Pre-season soccer conditioning

[*big D*]

Well im not sure if I am going to play soccer this next year but there is a chance that I might so I want to get my fitness levels up to where they where at the end of the last season. If I do continue to play then throughout the season I will be trying to improve my fitness also to get it to be as good as it was around 3 years ago when I had amazing fitness levels, unfortunately my fitness is currently pretty damn poor!

Just thought I would log what I do here because it helps give me some motivation and I can see if I am making progress.

My plan leading up to september should look like this.

Monday 20th july untill friday 31st july: continous running for cardio

Friday 31st july-august 7th on holiday but 8th and 9th back in the gym.

Week commencing monday 10th august - Sunday 16th: continous running

Monday 17th august - Sunday 6th September: HIIT instead of the regular cardio.

Regular cardio in the first few weeks is to improve Overall endurance and then HIIT is to improve sprinting speed and sprinting endurance... Sprints make me tired very fast so HIIT weeks will be extremely hard.

Lifting will stay normal hopefully continuing with 4 days a week lifting but could drop to 3.

[*big D*]

Yesterdays cardio: 17th july.

Home treadmill for half hour.

20 mins running at 8KMH
10 mins running at 10 KMH

With this type of Cardio as you see things are being kept simple, this way it will be easy to see if improvements are made.

[*big D*]

18th July Legs day:

Bought some new protein from myprotein.co.uk along with something called scottish oats. It was cheap... delivery arrived the next day and my workout seemed more intense than usual with smaller breaks inbetween sets and been able to lift more for longer. Going to save the oats for when I come back off the holidays and start to do the HIIT as it will help massively but I will try the oats again tmorrow to see if I get the same effect.

Legs workout:

5x5 Squats.
3x Hamstring curls - Usually after the squats my energy has gone but I noticed that today I was able to keep the weight around 20kg higher than normal.
3x Leg extensions - These where also good.
2x Straight-leg deads - Still had energy after I had done these, my legs where feeling real pumped by now.
3x Leg press - Usually I wouldn't do these I would of finished with what I have done above but because I still had the energy I thought why not? and Blasted out 3 sets on this, still managing a decent weight.

I could barely walk down the gym stairs to go home and was feeling pretty damn sick from pushing so hard but I loved it!

[*big D*]

I think for my cardio I will do as below:

Workout 1: 30 mins 8kmh

Workout 2: 25mins 8km... 5 mins at10kmh

Workout 3: 20 mins 8km... 10 mins at 10kmh

...Workout 7: 30 mins at 10kmh

And every so often il have a cardio session with more time instead of adding speed e.g. Workout 8: 45mins at 8kmh.

[*big D*]

Sunday 19th july

Biceps + triceps

3 x BB curls SS with Closegrip benchpress
3 x Tricep pushdowns SS with Seated alternating arm curls
2 x preacher DB curls
2 x machine bench press, palms facing each other grip to hit the triceps.

Cardio:

On the bike I was going for 8miles in 30 minutes but I ended up doing 6.5miles in 24mins which ment I was on track for my goal. I stopped however because the bike I was on this time was uncompfortable and I felt like it was splitting my butt cheeks apart!

[thesinner]

lol, bikes are not enjoyable

[*big D*]

Ye the one I used wasn't compfortable, there is upright bikes which is what I was on and some that are more layed back... they where all used up tho so I had to use the Bum ripper ones.

[*big D*]

Tuesday 21st

Did chest+shoulders however I forgot my workout pretty much... I remember doing:

3x flat bench
3x shoulder press
3x power cleans (first time I did these and dang they are very tiring)

But can't remember what else I did... if I did incline bench etc or some other movements. I have decided that I cannot do chest and shoulders again as its just too much pushing movements so I will drop the arms day and do triceps with shoulders on a saturday starting next week as I did use to find that a pretty good workout.

[*big D*]

22nd july - soccer training

I havn't played soccer in ages so I was happy to be training last night. Training lasted around 2 hours and consisted of:

Warm-ups with some basic passing and moving stuff just to get use to the ball at your feet again and warm up the muscles.

Shooting-Practised some shooting work against the goalkeeper, heading, beating a defender and shooting, volleys, 2 attackers vs 2 defenders and a few more things.

Cardio work- did some continous running, soccer related endurance including ladder work to improve agility also, some team sprinting work.

Finally a match- Played a match for around half an hour to finish things off followed by a cooldown.

[Joeflex73]

Doing very well man! Keep up the good work.

[*big D*]

Thanks for the encouragement joe!

[*big D*]

23rd july: Legs day.

Despite doing 2 hours of running around last night I decided to do legs today and thought I would leave out bi's and tri's this week and do back on sunday, this means I can do football training on saturday.

I havnt been doing my legs the whole time that iv been going to the gym and got more serious with the lately and its like newby gains for strength so its morale boosting.

Legs workout:

Squats 5x5: weight 5kg up from last week and feel I could hit more next week.
Hamstring curls x 3
Leg extensions x 3
Front squats x 3 (hate these because I just cant get a compfortable bar positioning)

Workout felt good and I was pretty energetic so I was happy. Tomorrow I plan to have as an off day and do some relaxing with my girl.

[adawg]

Looks like an awesome workout man, good job! Get some good rest in!

[*big D*]

Ye my legs will need it with another 2 hours training tmorrow. So im gunna go to the movies and watch a film!

[*big D*]

July 25th: Soccer training.

Did 2 hours of soccer training this morning and my legs are feeling bit tired now so will be looking forward to a few days rest untill wednesday however tmorrow they Will be needed again to do deadlifts. Fitness feels as though its getting slowly better which is good, hopefully it should be pretty good by the time the new season starts.