There are many different sort of drills you can do whilst training or warming up before a match. We recently covered
Balance and
Speed, below are some drills that can help your endurance.
Endurance
Speed is thought to be the most important skill in Soccer as you need to cover areas quickly and react quickly to the game. Players that are competitive and "on the ball" cover about two-thirds of the game at only a walk or a jog. Therefore endurance is shown by those players who can cover these areas at a faster pace. That is why endurance is so important; it is a combination or speed and overall fitness. Therefore as well as speed it is important to keep fitness up. Here are two common ways of doing so.
12-Minute Run
A team runs around a track as far as they can in 12 minutes. The results correlate to VO2 max. The score is how far the player ran in 12 minutes. Advantages: easy; only need a stopwatch and people to count laps. Disadvantages: pure endurance running, not soccer-specific running.
"Beep" Tests
These are 20-meter shuttle tests paced by an audiotape. There is a beep to start running, a beep when to arrive and turn at the 20-meter point, then a beep for when you are be back at the start line. The beeps continue until the athlete fails to keep the pace set by the audiotape. The score is the total
distance covered (number of runs x 40 meters). Advantages: easy to do; you can test many players at once; just need the tape and a "boom box." Disadvantage: tears the field up (at the turn-around point).
There are many types of beep tests (also called Yo-Yo tests), but they all fall into one of two categories:
- Continuous beep tests: In this method, the athlete runs continuously as there is no break. The pace gradually increases.
- Intermittent beep tests: The pace gradually increases, but in this method, after each run, there is a brief (usually 10 seconds) recovery period.
