CREATING A SEASON LONG TRAINING PLAN

Before we start, I need to create a small glossary to define certain terms which may not be understood by the first time reader/someone who doesn’t use the same terminologies as myself, making it friendly for all.

Game model – The development a game plan based around the 4 moment of the game (In possession, out of possession, transition in to out of possession, transition out to in possession)

Macro-principle – The principle you base around a whole moment of your game (EG Keeping the ball to create goal-scoring opportunities, Moment – in possession)

Sub-principle – A breakdown of the macro-principle into smaller sub-principles (EG Playing out from the goalkeeper for the above macro-principle)

What is a season long training plan and what does it include?

To begin designing a season long training plan, we must understand the various components it envelops. There are several components to be considered within the plan, and no individual component can be seen alone without the other components interlinking with them.

The first part of the season long plan is developed via the game model adopted by the team/academy worked for. This game model then can be broken down into a curriculum which is taught through the season’s sessions. The use of the game model within a season long training programme is highly important to create and develop training plans and sessions related to daily/weekly/cycle based topics.

Alongside this game model you must first considering both the quality of your players and the standard they are playing at. This will help guide your construction of training days and plans. For example, for an amateur men’s team, training every day of the week may be unsustainable for many players, therefore a happy medium must be found. Alongside this, consideration should be given to the player’s other daily activities (Children > school, amateur players > work, semi-professional players > work) and training must be organised as best in lieu with this.

Currently, I coach within a youth development set up and I also coach a men’s team in the Cayman Premier League. The youth development programme train twice a week at each age group for 1 hour and a half each session, whereas the men train three times a week for differing durations related to the daily periodisation or aims and objectives of the training session/week/block.

Once the frequency of training is identified, we can then develop an understanding of what training occurs at which time and why. A training plan must identify the loading and intensity of training and when these sessions occur. It all depends on which type of periodisation used, whether that be daily, weekly, monthly or various other cycles, but this will dictate what sessions are used and when. Personally, with the men’s team, I work off a week by week periodisation structure explained later in the article.

Upon deciding the periodisation, we must scale back and understand our resources, which relates back to the level/quality of both players and standard. As a professional club, it would be highly likely the programme will include some gym based strength and conditioning exercise for example, whereas as an amateur team it is highly likely access to fields/equipment is at a premium. Therefore, a training plan must be adjusting to resource constraints.

Therefore, a season long training plan must consider and consist of the following components; curriculum cycles game model, session topics/plans, quality/standard of play, periodisation, and resources.

What is the purpose of your season?

Before designing any plan, you must first identify the purpose and goal of your season. With the men’s team I coach, I place emphasis on results as a consequence of improving our performance and playing style, which allows work on both ends of the spectrum and also leans towards individual improvement.

If you coach a team of young players, you must define whether winning is the most important thing for yourself or if development is. As said above, both can be achieved, it is how we do this and also the age of which we are working with which dictate the purpose of our season.

Defining winning as an aspect of your season is not a problem at all, and you must create a season plan which atones for this. The most important aspect to achieve this this is creating a cohesive and clear game model which is then implemented via the season plan, which is further detailed below.

Goals and objectives can be detailed within the plan, and should be identified before the season starts to create some validity to them. These goals can then be orientated and changed as the season continues to make them more realistic and should be directed at both team improvements and individual improvements.

Individual development and improvement can also be included in the plan, detailing how at each week a certain individual is deemed to improve and what qualities we are working on with them in that particular season section, whether that be related to our game curriculum or periodisation/fitness components.

Creating a curriculum

A curriculum is a basic breakdown of a game model, which is a document detailing how the team will play/function through the 4 moments of the game, in possession, out of possession and both transition moments. To create a curriculum you must first break the game down into more manageable chunks (Sub principles) which you will coach during sessions which make up you season long plan.

For example during the in possession phase the teams aim primarily is to score goals, and the game model will detail how this is done via the use of sub principles which are broken down from the larger macro principle. Frequent trends that successful teams show is the use of width when in possession of the ball, good combination play in the opposition’s final third and intelligent movement to maintain possession of the ball. Personally, when developing my own game model, the macro principle of the in possession phase is ‘possessing the ball to attract the opposition’. The objective of this is to ‘disorganise the opposition’s defensive structure and create goal-scoring opportunities behind the last line of defence’. I then break the in possession moment down into 3 main phases; build up, creation of goal-scoring chances and finishing; and from there I break these phases into the separate sub-principles. These sub-principles again are related to your own footballing beliefs, however for example one of the sub-principles for our ‘build up’ possession phase is ‘playing out from the goal-keeper’. This incorporates numerous movement patterns, positioning related exercises and lots of passing and receiving.

