CHAPTER 9: DESIGNING A PROGRESSIVE AND EFFECTIVE

TRAINING PROGRAM

The ultimate goal of the conditioning coach is to prepare their athletes to achieve a peak level of fitness at
the start of the competition period, and maintain this conditioning level (as best as possible) throughout
the in-season. To achieve this peak level of match-ready fitness, the coach must construct a yearly
training plan that is structured, progressive and has attainable conditioning objectives. Incorporating
fitness activities into training sessions cannot be done at random. We cannot simply do agility or
plyometric exercises on a certain day because we ‘feel like it’ or because the ‘the boys have not done it in
a while’.

Indeed, designing a training plan is one of the most important assignments for any soccer coach and this
responsibility presents unique challenges for both the amateur and youth coach. For the youth coach, a
common problem is that many younger athletes often play for more than one soccer team or participate in
more than one competitive sport. Proper planning is therefore necessary to prevent overtraining or
burnout. In comparison, coaches of amateur teams may not be able to conduct year-round team training
and therefore have a truncated training season. For these coaches, achieving peak conditioning levels
prior to the competitive season becomes difficult due to the shortened preparation time.

In the program design section presented in Chapters 2 to 8, we have given you the general
recommendations (sets, repetitions, frequency, etc.) for each conditioning element and how each variable
changes with the phase of the season. In this chapter we assist you in putting all this information together
to design a progressive training program for the entire training year. These plans take into consideration
that most amateur and youth teams are limited to 2 to 3 training days per week and only have a few
months for their off and pre-season preparations.

PERIODIZATION

As much as we would like, our players are not capable of maintaining a peak level of match-ready fitness
all year long. As such, the ultimate goal of the soccer conditioning coach is to ensure that the players peak
at the start of (or soon after) the competition period. To do this, we need to have a system in place that
allows our players to gradually build their work capacity and enables them to incorporate a specific
fitness component at a time that facilitates optimum gains and prevents injury or fatigue. Periodization is
the structuring of the yearly training program into various phases or blocks. Each phase will have specific
conditioning objectives and allows you to build from the gains made in the previous one.

In terms of soccer conditioning, periodization allows you to transition from a general phase of high
volume and low-intensity (intended to build work capacity and a base level of fitness) to a phase of high-
intensity and soccer-specific training. Periodization not only enables your players to peak for the start of
the in-season, but it provides variety in training and helps prevents both physical and psychological
fatigue. For the majority of soccer teams, the training year is divided into four main blocks or phases: the
off-season (early and late); the pre-season, the in-season (competition period); and the transition period.