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Am I doing to much/to heavy for my age?
| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 05:00 | |
The Philly Flyer Joined: 29 Apr 2006, 02:08 Posts: 3152 Location: Delaware, USA |
If you are already a fairly talented player with good but not perfect technique* and your goal is to eliminate weaknesses in your game then I absolutely believe at least a semi structured routine is the most effective route. Improving your technique is largely (if not exclusively) dependent on muscle memory, and in order to gain muscle memory repetition is of critical importance. This is especially important when working on your weaker foot. If I hadn't trained with such structure and done so many many repetitions of the same drills or variations of those drills there is no way I would be as much of a two footed player as I am today. You can't learn (as efficiently as compared to a structured routine) to be two footed from simply messing around with the ball because your tendency is to use your dominant foot most often.
And this doesn't mean you have to do the exact same drills over and over for weeks and months on end. Be creative and switch them up whenever you get bored of them! There are countless ways to work on different aspects of technique especially if you have a wall to utilize or a training partner. Just think about freestyling. Who wants to practice atw with their weaker foot? Initially it is not as fun as it is practicing that with your strong foot, it can be frustrating especially if you are very adept at it with your preferred foot and can do them consecutively at ease. But if you want to learn you must get into a habit (or routine) of practicing weak foot atw's for a certain amount of time or repetitions or until you feel comfortable, and you must do this nearly every (if not every) time you practice freestyle. I believe the same concepts apply to striking and controlling the ball. At a certain point in your training career if you truly want to maximize your progress, I stand by what I said earlier- some type of structure and routine is the most effective way to train individually. This is coming from my own personal experience and served me quite well but I am not so close minded to think that other people may find different or comparable results using different training methods. This is simply the best advice I have to offer based off of my training habits, observed results, and playing career. *There is no such thing as a player with perfect technique. One should always strive to improve collin wrote: sometimes i feel like when i do routines i get this feeling that since i did my routine that i dont have to do anything else the rest of the day. Don't say you didn't say this to yourself before because everyone has.
I can 100% honestly say I never experienced that. And I have spent countless hours and days training off of a routine, typically doing multiple sessions in a day (during the brief off seasons when I wasn't having regular practices with my club, which is when I would get particularly serious about my individual training). Maybe my attitude about training was just different than yours. Sure it was hardwork sometimes and I really had to push myself, but I never lost focus on my ultimate goal which was to maximize my abilities and advance to the highest level of play I could. Every second you sit around, there is another aspiring footballer training harder. When I finished doing what I viewed as the drills and reps I wanted to accomplish for the day, I would do more if I felt up to it, and I would always take a break from the routine to be more creative and "mess around with the ball" and work on free kicks or new attacking moves or things like that. Every rep I completed brought me great satisfaction in knowing that I was improving my technique and consistency little by little all the time. If your attitude towards a training routine is negative, then I wouldn't expect you to react the same way as I did at the end of that type of training session.  Click it |
| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 11:11 | |
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I think theres got to be a balance between kicking the ball around for fun and sticking by a routine. Obviously we need to train hard and reguarly as part of a routine to perfect our skills, but we also need those little mess around games at school with our mates every now and then to keep the fun and love for the game there, like you guys mentioned with Messi and Pele. Im sure they both spent hours practising individual skills, but just as much playing the game with thier friends and enjoying it.
Anyway, another reason I think at that age you should focus more skills and enjoyment rather than get worked up about weights is because in few years time you'll be up to your neck in stress, homework, questions about the future... Sometimes I wish I was 14 again and had all afternoon to practise when I got home from school  Sig by me |
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 19:43 | |
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ok obviously nobody understands what i mean by messing around. All i have to say is when im in my basements practicing im touching the ball just as many times as you are, im doing skills just as many times as you are, im sweating just as much as you are, im running with the ball just as many times as you are. I just have no reps and no organized cone drills, no man has cone shaped feet. Its the same thing.
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 20:02 | |
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collin wrote: ok obviously nobody understands what i mean by messing around. All i have to say is when im in my basements practicing im touching the ball just as many times as you are, im doing skills just as many times as you are, im sweating just as much as you are, im running with the ball just as many times as you are. I just have no reps and no organized cone drills, no man has cone shaped feet. Its the same thing.