If required, you can break the further sub-principle down into a ‘sub-sub-principle’, for example when ‘playing out from the goalkeeper’ you could say a sub-sub-principle is the full backs movement and first touch when the holding midfielder receives the ball.

Now, once a cohesive, coherent game model has been designed, you can begin to assign certain sub-principles to sessions/weeks/cycles, allowing your team to fully develop and hopefully understand the team’s game model. Personally, our men’s team game model in possession moment has 12 sub-principles, as does our out of possession moment. Our transition moments have 4 sub-principles each, leading us to have 32 sub-principles in total. I assign a sub-principle to each week for the men’s team, of which we work on our ‘acquisition days’ (Explained further below). However, this is not to say it would be wrong to attribute a sub-principle per session rather than per week, or potentially even longer than a week. I do this for personal reasons related to the environment I coach within, and understand that the players I coach need slightly more time to develop and understand concepts related to their game model so I will cover it over 2-3 sessions during the week.

With the youth players I coach, I create a more simplified game model based around individual player techniques. For example, when the sub-principle is ‘playing out from the back’, my session may be based around ‘passing and receiving whilst under pressure’. This allows more emphasis on the technique and developing the required tools so when the player starts being taught the deeper tactical aspects, they have well developed skills to apply to the sub-principle being practiced.

The organisation and development of when and how to coach these sub-principles is again down to the individual coach. With the men’s team, I alternate on a 3 week cycle between moments of the game. For example, our first 3 weeks of pre-season will be based on developing our in possession moment, before 1 week of negative transition, and then 3 weeks of out of possession work, before 1 week of positive transition. I call these blocks (EG in possession block) and it allows us to build up certain aspects in a logical order, for example ‘playing out from the goalkeeper’ sub-principle in week 1 before ‘supporting angles behind the ball’ in week 2. Again, this is due to personal preference and is also how I structure the youth player training. I implore you to try different patterns related to this and see what works for you and your players!

Acquisition days and preparation days

Now, once a game model has been identified and sub-principles have been organised into specific blocks, training sessions must be segmented to specific areas. ‘Acquisition days’ are the days where we practice and develop our game based around the sub-principle of that week. ‘Preparation days’ are days related specifically to opposition strengths and weaknesses and veer away from the standard sub-principle based work.

Our men’s team acquisition-preparation day weekly structure looks as follows:

We train three times and have one classroom (Video analysis) session a week, followed by a game most Sunday evenings. The first two sessions of the week are apportioned as acquisition days, meaning we develop and practice in relation to the specific sub-principle given that week. On Friday we will then develop a session based around an analysis of the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses in all 4 moments of the game and practice in relation to that. Saturday is a video session to cement the previous evening’s trainings points, and we may quickly run over these points on the field if required.

This structure allows both the development of our game model and constant development whilst also modifying and structuring our game in relation to the constantly changing faces and qualities of our opponents on a weekly basis.

With regards to the youth players I coach, all training is structured around acquisition days until U14, where we begin to consider opposition qualities and how that affects our tactical stance within the game.

Periodisation

‘Periodisation’ is a buzzword heard a lot around football currently, mainly due to the continued increase in the physical demands related to players in the modern game. Periodisation is defined as ‘the systematic planning of athletic or physical training’ which allows peak physical condition at the correct moments.

There are many different forms of periodisation, with many people working on different actions/physical fitness components at different times. An example of differing programmes would be a team which uses a ‘meso-cycle’ within their training plan, which focusses on a specific component of physical fitness (Anaerobic power, muscular endurance) over a 3-6 week period. However, another team may work of a ‘tactical periodisation’ scheme, which aims on developing the physical fitness components during the same weekly cycle.

Now, people have written books on periodisation and the differing methods associated with this, so my aim is to make this passage as brief as possible.

Particularly with older teams (16+), where the development of physical fitness is more important, a periodisation structure must be set to maximise the outcomes of the season long training programme. I will outline two popular periodisation programmes below, the first I have previously used and the second I currently use.

The first periodisation structure is a more traditional based macrocycle, mesocycle and microcycle plan. Macrocycle is the whole cycle, so for football the season, mesocycle’s are shorter periods, anywhere between 3-6 weeks usually, and microcycle’s are the weeks making the mesocycle. Therefore, the overall macrocycle outlines the season plan, which is then broken down into smaller chunks via mesocycles and smaller chunks again via microcycles. Some coaches apportion specific physical fitness components to individual mesocycles, for example one mesocycle builds anaerobic endurance. This mesocycle is then planned into smaller microcycle chunks which could focus on more specific details within the physical fitness component. Usually, the macrocycle involves 3 stages, the preparation phase (Pre-season), the competitive stage (Season) and the transition phase (Off-season).

