12 Years of Premier League Benchmark Fitness Testing

Elite Player Performance Plan

In late 2022, the Elite Player Performance Plan (EPPP) celebrated its 10th anniversary. The EPPP was launched by the Premier League (PL), Football League (EFL) and Football Association (FA) in 2012 with the vision of developing a world-leading academy system.

A key objective of the EPPP was to ensure that clubs throughout the pyramid produced more and better home grown players.

In addition to those vision and mission statements, a further 5 areas for development were identified, totalling 6 critical success factors to measure the impact of the EPPP on male youth academy soccer in the UK (The Premier League, 2022):

●?????? Increase the number and quality of home grown players

●?????? Improve coaching provision

●?????? Create more time for players to play and be coached

●?????? Seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development

●?????? Positively influence strategic investment and demonstrate value for money

●?????? Implement a system of effective measurement and quality assurance

A recent report (The Premier League, 2022) reviews those critical success factors and highlights the positive impact the EPPP has had on player development within academy system, and the further football landscape in England and Wales.

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Seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development

The EPPP was implemented in the 2012/2013 season and the following season our company, Pro Football Support, was brought to the attention of the the Head of Performance and Head of Sport Science at the PL.

Pro Football Support, founded by Guy Parkin in 2009, had spent the previous years innovating within the academy system through providing high quality sport science, strength & conditioning, and performance support to EFL clubs.

Our vision (in a similar manner to the EPPP) is to improve the provision of performance support across the football landscape in the UK. In the years leading up to the implementation of EPPP, Pro Football Support was a key figure in supporting clubs in their preparations for changes to the academy system and ensuring clubs achieved their intended EPPP Category 2 or 3 status.

We ensured they had the necessary performance support in place for their players, delivered that support with intent and high quality, and provided supporting documentation for both internal and external audit processes and quality assurance purposes. It was perhaps this reputation within the EFL academies that gathered the interest of the PL and has allowed Pro Football Support to work with 33 out of 44 professional club academies at the Category 2 and 3 level.

In the 2013/14 season, a year after the implementation of the EPPP, Pro Football Support were asked to pilot a national physical fitness testing initiative that the PL and EPPP intended to introduce. This initiative, intended to longitudinally track the physical development of elite male youth soccer players in the PL, would be a key measure of success against the EPPP’s 4th critical success factor: seek to implement significant gains in every aspect of player development.

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Premier League Benchmark Fitness Testing

After a successful season piloting the PL benchmark fitness testing initiative, Pro Football Support was awarded the contract to undertake PL Benchmark Fitness Testing for all Category 1 and PL academies.

This would entail a team of Pro Football Support’s staff (between 2 and 4 members of staff) attending a club’s training facilities and undertaking, facilitating, or verifying the club completing a standardised battery of physical fitness assessments - derived from previous discussions with various experts, practitioners, and heads of departments.

A national project of this scale required extensive planning from an operations perspective in addition to the difficulty of the logistics and staffing structures required to execute the project efficiently. However, over the last 12 years Pro Football Support has been able to effectively deliver it’s services across a total of 32 Category 1 and PL academies across the U12-U21 age groups.

Implementing an executing this initiative over a 12-year period has not been without it’s challenges. A huge thank you must be extended to the current and former Pro Football Support staff (many of whom secured further full time roles at professional football club academies through their involvement) who expertly delivered their services up and down the country, despite extensive travel and time requirements, ensuring that each club could undertake up to 4 visits, across 3 “testing windows” (September, January, and April/May) throughout the season, over a 12-year period, in order to deliver the PL’s initiative.

The data collected has proven to be invaluable to not only Category 1 and PL academies, but has provided a reliable and valid normative data set for longitudinal tracking of the development of player’s physical characteristics, in addition to the ability to understand the effect’s of growth and maturation in relation to these physical characteristics.

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Conclusion

From initially being referred to as “the blue Smurfs” (due to the all blue PL tracksuit) by a passing first team squad member at a particular club during the initial phases of the project, to a famous verbal lambasting from an academy manager voicing his displeasure at one of his players being disqualified on a Yo-Yo test, the Premier League Benchmark Fitness testing project has seen it all over the last 12 years.

In line with the Pro Football Support vision, we feel proud and privileged in the work we have done and continue to undertake in delivering this PL initiative in addition to our work across the football pyramid.

The work undertaken has created unprecedented resources for tracking player development and undoubtedly has helped improve the provision of performance support across the football landscape in the UK.

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