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PEAKING IN THE CLOSE SEASON

The summer break from club action provides the perfect opportunity to stage events such as the World Cup, but does present coaches with the challenge of getting players into peak physical condition just a few weeks after a long domestic season?

The French tried extending their Ligue 1 season to finish just nine days before the European Championships in 2008, and were promptly dumped out in the group stages, whilst Denmark famously won Euro 92 after hurriedly calling players back from holiday when they replaced Yugoslavia at the eleventh hour.

So just what are the key factors in getting players in shape for a major event out of season?

“During the season players will typically play up to three games a week, so you can assume the matches give them the adaptations they need to maintain or improve fitness levels, meaning a much larger emphasis or focus during training days is around recovery and restoration strategies to prepare them for the next games”

“In the time between the end of the season and the World Cup what you are likely to see in the players is an unloading element because they are not playing with the same frequency, which might typically consist of around two weeks tapering of shorter but good quality training sessions.”

A strength and conditioning coach is concerned with the physical and physiological development of athletes for elite sport performance and works alongside a sports coach to assist them in designing specific programmes that will address the particular need of the athlete, team and sport.

“For those involved in the world cup it is paramount that the coaching staff facilitate an optimal training environment. This should incorporate a period of unloading before going into a block of high quality training interspersed with much longer recovery periods than they would usually have had throughout the season.

“All the teams in South Africa will have very purposely planned their pre tournament schedules, implementing the strategies they feel will work best for their players and ensuring they have plenty of time for recovery between each game, including the friendlies beforehand.”

With the competition now well underway and the frequency of matches increasing for those that progress to the later stages, the players are likely to return to a more usual pattern of preparation and recovery, but how well they respond to this depends on a number of factors.

“Success at a major competition like the World Cup depends on a huge number of factors of which the players’ physical conditioning is just one, albeit an important one”

“The examples of Denmark and France are extreme cases and it is much more likely that each team will have looked to strike a balance with their preparation strategies which in most cases would have typically put an emphasis on the quality, rather than the volume of training.”