Invisible Training (Part 2)

This article was written by Adal Sánchez, a seasoned professional with 17 years of experience in football across various categories, from grassroots to professional levels, encompassing both male and female divisions. With a background as a fitness coach in the top tier of football in Panama and Costa Rica, Adal has also spent seasons working in the United States, contributing to academies and universities in California. With a decade-long tenure as a personal trainer specializing in strength and skill enhancement, Adal has worked with players representing national teams in both men's and women's categories, as well as top-flight clubs in Costa Rica and the MLS in the United States.

Read time: 3 minutes.

Continuing our analysis on invisible training in football, we now delve into the second part of this exploration. In this installment, we will delve deeper into crucial aspects such as recovery, strength, and technique, highlighting their importance for elite footballers. Let's continue our journey towards a more comprehensive understanding of what it takes to succeed in the demanding world of modern football.

Recovery: Football is a sport of high physical demand, where teams compete in up to 3 or more tournaments per season, accumulating approximately 70 matches, between club and national team competitions, cup tournaments, international tournaments such as the Champions League, etc. Furthermore, we observe that players are covering more distance per game, so many players opt for different means of post-training and post-match recovery, such as hydrotherapy, hyperbaric chamber, massage, electrostimulation, compression garments, cryotherapy, and sleep.

Strength: In an interview with YouTuber CrisMD, he said, "90 percent of my success is maintaining physical condition," "you have to take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, no one else will help you." Strength training plays a fundamental role in a footballer's life, as it allows them to withstand the physical demands of competition. Additionally, it can lead to neuromuscular gains to be much more powerful, resilient, strong, and above all, reduce the risk of injury. Often, to achieve these muscle gains, we must do extra work off the field under the supervision of a strength specialist for footballers. Dedicate more minutes according to the specific needs of each player, perform mobility work, core strength, and power training will help us maintain and increase physical performance on the field.

Technique: We are what we do day by day. If we need to improve our shooting on goal, long passes, first touch passes, oriented control, dribbling, etc., we must allocate specific minutes for this type of work. With this, we aim to create technical automatisms. While it is true that these exercises are isolated from what happens in a real game situation (with opposition), we can still gain technical advantages that allow us to solve situations on the field. These extra works instill confidence in the footballer to play. If you are a player who is technically well-trained, you can surely focus on other game situations knowing that you can execute well with the ball. Football demands more from us; handling both profiles is a necessity, regardless of the level you are at, you must focus on improving both profiles, left and right, and thus, you will be gaining the opportunity to play wherever the coach needs you, as you can execute and reduce technical errors because you have worked on them.

In today's football, if we want to achieve our goals, we have to work very hard on them, especially on those details that make a difference in competition. If the goal is to stand out from the average footballer, we have to work harder on all these aforementioned aspects.