A Pre-Season Template

I was recently approached by a coach to assist him with designing a pre-season programme and thought I would share some elements of it with you as a potential template.

The template has 3 segments to it that have been blended together from some of Raymond Verheijen’s periodisation model, my own experience as a player and coach and, a well worn sizing chart from footballscience.net for fields.

Any time I have been able to set up a pre-season programme the way I wanted it, I worked across 6 weeks.  This is where part of Verheijen’s model is used; the 6 week programme is broken into three, two week segments.  The first two weeks works on a larger field size and numbers with the next two weeks smaller and, eventually smaller still for the final two weeks.

The basic idea of this, as I understand it, is that the start of the programme is to develop player’s endurance during larger games and develop sharpness during the smaller games.  Developing the sharpness needed for competitive play at the start of the season in those final two weeks.  I have also heard of another model used by some professional clubs that completely removes endurance work from training sessions and allows players to develop this during pre-season friendlies.  This may work for teams that give players 8-10 games across pre-season to develop their endurance but, I have not used this method.

On day 1 of pre-season, I will ask players to play a series of larger sided games until the standard and pace noticeably drops; this is the ‘zero point’, or starting point.  This may be done along with some testing (not the beep test or yo-yo test as the games are used as the ‘endurance test’) to give the sport scientists or coaches a start point for other physical factors.  I would play games of 10 minutes and use the rest period or the work period to increase the difficult as pre-season moves on.  I understand that some scientists would prefer one variable (work time or rest time) rather than having work or rest time or, size of field or, number of players to give a true indication of progression but, football is a game of many variables.

I usually include a number of rondos, possession games and passing patterns throughout pre-season and, as much as possible, include a ball in fitness work.  One of the coaches I worked with in Scotland said he would always ask himself the same question after session planning, “Would I have enjoyed this session as a player?”  Whilst not every player will love to do the same things, I think this is a great start point.  I also include tactical work into my plans and use each of the 6 weeks to add to the tactical knowledge of the squad.

To assist with the sizing of fields I have used the table below as a rough guide.  I do differ on a couple of the sizes as I feel an 8yd x 12yd area for 1v1 is ideal (in most cases) and 28yds x 35yds is my favoured sized for 5v5.

And there you go, a basic template for pre-season: work from larger to smaller games to build endurance towards sharpness.  Manipulate the size of the field, number of players and work/rest ratios to increase or decrease intensity.  Finally, and maybe most importantly, build the session plans keeping the player at the centre of focus.  Players work hard when they enjoy sessions, they retain information better when they are engaged and they give more to the team when everyone is working hard, together.