05 Jun Don’t Be The Coach Who OBLITERATES Your Soccer Players On Week One of Off Season
“7am rise and grind!”
I see this in a caption on Instagram from a coach that has their U14 girls soccer team running suicides, then performing 10 burpees, then running the suicides again…for 5 minutes straight.
This is not a badge of honor.
This is anti development.
This is the worst thing you can do for your girls teams, not just in week one of summer off-season, but any time of year.
Don’t ever, ever superset suicides with burpees for the love of God.
Off-season Soccer Training is a Marathon
Summer off-season speed, strength and conditioning should be a gradual progression, not total obliteration in the first week.
Look. These girls have gone hard with games, practices, and showcases the past several months, why do you have to destroy them in week one of summer?
Every training cycle must have a deload period, where girls can recover, then slowly build again. Go high intensity for too long, and you get injuries, burnout, and a sour taste in their mouths toward training.
Don’t be that coach.
Summer off-season is about 8-10 weeks for girls who don’t have practices and games. They have time to build. Burn the steak in week one, and not only do you risk injury and overuse, but you also risk performance improvements like speed, power and strength dwindling away. This is because the body is not recovered and adapting well enough.
Their bodies have no gradual build up to adapt to a new training stimulus. Their bodies will be in shock in week one, which is the worst thing for an adaptation to occur.
It’s like doing a max effort lift on week one of a strength training program. It’s stupid. And it doesn’t build confidence either.
Training cycles should be periodized, meaning there are ebbs and flows of backing off, then gradually going hard again.
For our off season speed, strength and conditioning program here in Tampa, Florida, we start with light to moderate load so girls can get reps in, gain confidence and learn that movement pattern. Then, we gradually increase load every few weeks.
A girl who has never done a box depth drop in her life? We are starting small. We aren’t starting with the 30″ box. She needs to gain the skill of landing properly and controlling her body weight when she jumps off the box, otherwise if she gets it wrong, she risks stress to the knees and not getting any deceleration benefit from the exercise.
We also start our agility days with learning linear deceleration, then we gradually increase the intensity of the cut performed (45, 60, then 180 degree cut), going from lowest mechanical load, to the highest.
What builds confidence in speed, strength and conditioning is gradual progressions. Harder, more advanced workouts can wait until the second month of off season, when a solid base of endurance, speed, strength and movement competency is met.
And a few weeks before preseason, girls should taper off, so they go into preseason fresh, explosive and energized.
Don’t crush your girls on week one of summer off-season training. And don’t crush them a few days before preseason begins.
Don’t be the idiot who programs burpees combined with suicides.
Don’t be the lazy coach who just runs athletes through cones, ladders, and hurdles and who yells “quick feet!”
You need to COACH, bro.
Anyone can put an athlete through a zig-zag cone drill, yell and blow a whistle. But not everyone can teach change of direction mechanics and actually break it down for these girls to control their momentum and have elite level braking and re-acceleration skills.
Don’t crush your athletes in week one of off-season.
Stop throwing together a workout you found on Chat GPT.
Do your research on proper speed, strength and conditioning off-season training, or better yet, hire a certified (and insured!) professional who actually knows what the hell they’re doing.
Don’t crush your athletes in week one of off-season.
This is anti development.
Don’t be anti development.
Work with Erica in Tampa and Land O’ Lakes Florida for speed, agility, and strength training, OR late stage ACL rehab (must be at minimum 2-3 months into physical therapy and post-surgery to be considered): BOOK ASSESSMENT HERE
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