Soccer Fitness – Why Soccer Players Are So Fit

by Yuri in Train Like a Pro

Yesterday, I mentioned that I believed rugby players to be the fittest of all athletes. Today, I want to discuss why I believe soccer players are 2nd on my list of fittest athletes.

Aerobic Fitness Demands

First, off to play soccer at a decent to high level you need to be able to run 90 minutes. It’s as simple as that. If you can’t last the duration of a game, then forget about everything else. Having a solid aerobic base is important because of its impact on mental acuity and technical execution.

If a soccer player becomes fatigued during a game, his or her technical game goes down the drain. Passes are not as accurate, shots are off target, and more mistakes are made.

Research shows that soccer is predominantly aerobic with about a 70-30 aerobic to anaerobic split. Thus, most elite soccer players have a VO2max (maximal aerobic capacity) upwards of 55 ml/kg/min.

But that’s not all…

Anaerobic Energy Demands

Take a marathon runner and throw him/her into a soccer game and you’ll soon see a fish out of water. That’s because soccer involves changes of speed and direction every 5-6 seconds – something a long distance runner is not used to.

It also involves midfield battles and full field sprints that are very taxing on the body’s anaerobic energy system. And this is where the lactic acid starts to pour into the muscles, making the legs feel like lead.

But that’s partly why it’s important to have a strong aerobic base. The fitter (aerobically) a soccer player is to begin with, the faster they will recover from the high intensity anaerobic demands of the sport.

SAQ Demands

SAQ stands for speed, agility, and quickness. Soccer (and most high level sports) is all about the “first step”. Being quickest off the mark and being able to shift your feet and bodyweight quickly are paramount to any elite player. Not only do soccer players need to be able to accelerate, stop, cut, change direction, and more, but they also have to do all that with a ball in many cases too!

Power and Explosiveness Are King

The difference between the best soccer players in the world and those just beneath them – aside from technical and tactical ability – is their speed of play, their power, and their explosiveness.

As I briefly mentioned above, in soccer that first step is huge. It’s the difference between creating an inch of space to shoot on goal or getting around your opponent. Being able to jump higher than anyone else will mean that you can win headers in the midfield while posing a greater threat to the opposing goal on set pieces.

Jumping, sprinting, and being quick off the mark are all determined by a player’s power.

As a former professional goalie, power was my bread and butter. I would train day and night to become more explosive because I knew that if I could jump just a little bit higher or dive an inch further I would be that much more difficult to beat.

And as the strength and conditioning of the men’s soccer team at the University of Toronto, power development is one of my biggest priorities for our team.

But this is where it gets difficult…

Bringing it All Together

This is a similar dilemma encountered by most complex sports…

How do you train to better your aerobic and anaerobic endurance while devoting time to strength training and power and speed development?

It’s certainly best not to do all of it at the same time.

That’s where the training concept called periodization comes into play. Basically, this means planning your training calendar to devote certain blocks of time (ie. training cycles) to certain elements of fitness.

For instance, at U of T, our off-season conditioning begins with 2 weeks of general full body conditioning followed by 6-8 weeks of strength training and then about 4-6 weeks of power development.

During this time, we still practice 1-2 days per week with about 1 game. So our guys are still getting their aerobic/anaerobic conditioning through their on-field play. As the season approaches, we begin to spend more time really maximizing their VO2max and lactate threshold through all sorts of interval training runs, hill runs, and more.

So as you can see, soccer players have a wide array of fitness components that need to be addressed. And let’s not forget perhaps the most important part of soccer – actually being able to play the game. This requires countless hours of ball work, tactical understanding, and so many other intricacies that I can’t possibly mention here.

And that’s why soccer players take 2nd spot on my list of the world’s fittest athletes!

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post where we’ll be looking at the fitness of hockey players.

Tags: Accurate Shots, aerobic, Aerobic Base, aerobic fitness, anaerobic, Elite Player, Elite Soccer, Energy Demands, explosiveness, Field Sprints, Fish Out Of Water, fittest athletes, high intensity, jump higher, lactate threshold, lactic acid, Long Distance Runner, Marathon Runner, Maximal Aerobic Capacity, Mental Acuity, power, quickness, saq, Soccer Fitness, Soccer Game, Soccer Player, Soccer Players, speed, Sport Saq, sprinting, Target, Technical Execution, u of t men's soccer, university of toronto soccer, vo2max