Hi folks, hope everyone is enjoying the course and the following post helps. It’s some of the changes i’m hoping to implement when we’re allowed back training based on the FCE mentorship.

Raymond, thanks for the information, very specific and detailed. I’ve been looking back at my own training sessions in Novembeer/December which was the last time we were allowed to train in a group. My sessions usually consisted of:

1) General warm up to gradually elevate the heart rate
2) “Passing” drill to warm up “football actions”
3) Rondo in tight space to overload the players football ability in tight space
4) Unoppossed movement patterns for the forward players
5) Tactical training session, attackers versus defenders, the focus was on exploiting the space behind by implementing our movement patterns
6) Small 7-v-7 +1 game to finish

My goal was to include as much football as possible, which I thought I was doing. Based on the course so far I can see a few ways I can improve the quality of delivery of my sessions and making my game choices more goal specific. For instance are we training football fitness or football ability, what energy system do we want to target, are we breaking each component of the session into blocks with adequate recovery?

Here are some changes i’m going to implement:

1) General warm up to gradually elevate the heart rate –> remains the same
2) “Passing” drill to warm up football actions –> Redefine this as basic action kicking drill to warm up basic action kicking
3) Rondo 4-v-4+3 and 3-v-1 in tight space to overload the players football ability in tight space –> Redefine as Rondo 4-v-4+3 and 3-v-1 in tight space to warm up communication, decicion making and execution. The squad is of mixed ability so I will adjust the size of the area to challenge the players appropriately. Put players in position specific areas within the rondo to improve predictability amongst players.
4) Unoppossed movement patterns for the forward players –> Redefine as a foootball fitness game. I will try to use this as a maximal effort minimum recovery football fitness game to include a goal keeper and back 4 to play against. THe training principle of contextual interference should help the attacking players adapt to changing defensive structures/decisions. WIth a back 4 to beat hopefully this will challenge the acceleration of the front 3 too more so than if it was unoppossed.

The maximal efforts should take between 4-5 seconds with 10 seconds recovery and we will do 6-8 repetitions to ensure the phosphate system is depleted and the players situation-action patterns (think fatigue or think next action) are challenged. We will then sub in a new group of attackers and give the defenders a 3 minute break. It may or may not work, I will only know when we are allowed to train as a team again.
5) Tactical training session, attackers versus defenders, the focus was on exploiting the space behind by implementing our movement patterns —> redefine as foootball ability game. The focus will remain the same, exploit the space behind but we will focus on maximal football actions MAXIMUM rest to improve football ability. This part of the session will be split into 8 minute playing blocks with 3 minutes rest. If the quality of the football is poor toward the end of the block the playing time:rest time will need to be adjusted or some other intervention may be necessary, reference coaching, individual coaching.
6) We have 2 hours with the group if we are lucky. We may not have time for a small game at the end but it is good for our groups internal motivation so if we do have time the 7-v-8 may be broken into 4 x 5 minute quarters. If we have uneven numbers we will not use a floater as this is unrealistic. An overload-v-underload is more game appropriate and presents different challenge for the overload team and under load team particularly for the under load team. Do they sit deep or press with aggression?

Has anybody made similar changes to their training plans?

Cheers,
Stephen.