Before starting a match we see football players performing activities on the pitch. What are they doing, what are they doing it for? They are doing warm-up exercises.

Should these exercises always be done? Or just before each game? Is it the same thing to do any exercise?

To be able to make a balanced plan, we must know the parameters that make a session simpler or more complex.

Knowing this, it will be easier to put them in sequence in an efficient and logical way for maximum performance, to avoid training injuries.

The training load can be defined as a set of exercises, that stimulate the organism, causing an alteration to it.

To define a training load, it is necessary to answer the following questions:

How much?  At what rate? How?  How long is recovery?  How often?

For example running 2 kilometres, is a training load. So is doing 2 sets of 3 repetitions lifting 30 kilograms on a quads bench at maximum speed, recovering five minutes between each set, performing 3 multi – hops and stretching the required muscles to finish.

Planning the football training: Volume and Intensity

In this introductory article I will present the master lines and create an overview, from where we can get into more detail about the more complex and specific parts of the process. The sketch of a traditional and very simple model that you can use with junior and youth players.

What is the planning of sports training?

Planning is to complete the structures or temporary cycles produced in the periodisation with training sessions. As we saw in periodisation, we have to achieve different goals through the work on content. These were selected and sequenced in a logical order. Now in the planning phase we will explain what will be done in each cycle, sessions will be developed at all times for achieving the goals we set in periodisation.

I will explain how to perform a step by step plan. However it is very complex and I would need many more articles.

Warming-up as a set of physical exercises should be conducted in an orderly and progressive manner. To organize exercises, we divide warm-up in phases, which have the same goals: activation, joint mobility, stretches and specific exercises.

Activation.- Consists on "waking up" the body, we raise breathing rate, increase muscle temperature and viscosity, increase beats per minute, vasodilation, we redistribute cardiac output, etc.

Articular Mobility.- perform abduction and adduction, flexion - extension, and/or rotation of the joints. Thus we lubricate cartilage and prepare ligament insertions.

Muscle stretching.- Once muscles have increased temperature, becoming more viscous and receiving more oxygenated blood, we can proceed to stretch the myofibrils and muscle fascia, preparing the muscles to lengthen and give maximum possible elasticity.

What are the best physical trials in football? Do they serve for anything or are they a waste of time? Why conduct these tests and not others? Is it the same to do tests on Monday than on Thursday? How to organize a session of physical trials to be effective and not a waste of time for the players? What should I prepare before taking the session to the field? What type of warm up should be done? What data is important and useful?