Soccer FIT Academy Has Moved!

Our new site is now up at www.soccerfitacademy.com

If you have not already done so, you must re-subscribe to the site to continue to recieve information via email from the Soccer FIT Academy. You can subscribe by clicking here…

Thanks for all your great feedback over the past few months! I hope you enjoy the new site.

Scott

SPARQ Testing with Soccer Players (in the cold)…

Many of the soccer clubs around the country have jumped on the Nike SPARQ (Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction, Quickness) Testing over the last few years. So in order to compare our players with other players around the country, we have adopted this testing format for some of our elite teams. Even though Nike allows you to time via a stop watch, laser time or a combination of the two, we have elected to use one of the best systems I have ever come across, Fusion Sports, Smartspeed system, to do the testing. This system allows us to run 2-4 lanes at a time, creating a very competitive testing environment (videos below show 2 lane testing). In Baltimore 2 weeks ago, we tested 180 athletes in 5 tests in less than 2 hours using 4 lanes.

Not only does this system increase the quantity of tests that you can run in a short time, it also increases the quality. For instance, in the past have seen athletes lean in to the beam to early, or throw their hands through the beam in the start which starts the clock before they actually begin the test. The Smartspeed system will take the longest break in the beam as the athlete crosses (in this case it will only capture their torso) making for much more consistent times. The system also saves all tests to a database on a hand held PDA so that we can sync the scores into our system without hours of data entry.

The SPARQ tests that we run for soccer players include:

• 20meter dash
• arrowhead agility run
• vertical jump
• yo-yo intermittent recovery run

Here are some video clips from our session last Tuesday. By the way, it was cold (around 40 degrees) and the wind made it feel like 20 degrees. Not ideal for testing, but what are you going to do, it’s Kansas in late November!

Click on the image to view video…

20 Meter Dash

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Arrowhead Agility Run

Yo-Yo Intermittent Interval Run

Homework: Fitness Week 4

Our Fitness Progression for the Off-Season is as follows:

1. Aerobic Capacity / Body Weight Strength Endurance
2. Short to Intermediate Strong Run Intervals / HR Recovery
3. Long Sprints / Based for Speed / HR Recovery
4. Soccer Specific Intervals / Gaining Distance with Intermittent Sprints
5. Yo-Yo and RAST based Anaerobic Fatigue Testing

We are currently finishing up the first phase 1) Aerobic Capacity and your homework this week will be as follows…

Day 1…

3 minutes on 1 minute off  – 8 times for a total of 24 minutes of work

Goal: to cover as much distance as possible in each of the runs…then let your HR recover as much as possible in the 1 minute rest interval. We have cut the rest interval in half this week from 2 minutes to 1 minute and we have cut the distance in half as well. You should cover more total distance this week than you did last week in the same amount of total time (24 minutes) as your pace should be faster. If you are having trouble with this workout please go back and revisit the workouts from last week (6 minutes on 2 minutes off 4 times) or Week 1’s workouts (8 minutes on 2 minutes off 3 times) on Days 2 and 3 of your homework.

Day 2…

Arc Trainer Strong Runs of 3 minutes on 1 minute off starting at 35 resistance and an incline of 5 or 6. Your strides per minute should stay above 140 and you should increase resistance each set (example: 35, 45, 55, 60)…

Goal: To strengthen your stride by increasing the load and keeping the Strides Per Minute (SPM) above 140. This pace is fairly vigorous, and if you are having trouble go back and revisit the workouts from last week, where we were at 6 minutes on 2 minutes off or from week 1 where we were at 8 minutes on and 2 minutes off.

