Recently I have posted information about planning and how to organize the training week. I would love to dive a little deeper and truly get down to the crux of what quality training looks like. Obviously this is only my opinion and is not the only way to work. I do believe that a highly detailed training plan that prioritizes the team's tactical development to be ideal, both for the coaching staff and players. I'm sure some of you are wondering about the physical side of the game. That's the beauty of the whole process. If we plan each exercise and each session to the level I am going to outline, then the physical development will mostly take care of itself. This doesn't mean we operate without any isolated physical work but use it more as what Rui Faria would say "it's the milk in the coffee".
We need to start with the foundational elements of our training week then work our way down to the smaller details. Before we can start putting pen to paper we have to ask ourselves one question. What is our Game Model? First a simple definition of Game Model.
Game Model = How the player acts within different moments of the game within the different phases of the game. This is on an individual level and a collective level. For example, what does a #11 do when the team has the ball in the opposition's final third? This is one small aspect of your club's Game Model. For success every player needs to understand their individual responsibilities within the team construct in every moment.
Moments of the Game
Offensive Organization - What you do when you have the ball
Defensive Organization - what you do when you do not have the ball
Transition from Offense to Defense - What you do when you lose the ball
Transition from Defense to Offense - What you do when you win the ball back
Set Pieces - What you do from dead ball situations both in attack and defense
In addition your club's Game Model is shaped taking into account a multitude of factors, such as: club history, player attributes, facilities, weather, coach's preferred style of play, etc. The best thing about it is that it is always evolving and will never be achieved.
If you want a more detailed explanation of what a Game Model is I suggest you read "Complex Football" by Javier Mallo.
The reason we want to know about the Game Model is because it will dictate everything we do on the training field. It underpins the technical, tactical, physical, and psychological demands for every player on the field. Once you know this you can begin the planning process.
Now that we know how our team will play let's look at the schedule and find "windows of trainability". These are the days we can load the players. Some may call this "fitness" days or "overloading" days. I'm not bothered what they are called, more focused on the type of work. We want to achieve an adaptation from these sessions, meaning that we get closer to achieving our Game Model. So let's look at the week.
As you can see above the next match is on Saturday. This gives us five training days to work with after the rest day on the previous Sunday. Below I describe each day and it's goal. In all my work I always work backwards from the previous match.
Friday, MD-1 Organizational Session
We want to use this session as a continued recovery from the week's work while organizing the team within some tactical elements of the game. Also, we focus attention on the "5th moment of the game" set pieces. Similar to MD+2 we want to keep any explosive actions to a minimal on this day.
Thursday, MD-2 Speed Reaction Session
This is an often misunderstood training session. Our goal is to have fast, dynamic actions with significant rest between bouts. Our hope is to recreate real game situations, often times transitional moments. The difficult balance is within exercise set up and structure. This shouldn't be a day where players are fatigued or pushed past physical limitations. In regards to monitoring our hope would be for some sprint and high speed exposure while keeping total distances very low.
Wednesday, MD-3 Endurance Session
This session should resemble the match. This means all exercises are done in spaces similar to a match over extended periods of time. As a team we can work on collective actions in different moments of the game. This should be by far your longest training session of the week. If you are using GPS on this day some of the metrics that we'd want to see higher volumes in are total distance, high speed running, and some exposure to sprint.
Tuesday, MD-4 Strength/Power Session
Because this session is done in smaller spaces we can focus on training in small groups or individual actions. This is a great opportunity for players to focus on areas of the game they need to improve upon within their respective positions. For example, it may be a wide player's ability to combine with the outside back on the same side to create chances when in possession. If you are using GPS on this day some of the metrics that we'd want higher volumes in are change of direction, accelerations/decelerations, heart rate load, and meters per min. It is key to have this session as far from the match as possible as it takes longer to recovery from this type of work. Often times around 72 hours to fully recover.
Monday, MD+2 Active Recovery
The main focus of this day is to facilitate recovery from the previous match through soccer exercises and actions. I am a believer that the best way to recover is to perform the same actions that caused the fatigue. Obviously they are done in a very different way as to not cause further tiredness. From a monitoring point of view we do not want to see a bias towards explosive actions (change of direction, accel/decel, or sprint).
At this point we know our club's Game Model (how we want to play in every situation) and also the structure of the week (what type of work is done on what days). In my Part 2 we will cover the training variables and how we can manipulate them to plan our week.
This is very good information and thanks for posting.
Dr. Ajit Korgaokar, Nashville SC Academy, Performance Coach