from insignificant load in the off-season, it is key that whatever is left of the activity waiting to be done in this time span does not cause enthusiastic increments in weight. This brings along spikes in phenomenal weights that have been related with augmentation hurt shot ("Planning a Pre-season in Football - Part I - Football Medicine", 2019). The two activities, by and large, fuse doing the player's improvement at a slower pace and decreased power. A warm-up is necessarily required for the cardiovascular framework by raising the athlete's body temperature and developing a circulatory framework to the muscles. It is important to understand that just like any other sport; football engages much power and at the same time establishes the technicality aspect. Therefore, performing the two exercises medically plus the stretching exercises will help not only to set the body of the player in the playing mood but also to relax the muscles due to the intense training activities (Woods, C., Hawkins, R., Hulse, M., & Hodson, A. 2002). There is a propensity for staff to limit physical execution because of an expansion in mischief plausibility. It is at any rate proposed by the producers that as execution staff they can give a 'controlled spike' in weight to best set up our adversaries for the advancing toward test load. Before one works out, they consider heating up their muscles like they would heat up their vehicle. It develops the temperature and adaptability of the muscles and influences you to be logically suitable and progressively secure amidst your movement. Chilling off might be most fundamental for intense length contenders, for example, long-expel sprinters since it organizes flow framework. While giving this advancement in weight, authorities need to work shrewd; using the information to offer inspiration to what they are proposing to do. A warm-up before moderate or very much power searing movement permits a relentless expansion in heartbeat and breathing toward the beginning of the improvement (Iaia, F. M., Ermanno, R., & Bangsbo, J. 2009). Cooling down doesn't seem to help diminish muscle vigour and soreness after exercise, regardless, more research is required.

Monitoring Intensity

The intensity of the whole training phase of the season can be monitored through the evaluation of the player after a given period of time ("The right way to warm up and cool down", 2019). This practice can be conducted in teams or individually. There are various benefits which come along with the intensity monitoring activity. Through the administration of the evaluators, the strength and weaknesses of players can be revealed and the necessary initiative can be taken to address the situation. In addition, monitoring the intensity of the exercises will help to adjust the levels of training in order to fit the player's abilities.

Fig 2: Intensity of the Training Activities for the Pre-season Training ("Planning a Pre-season in Football - Part I - Football Medicine", 2019)

The examination is mostly based upon the physical qualities of the payer such as the speed, fitness, the upper and lower body fitness as well as the body power of the player ("Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal - Football recovery strategies", 2019). Given the heterogeneous arranging foundation of footballers that are reliably seen at the ace estimation, it is essential for specialists to almost certainly discover answers for measure target physical qualities without developing the risk of damage.

Fig 3: Physical Attributes of the players to be monitored ("Planning a Pre-season in Football - Part I - Football Medicine", 2019)

Recovery Strategies

Recovery strategies in modern football have become an essential need for any footballer in the effort of reducing fatigue due to play as well as improving the performance during the training session. Two main categories of the strategies and which will be mostly used in this particular program is the active and passive strategies (Recovery in football. 2019). The strategy to be used is mostly determined by the individual player as well as the actual problem. The active recovery is mostly influenced by the intensity used in the activity in which case it will be relative to low-intensity exercise ("Recovery Techniques for Athletes", 2019). These practices include cycling, water exercise, running and stretching. Passive strategy, on the other hand, includes longer acting practices such as hydration and dieting, sleep, massage and sauna.

References

The right way to warm up and cool down. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/fitness/in-depth/exercise/art-20045517

Buchheit, M., Racinais, S., Bilsborough, J. C., Bourdon, P. C., Voss, S. C., Hocking, J., ... & Coutts, A. J. (2013). Monitoring fitness, fatigue and running performance during a pre-season training camp in elite football players. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport, 16(6), 550-555.

Woods, C., Hawkins, R., Hulse, M., & Hodson, A. (2002). The Football Association Medical Research Programme: an audit of injuries in professional football-analysis of preseason injuries. British journal of sports medicine, 36(6), 436-441.

Recovery Techniques for Athletes. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.gssiweb.org/sports-science-exchange/article/sse-120-recovery-techniques-for-athletes

Iaia, F. M., Ermanno, R., & Bangsbo, J. (2009). High-intensity training in football. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 4(3), 291-306.

Recovery in football. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.footballscience.net/special-topics/recovery/Aspetar Sports Medicine Journal - Football recovery strategies. (2019). Retrieved from http://www.aspetar.com/journal/viewarticle.aspx?id=180#.XI3nsCgzbIV

Faude, O., Schnittker, R., Schulte-Zurhausen, R., Muller, F., & Meyer, T. (2013). High-intensity interval training vs. high-volume running training during pre-season conditioning in high-level youth football: a cross-over trial. Journal of Sports Sciences, 31(13), 1441-1450.

Verrall, G. M., Slavotinek, J. P., & Barnes, P. G. (2005). The effect of sports specific training on reducing the incidence of hamstring injuries in professional Australian Rules football players. British journal of sports medicine, 39(6), 363-368.

Hoffman, J. R., Kang, J., Ratamess, N. A., & Faigenbaum, A. D. (2005). Biochemical and hormonal responses during an intercollegiate football season. Medicine and science in sports and exercise, 37(7), 1237-1241.

Warm Up, Cool Down. (2019). Retrieved from https://www.heart.org/en/healthy-living/fitness/fitness-basics/warm-up-cool-downWong, P. L., Chaouac...