We feel that the Arc Trainers ability to enhance both strength, speed and HR recovery is essential to the total development of the soccer player. Here is some more info on the Cybex Arc Trainer…

Functional Outcomes Study 2008

Muscular Endurance Study 2008

 

 

Weekly Recap: Off-Season Week 3

Due to the Thanksgiving Holiday we only went Monday through Wednesday last week. On Wednesday we had morning open gym classes and we did some initial video testing of our reaction based agility with the athletes. In this test we used the Sportspeed System from Fusion Sport. The athletes started at the first gate and then sprinted through each gate as it lit up. The system was set for 30 seconds and the goal was to get through as many gates as possible in that time. Keys to success in this drill are:

1. Keep moving and anticipate where the next light will come up
2. Keep all gates in your field of vision
3. Always been in a position to accelerate in either direction
4. Have fast feet, body control and quick anticipation/perception skills

Here is a short video of some of our younger players (U10-U12) in this drill…

The best time we had in the U8-U10 range was 11 gates and the best time we had in the U16-U18 range was 15 gates. These are really good times considering that our U16-U18’s hit 1 gate every 2 seconds and there was a 1 second delay set after they broke a gate, before the next gate would light up.

Over the next 12 weeks we will be building off this basic drill and adding more analysis of reaction (how quickly they make decisions in both known and unknown directions), acceleration (how quickly they accelerate to the gate), transition (how quickly they change direction) and finally how quickly they can perform the drill with and without the ball at their feet.

In my opinion this is how we need to start measuring sport speed, or true agility. Instead of looking at how fast they can maneuver through a known pattern, we need to also monitor how quickly they make decisions and react to unknown stimuli. When we add a ball to this drill we will also see how confident they are with a ball at their feet.

Another great week of training in the books! This week we will be adding a “Homework” section that will be outlining our fitness program for the off-season. Most of the drills we will be doing within the Academy, but some of the drills will need to be done at home if we are to reach our goals. Congrats to Paige P., Evan P. and Bekah W. who set the standard for the fitness runs (on the Speedboard and on the Arc Trainer) for this week…Keep up the good work!

90 Second Interval Conditioning Test on the Speedboard

This week we pre-tested our 90second interval test on the Woodway Speedboard Treadmill. The beauty of doing this test on the Speedboard (and Force Treadmill for that matter) is that the athletes can pace themselves as fast as they want. I simply give the instructions to walk, jog, run, strong run or sprint and they perform at the best of their ability. The walks are always used as recovery, but you will see some players stop completely, while others walk at a fairly brisk pace. The jogs can be used as recovery or to gain a little distance. As we start to run and strong run, we want the athletes to cover as much distance as possible. And finally, when we sprint, we are looking for them to tell us how fast they got the tread mill up to. One of our U18 boys was consistently hitting 15.5 – 16.1 MPH on the sprints…cant do that on a normal treadmill!

The goal of this test is two fold…I want the athletes to cover as much distance as possible and I want them to be within 90-95% of top speed when asked to sprint. We run this test for 12 minutes and then take a 2 minute break and repeat the test. For more specifics on the test, feel free to contact me directly at: Scott@AthleteFIT.com. Here is an example of one of the intervals…

The best and most fit players tend to cover more distance during the course of the game, are involved in more actions, touch the ball more and are typically your best players. Players that can cover distance and still be fast when they need to are usually recognized as the great ones! This is why we put so much into this base line (indoor, off-season fitness assessment).

Having a non-motorized treadmill like the Woodway Force or Woodway Speedboard is essential to this test and our mission to create more competitive athletes, as most programs will simply set a pace we ask our athletes to push their own limits and create a pace that is challenging to them.

Agility 101: Understanding the Basics

Agility, like we have stated (and sometimes overstated again, and again) is made up of 4 unique trainable components:

1. Quick Feet (or Quick Repositioning of the Feet)
2. Body Position (or Controlling Posture)
3. Strength / Power (Elastic / Dynamic Muscle Properties)
4. Reaction (Anticipating, Understanding and Reacting to Situations)

In the beginning of any program you want to make sure your athletes are building a very strong and sold foundation in these characteristics. Here is a quick videos that we shot last night as our 11-13 year olds work on simple quick feet drills. This is the beginning of a wide variety of drills that we will expose them to both with and without the ball.

We also want to incorporate simple body control drills like the one pictured below that empahsizes posture and control of shoulder sway. This is just  a simple shuffle to shuffle drill where we will focus on rhythm and body lean.

