Football is a team sport. The ultimate goal in football is to score one more goal than the opponent. To achieve this coaches often use tactical principles. Within boundaries players execute decisions that relate to these tactical principles trained by the team, to ensure the best possible result. Principles for Attacking, Transitioning and Defending are... Continue Reading →

22 players looking at a screen waiting for the fitness coach to start the session. This is one of the few possibilities left to keep players fit, as we speak. Leagues cancelled, leagues postponed, no one allowed to leave their house, until further notice, etc, etc. In short, players are not playing football. By not... Continue Reading →

On a personal note… Football is the most important thing of all unimportant things. In the current situation a lot of people are not allowed to show up at their workplace. Some are able to work from home while others can’t. Everybody finds themselves in an unfamiliar situation. Suddenly we have to improvise to a... Continue Reading →

  The game of football is the starting point of what you plan in your training sessions. You will be either working on team communication, game insight, execution of a decision or football fitness. In a normal week on a normal day, this wouldn´t create any problems what so ever. Covid-19 makes it, however, impossible... Continue Reading →

At most courses, speakers, usually from top clubs, present about a certain topic. Often a fitness coach, assistant coach or analyst who shows how they work at their respective clubs. They explain situations from their perspective, with their external factors to whom the listeners cannot relate. People working in pro football try to show the... Continue Reading →

The game of football is the starting point for football coaches and this should therefore also apply to other coaches involved in their respective sport. The game has to be the starting point. Like mentioned in a previous post we call this a Top-down or bottom-up approach. In the following example we will use the assistant coach... Continue Reading →

Before studying physiotherapy I studied sports coaching. My thought process was always the traditional way, which basically meant: Technique, Tactics, Fitness and Mental. Team sports sessions, like football and basketball, were often divided into dribbling through cones and a game at the end. After this the teachers hoped that we were able to dribble better... Continue Reading →

Apples do not collectively define the definition of fruit. Bananas do not collectively define the definition of fruit. The same can be said for grapes, lemons and oranges, amongst others. They are all fruit. This basically means that fruit is the generic name for all different kind’s of the aforementioned fruit. There is a hierarchal... Continue Reading →

The game of football is the starting point. This counts for both fit players and players coming back from an injury. When an injury occurs the coach starts to plan a football rehabilitation periodisation. Within this football rehab periodisation the coach plans the expected first game after the injury. This first game is the starting... Continue Reading →

After discussing the difference between a Quality and a Quantity session we now have to place the different sessions on a certain day, within the week. As mentioned in the previous earlier there are differences between a quality session and a quantity session. Every movement/action you execute in a rehab session must, at first, be... Continue Reading →

To execute a Quality session Football Rehab – part 1  the player needs to be totally fresh both before and during the session. If entering a quality session with fatigue from a previous session, you can´t guarantee that the quality you wish to obtain, will be achieved. Freshness is needed because the player in question, will... Continue Reading →

A fully fit player trains volume before intensity. He will first build up his ability to maintain making actions, before he will work towards making more actions per minute by training how to recover quicker between actions. A normal sequence in which to do this is by playing football conditioning games in an 11 v... Continue Reading →

Most coaches will work with youth players at some point in their career. Youth coaches will recognise that there are physical differences between the players in regards to their height. When players are going through their mini growth spurt these differences can be considerable. The first question for the coach is, do you acknowledge the... Continue Reading →

Football is played all over the world and it is conducted in the same way all over the world. It doesn’t matter if we talk about amateur football, women’s football, men’s football, professional football or children’s football. In every game there will be attacking, transitioning and defending, by definition. These team functions are executed by... Continue Reading →

Football is the most important thing of all non-important things. For players the most im- portant thing is to play the game and not to be in the gym doing some sort of rehab, after an unnecessary injury Blog. As we all know we cannot prevent all injuries, but many are preventable. A common challenge... Continue Reading →

Football is way to complex to divide it into small parts, yet many coaches train tactics, technique, fitness and the mental thing separately. With this they hope that when putting all the pieces of the puzzle back together, the team will perform better in the next game. The question is, does this really work? Of... Continue Reading →

Football is an individual team sport with 11 individuals organised together in order to work as a team. However, these players all have different roles and responsibilities for the team. They all have different genes, come from different backgrounds and therefore react differently to the training load planned by the coaches. Age differences, injury history,... Continue Reading →

Football has become an all year around sport. It is rather an exception then a rule if there is no game on TV to watch. Top professional players have to perform for at least 50-60 matches each season and sometimes when there is a big tournament, like the World Cup, they play even more. The... Continue Reading →

Players get tested for about everything and anything at their respective clubs. They get tested several times a year. But for what reason are they getting tested? What are they testing? What are coaches doing with all the data? Will this data be used and converted into actual football exercises? Or is this data only... Continue Reading →

The first thing kids do when they enter the pitch is shoot at goal. Why? Because the best feeling in the world for this child is to score goals, just as their favourite player does every week in the top leagues all over the world. Finishing is one of the exercises you as a coach... Continue Reading →

Receiving an invitation to represent your country should be the best thing that can happen in a footballers career. There are however some factors to discuss when looking at the workload per player. Players come from different clubs, from different countries on different continents, where there are different cultures and different training regimes. Most players... Continue Reading →

Football is an individual team sport. In other words, 11 individuals have to learn how to work together as a team. However, these 11 players all have different backgrounds and respond differently to certain training methods Individual Periodisation. A coach should therefore, after he planned the team workload, individualize the workload for each and every... Continue Reading →

At a certain moment in the rehab process a player will and must be introduced to the real thing, the game. He will start to play minutes, but how many minutes will he play in his first game(s)? How can we progress if everything goes according to plan? These are only two of many questions... Continue Reading →

In a football team the head coach is responsible. If things go wrong he is the one who gets the sack. The head coach has the overall responsibility in all aspects regarding the team process. This means that he also is responsible for the injured player, returning to training and playing. Or is he? As... Continue Reading →

The interval principle in football rehab Football is an interval sport. In football oxygen is used to recover between football actions. This interval principle should therefore be introduced in the rehab process as soon as possible. The interval principle is not often introduced in a rehab process. Not introducing the interval principle in rehab can... Continue Reading →

What if you don´t have a Sport Science department to support you with data? Only the big teams with high budgets have Sport Science departments to collect data. They gather all kinds of data. Heart rates, RPE´s, body weight, results of saliva samples, etc, etc are collected and put into a spreadsheet. This data is... Continue Reading →

Where to start? When going on a course you expect to learn something. You expect that the presented will give you that little extra in the future. Most courses do not give you anything new. There are no «secrets» in football. Football still has the same rules and is played the same way all over... Continue Reading →

    A case study. Player X is a first year U19 in Norway. A season in Norway lasts from January until October. The pre - season starts in January until April and league games are played between April and October. At his previous club he played as an elite player in the U15 and... Continue Reading →

                                        The game is the reference of your rehab process. It is the starting point from which you start planning. Always start with the finish in mind and then work backwards. Everything the player does is... Continue Reading →