Previously, I used this structure as it was the first one I was introduced to whilst studying Sport and Exercise Science at University. It allowed me to organise the sessions methodically and due to having access to a gym, balance a gym programme with football work. The problem was adaptation to the field. For one mesocycle to be based around anaerobic endurance for example was difficult on the players, particularly during the season. Also, this form of periodisation is designed for athletics and other sports with particularly long preparation stages and shorter competitive stages, the opposite to football.

Therefore, I researched further and found out about ‘tactical periodisation’. Mid-season last year I made the jump from the more traditional periodisation methodology used above and started using a more tactical periodisation based method (Not quite exact due to training days etc). Tactical periodisation in simple terms focusses on all physical fitness components, with a different physical fitness component focussed on each day. This does not mean that other component aren’t practiced on any particular day, it just means that practices and exercises are designed more specifically in relation to the days component focus. This weekly pattern is sometimes referred to as the ‘morphocycle’ and in a full time programme with one game a week is detailed below:

With these component focusses, it allows for the structure to focus on specific sections of our play (sub-principles). For example, on Thursday the focus is on duration/endurance, meaning the distances become larger and the duration times of exercises become longer.

This makes tactical periodisation easy to implement within an environment which only uses football training sessions (No gym work). In a part time environment, it is difficult to get all elements of each day involved in 2-3 sessions. When coaching the men’s team, we train Tuesday’s, Wednesday’s and Friday’s. Tuesday is a recovery day, with areas being small and duration periods being low. Due to this, intensity is expected to be high and it is most likely we just practice and reference the sub-principle. This day is also an acquisition day so is easy to plan ahead of time. Wednesday is a tension/duration day, while also being our second acquisition day. To implement the tension component there are lots of obstacles involved (Hurdles, slaloms, cones) to begin with before we utilise longer duration exercises across larger areas to improve endurance, and due to this we can practice both our sub-principle and macro-principle. Friday is a speed day, so we do extremely high intensity, match pace work at very short intervals. Here, we use medium sized distances, making it as game realistic as possible as it is our preparation day.

Below is a weekly pattern based around tactical periodisation, which can be adapted to needs and qualities, as I have personally.

The real benefit of this form of periodisation is there is a continuous building of physical fitness which leads to few peaks and troughs throughout the season (EG such as a trough during an endurance loading phase within the traditional periodisation format). Some argue it keeps players fresher than traditional periodisation throughout the season by creating more quality training rather than a higher quantity, which leads to lesser injuries. While there has been studies relating to both periodisation structures injury status, there is none to compare the two directly, meaning saying one is less likely to cause injury than the other is currently not quite fact, although strong assumptions can be made.

Individual player development

In accordance with the above, individual player development must be structured in at the correct time and must be in relation to the periodisation of the cycle/day and also potentially the sub-principle being practiced in that week.

Extra work/sessions are not discouraged, but when using these it must fall within the periodisation structure. For example, if it is a recovery session, it would be wise not to work on a player’s high intensity distance running.

Incorporating player development can be easily enveloped within the curriculum. An example of this may be developing a centre backs passing/distribution during the sub-principle ‘playing out from the goalkeeper’. Therefore, within this week you could write specific points in relation to this centre backs current performance and small changes you want to improve to help develop this players passing/distribution which will, in turn, develop the teams ‘playing out from the goalkeeper’.

These individual player points can be incorporated into the season plan and further into individual session plans to help further and track the development of each player. These points could be factored into individual goals which may also improve motivation and also help the player track and understand their own development within the grand scheme of the game model.

Creating your programme

With the support of this article, hopefully you can clearer see how to develop your own season long training plan which helps build on your team’s game model and creates long-standing fitness.

However, there are still considerations of how rigid or loose the plan is. For example, is your structure extremely rigid with regards to sticking to the sub-principle due to be practiced on acquisition days? If so, after a bad performance on a game day, you therefore cannot specifically work on a specific sub-principle your team struggled with during the game. If you are looser with the structure, you can therefore make small adjustments when required and potentially double acquisition days with some preparation.

The benefit of a rigid system is that you can plan further ahead and with more certainty, in effect allowing you to plan the whole season’s acquisition days before it begins, within reason (IE Subtle changes related to individual developments/injuries etc).

The benefit of a loose system is the ability to practice what is required at times and allows more freedom to coach what you see. A loose system also allows for more opportunities to alter the season long plan if unforeseen circumstances occur, such as fixture changes. This can create an easier transition if you can successfully re-structure the sessions and periodisation related to this unforeseen circumstance.

Conclusion

To conclude, a season long training plan will include the following

• Game model
• Curriculum
• Schedule
• Periodisation
• Individual player intricacies

If you have any questions, want to discuss this further, or want to see an example season long training plan, email me on [email protected] or tweet me on @jackbraz29

I would be happy to hear from you.