TRX Pull Up Superset…

Sometimes in our workouts we want to challenge the athletes with a particular exercise, while at the same time getting increased volume in some of the simple exercises. Pull ups tend to fall into this category as with most of our female population, they are only able to knock out 1 or 2 unassisted pull ups on a good day. So in our normal competitive manner we set up a 10 minute workout where each girl partnered up creating 3-6 teams (pairs of 2 athletes). The goal was to score as many points as possible in 3 sets. Here was the scoring format…

• Unassisted Pull Ups = 5 points
• Band Assisted Pull Ups = 2 points
• TRX Suspended Inverted Row = 1 point

So one of our athletes, in her first set did 3 Unassisted Pull Ups (15 pts), 6 Assisted Pull Ups (12 pts) and 13 (TRX Suspended Inverted Rows (13 pts) for a grand total of 40 pts! Her total after 3 sets was 97 points. Some of our boys were scoring in the 120’s and one of our boys got to 140! This is a great way to work on strengthening posture and upper back strength with tons of body weight oriented volume in a competitive manner.

Here is a brief video of one of our groups last night. On point to make note of is that the were doing this AFTER they completed 2 sets of a 12 minute sprint conditioning interval test (24 minutes of walk, jog, run and sprint for both distance and speed!). So if you see some standing around, we were encouraging some recovery in this exercises as they were told to take their time.

TRX Competitive Drills …

Many people look at the TRX Suspension Training System as something that would be easy to do, or very low level. Especially when they walk into our training facility and see the U10’s doing inverted rows on the straps (pictured here)…

But with our older athletes we have set up a competitive style workout to challenge them to get just a little bit more out of their workout. We use a points system where we use the suspension frame to do pull ups or band assisted pull ups and then as they fatigue the finish with inverted rows on the TRX.

Each athlete will pair up and they get 3-5 sets (depending on the exercises and workout) to score as many points as possible. For instance in this exercise

Meet the Staff of the Soccer F.I.T. Academy

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce the new staff at the Soccer F.I.T. Academy. For years I have been looking for a staff to take this program to the next level. We have always had excellent strength and speed coaches, but what I really felt we lacked was someone who had played the game at an extremely high level. I had always thought that if we could ever get some of our former athletes to come back and coach for us we would be in a position to really take our program to the next level. Well, it just happened!

Our new staff is made up of 3 of our former athletes Marcy Gans, Missy Geha and Jackie Thomas, and 1 coach (Nacole Neuendorf). Here is a bit of info on what they all bring to the table.

All 4 of our new coaches were standouts in high school. Here is a list of their high school achievements:

Weekly Recap: Off-Season Week 1

We just wrapped up our first week of off-season training at the Soccer F.I.T. Academy and I think we are off to a pretty good start. We set some goals this week and with over 200 athletes in 20 groups, you might think goal setting would be all over the board. But really it always seemed to come back to about 3 main goals:

1. Be in the best “Soccer” shape of my life…
2. Improve my speed on the field…
3. Get stronger, especially in the upper body and core…

Although this was mainly an testing and orientation week, we wanted to get started pursuing some of these goals. Here is a portion of a 30 minute familiarization circuit that we did on the TRX and Woodway Speedborad Treadmill.

In a previous post, I mentioned some of the testing that we do. In testing the CAP Soccer Specific Interval Test or CAPSSIT, we are looking to mix in the movements associated with soccer in a progressively faster interval with intermittent rest periods of 30 seconds. Our record for females is 2070 yds or making it to the 12th level, here is a clip from last night were one of our girls finished just shy of record pace making it 2000 yds or the 11th level.

This test can also be performed with a ball…as seen below.

Overall it was a good first week, where I think we set a good standard for how we are going to work through the winter. Next week we will introduce the staff, put out an article on how we establish a foundation first, and show some of the other conditioning tests that we will be implementing. If you have not subscribed to this post yet and click here to do so…SUBSCRIBE