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Health & Fitness for Young Footballers

Health Issues

Eat balanced meals with plenty of fruit and vegetables for vitamins and essential minerals. Drink milk on its own or with your breakfast cereal to help your bones grow. Potatoes, pasta and rice will provide a source of quick (carbohydrate) energy. Meat, cheese and milk provide protein for building and growing muscles.

Junk food and too many burgers provide a poorly balanced diet and little goodness. Fresh food is always better than processed “takeaways”. However, there is nothing wrong with chips and burgers occasionally as part of a balanced and varied diet.

As an active sportsperson you need to drink plenty of water to replace that which is lost through sweating and when you are breathing heavily because you are training hard. Squash, fruit juice and other drinks based on water are excellent. Fizzy drinks make you burp and contain far too much sugar. Failure to drink enough will result in dehydration – your mouth will feel dry, your body will suffer from cramp and there will be insufficient fluid in your muscles – you will feel tired quickly.

You should try to drink at least 8 glasses of water a day and make sure that you take at least 1 litre of drink to every training session and match. More importantly, you should drink regularly whilst training and at half time during matches.

The more exercise you take and the more tired you make your body, the more sleep you will need. The body uses the time you are asleep to recover from hard training sessions. Your muscles will adapt to an increased level of exercise whilst you are resting.

For sports people, at least 8 hours of proper sleep is required each night and for young players you should aim for 10 hours.

Going to bed especially early the night before a big game will not work because you will be too excited to sleep. However, you should at least be resting, if not asleep. If you are 11 years old, it is far better to make it your routine to go to bed at 9.30 every night to ensure that you are getting a good amount of sleep every night – then one late night will not matter.

Try to sleep with a top window open all year round. If you do this in the winter you might even find that you suffer from fewer colds because you will be more used to fresh air.

If you are injured, you should not be training and making the problem worse. Serious and long-term injuries need proper medical attention. Minor muscle pulls and strains need rest and a period of recovery. These injuries often respond best to gentle exercise during the recovery period as muscles that are used tend to mend quicker, with less soreness and retain their flexibility compared to those that are not used.

Smoking is a bad idea. Smokers develop coughs; they are less able to use the oxygen in the air they breathe because their lungs have been damaged by smoke. This means they will eventually become less fit than non-smokers and less able to run as fast or as far as they should.

Leg strength can help you jump higher. It will also help you to kick a ball harder and further. As you get older you will naturally get stronger so this is probably less important for younger players than the other components below.

This is your ability to run for LONG DISTANCES without tiring. If you want to be a midfielder you need to be able to run and run and run.

Football is a game where you run and tackle and run and pass and run and shoot and run and mark and run……………

Sadly the best way to get fit for running is to run! However it would be very boring to just run laps of the pitch and remember football is played with a ball so take it everywhere you go.

If you are doing a lap of the pitch, take the ball with you. Vary your speed. Change direction. But, keep moving. Dribbling repetitions are ideal stamina training – provided you do enough of them.

So long as you are running continuously and varying the speed, you will be getting fitter and improving your stamina.

The more flexible we are, the greater our range of movement. This applies equally to goalkeepers and outfield players alike. A supple body is less likely to pull a muscle and is better able to take the bumps that occur in any game.

Our aim should be to increase our range of movement by regular stretching to gently extend our muscles beyond their normal range.

You should devote 10 minutes of every session to general flexibility such as hip circles, ankle stretching, hamstring stretches and other leg stretching positions. A footballer’s ankles, knees and hamstrings need to be supple and this can be achieved by static stretching where a position is held for a count of 10. Try not to bounce when touching your toes but hold a position at the furthest distance you can comfortably manage.

When training with your club, you will be shown a range of stretching exercises and you should repeat these at home at least twice a week. The best time to do this is when watching the television or playing on your play station. Even better is to do it after a bath as your muscles will already be warm and flexible.

Speed

This is your ability to run FAST. Watch David Beckham or Wayne Rooney and see how quickly they close down an opponent forcing them to make mistakes.

Speed is about leg speed and stride length. It is also about changing direction. You need to be first to the ball whether it be to make a tackle or to take a shot. The player who gets to the ball first has the advantage.

World class sprinters are born fast, but we can all improve our own sprinting speed by concentrating on moving our legs quickly, pumping our arms and relaxing our shoulders. You should run on your toes and practice changing direction by weaving in and out of cones (imagine you are weaving in and out of opponents).

Repetitions of sprinting over small distances of 5 -10m with a jog back to the start will train your body to cope with running faster. Watch Thierry Henry and see how he drifts out of the game only to reappear seconds later going flat out for goal.

How quickly can you lose your marker? The faster you are the better able you will be to move into space at the right time. A properly timed run is the most effective way of beating an opponent to the “through ball”.

We also need to be able to move quickly with the ball. Alternate fast and slow dribbling between cones with changes in direction will help you to improve your speed on the ball.

This is what training sessions are for but you also have a great opportunity to perfect your skills in the garden, over the park or with your mates. Whenever you go out do you take your ball? What are you good at? What do you need to practice?

You should concentrate on the basics – accurate passing to feet; properly weighted passes that don’t get intercepted; defending space by using your body as a barrier; running and dribbling with the ball; accurate shooting; volleying; accurate heading.

Proper technique will be taught at club training sessions. You should go away and practice whenever you have the opportunity. Practice (and more practice) makes perfect. As part of his training for the Rugby World Cup in 2003, Jonny Wilkinson took 100 kicks at goal at the end of every normal training session. His dropped goal in the final minute of the World Cup Final was no accident – he had trained for that moment over and over again and believed that he could do it (see below)

This is your will-to-win. Is your mental attitude right? Have you prepared properly? Have you given full attention to your training? Do you understand your position and what you have to do? Are you part of the team? Are you fit enough? Do you believe that you can slot that penalty; make that goal-saving tackle; catch the high cross; thread an accurate long pass? Do you believe in yourself?