Fitness Concepts in Soccer

Make soccer fitness fun and relevant to every day training and game situations.

Coach Brandon Koons, owner of three NCAA Sweet 16 appearances, breaks down his fitness program and shows you how to implement fitness training into your practices (when, how much, etc.) and ultimately how to field a well-conditioned team.

Fitness Testing
How do you know if you're team is physically prepared for the season? Fitness testing allows you to see if your team is ready to take on the season ahead. Koons provides five fitness tests you can use to measure and track the fitness levels of your players. Watch as Koons conducts each test, giving you great insight into how you can run the tests with your team.

Warm-Up Exercises
Players put themselves at risk of injury if they don't prepare themselves properly for practice. Through the use of dynamic exercises, Coach Koons shows many different types of activities that he has created to simulate a game-like situation. Most of the warm-up exercises he shows involve players getting touches on the ball. You'll see how to perform these exercises in pairs, which helps synchronize movements, improves the quality of the repetition and enhances team concepts. He also has his players demonstrate a pre-game warm up without a ball.

Adding Fitness to Common Exercises
Often times as a coach you are limited in the amount of time you can spend with your players. Having exercises that develop two pillars of the game simultaneously is extremely valuable. Koons shows you how to add a fitness component to some commonly used soccer exercises. This allows you to get two benefits from a single exercise. Koons shows several different small-sided games that are fast paced and provide for many touches on the ball.

Players don't enjoy fitness but once you add a ball they focus on the exercises and improve their fitness without realizing it.

Throughout the video Koons provides coaching points and ideas for adjusting the exercises to help achieve the desired outcome. You'll also see overload principles to change the dynamics of your exercises.

Soccer players also need to give attention to many types of conditioning: Strength training to win challenges and keep players safe from injury, speed and agility for quick reactions, endurance to meet the high running demands of the game, recovery, and much more. This video addresses many different facets of soccer fitness and will help you field a physically fit, successful team on game day.

102 minutes. 2013.