I swear you're just disagreeing for the sake of it. I remember you asking for cone drills for dribbling in the past.. I'll play though. Who here was said a routine equates to a certain amount of reps, or even cone drills? Sure, they could be a part of one, but that is not what makes a routine. A routine is simply structured training. Not an amount of reps, or cones. The people who ask how many reps of a drill until they become Ronaldo are also the same people who won't get anywhere. They don't think about their actual skills and just do what people say. A routine is necessary to help develop lagging parts. In your muck around you're almost guaranteed to not be putting as much attention on lagging parts or else they wouldn't be lagging. This is the key of routines. Is saying that you will be doing something at a certain time. Not that I will do 10 reps with my weak foot. But that you are going to focus on it no matter what. Your routine isn't going to stay the same even from week to week. You'll constantly be changing your skill training up to focus on those skills that aren't quite there yet so you can start doing even more complicated drills without a specific part of a drill slowing you down. I imagine much of this is rambling, but ah well I think it might get the point across... "Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness" |
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 20:10 | |
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i have an outdoor routine and i do cone drills again i repeat myself it is cold as hell outside so all i have is my basement at the moment. Im just saying back when i was later 14 early 15 year old all i did was go in my backyard and just play. dribble around do stepovers pass against the wall occasionaly, did some juggling. I did whatever i wanted to, and I can say now that that made me go from a bad to a good player. I didnt have a routine, i went out an did what i wanted to, played with the ball because i loved it. Also, i have no idea what you mean when you say a training structure with no reps or anything. can u explain that more
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 20:21 | |
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collin wrote: i have an outdoor routine and i do cone drills again i repeat myself it is cold as hell outside so all i have is my basement at the moment. Im just saying back when i was later 14 early 15 year old all i did was go in my backyard and just play. dribble around do stepovers pass against the wall occasionaly, did some juggling. I did whatever i wanted to, and I can say now that that made me go from a bad to a good player. I didnt have a routine, i went out an did what i wanted to, played with the ball because i loved it. Also, i have no idea what you mean when you say a training structure with no reps or anything. can u explain that more
Hm.. Without writing a ridiculous amount about my philosophy of skill training I'll try to sum it up and hopefully make sense. Training for a specific amount of reps causes you to just go as fast as possible. If you don't want to be doing the training, but you feel you have to, that's easy to fix you just do it quickly and disregard quality. Training on your own needs to focus on perfecting the skills, and trying to just do something as quickly as possible doesn't develop skills. If you want to get quicker at a skill and remain at your current level do it against people. If you want to actually improve the skill do it on your own, and focus on doing it right instead of quickly. Over time you'll naturally just start doing it quicker on your own. So, the above will eliminate purely focusing on reps (not saying never do a specific amount of reps, but it's not really helpful for skill training). ------ The structured training merely means making yourself do things you don't want to do. A rule of thumb I usually use is if I don't want to do something it's probably because I suck at it. For example when I first started and my weak foot sucked I usually ignored it. So, structuring it so you do things you don't want to do for the development as a whole. "Somewhere along the line, we seem to have confused comfort with happiness" |
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 20:34 | |
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so you say you shouldnt work on dong it as fast as possible? but what if im already pretty good at it? what is beyond that point, then do i do it as fast as possible, for example doing a regular slalom through 5 cones, i can do it really fast but shouldnt i keep pushing myself to do it faster and faster. i guess this could work in 2 different ways. for example when your running with the ball trying to keep it as close as possible, so i should start out at a jogging pace and set reps for it. Then everyday keep doing it at a jogging pace and eventually it will get faster? dont i have to try and make myself go faster before i can make myself get any better at the next level beyond that jogging pace? or another example. Im running at the cone and doing a skill. Im already "doing it right" and i can do it pretty fast, so why would i keep doing the skill at the same pace trying to perfect that technique when i should be trying to do it as fast as possible making it gamelike and perfecting it at the highest speed possible?
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 21:18 | |
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so icy, would it be good to do a daily routine like this
Monday: i focus all of my time on just keeping the ball under control at pace, taking a touch every step. Do that back and fourth in my basement swtiching from left to right foot. then i would do my fitness Tuesday: Close control cone drills. Focus the whole day doing slalom and fiure 8 drills and just doing quick small touches around cones. then do fitness Wednsday: High speed cone drills. Focus all my time on running at cones with pace, and sharp cutting through them as quick as possible. then do fitness ect,ect... or should i be doing a little bit of each every day? |
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| Posted: 02 Dec 2010, 23:45 | |
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I always figured a routine was something you did without interruption for multiple days in order to improve your muscle memory/familiarity/comfort ect...
For example, working on your instep drives for half an hour 4 days a week would be considered a routine, regardless of whether you're counting how many you do. |
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