FITNESS REQUIREMENTS FOR YOUTH SOCCER PLAYERS

The physical requirements of soccer at the youth level are also great and attaining high levels of fitness is
certainly a vital requirement for successful performance, especially for more advanced junior players.
One important distinction however, is that the duration of games for younger players is usually less; with
many leagues using a 60-minute match length instead of the 90-minute time frame used for senior
players.

Nonetheless, similar to their adult counterparts, youth players have to perform and recover from repeated
high-intensity bouts over the course of a game, and the amount and type also appears to vary depending
on player position. Elite youth players, ages 11 to 14 years old, have been shown to cover approximately
6 km during a 60-minute match, approximately 10 to 15% of which was done at a high-intensity. Like
adult players, youth players are also likely to suffer from fatigue and cover significantly less distance in
the second half.

Interestingly, research studies show that both elite and non-elite youth players also maintain an average
heart rate between 80% to 90% of their maximum heart rate (although elite players are capable of
achieving a higher value), illustrating the heavy work load experienced by soccer players even at the
junior level.

Although the conditioning demands for younger players are quite similar to those for an adult, coaches
must realize that youth athletes are not just smaller and younger adults and that you cannot simply assign
a toned-down version of an adult conditioning program to youth players. Young athletes are complex and
have different physiological characteristics. Most importantly, technical development should be the major
priority for youth players, especially those in the pre-puberty (8 to 11 year olds) age groups. For younger
players, general fitness and technical development should be the focus, rather than soccer-specific
conditioning. Fitness exercises can be incorporated into training sessions but should be in the form of fun
games and should not be high in intensity. When children start puberty and enter into the adolescent
phase (11 to 14 year olds), their work capacity naturally increases and coaches may start incorporating
structured and soccer-specific conditioning exercises. More specific details on how to design activities for
the various components of conditioning are given in the upcoming chapters.