Traditionally, interventions to improve performance of substitutes have not received much attention. Their pre-match warm-ups are usually performed isolated from starters and they then carry out a re-warm-up in the second half prior to going onto the field. Substitutes should be prepared to perform at equivalent or higher work-rates than the players being replaced and/or

Preparation for training and matches usually starts with the regular team warm-up, consisting of 10-30’ of generic/specific directed-to-team preparation, but the ‘one-fits-all’ approach may not be enough for individual preparation. The 360º individual pre-formance strategy (360PRE) is a strategy designed to protect the body, provoke the mind, and prepare the player for movement. Given its

Xavi Hernandez is the new head coach of Barcelona FC. In the FSI Master’s course High-Performance Football Coach, Xavi offers our students an extensive technical interview about his training methodology. Here we offer you a brief extract of it.  

Long-term athletic development (LTAD) is a process over several years in which strength training is carried out from a young age. It is an important capability as it is correlated to jumping, sprinting, agility and a decreased injury rate. An optimal amount of stimuli in the long term has to be placed on the player

Injuries, which are multifactorial and the most complex issue reported by practitioners, have a huge negative impact on the performance and economy of professional football teams. As a starting point for decision making to reduce injury risk, teams should find an effective way to store and share important information between staff. For the analytical process

Training based strategies to optimize readiness to play may be based on three main pillars. Firstly, the periodization process will serve as a framework of how the players will be biologically prepared in relation to match competition, the game being the key indicator. Most muscular and ACL injuries occur at the beginning of the season,

Travel fatigue (cumulative exposure to a travelling environment) and jet-lag (dysregulation between internal circadian rhythms and external daylight processes) are the main issues related to team travel that, if not appropriately managed, can negatively affect performance and risk of illness/injury. In terms of short-haul travel accumulation during the season (2-3hr. trips), they seem to have

In soccer, load can be categorised into three components: cardiovascular or metabolic (internal (IL)), mechanical (ML) and locomotive (LL) load, the last two referring to external load. Information coming from all three components provide the whole loading picture of the player. The relationship and interaction between them depend, among other factors, on the individual profile

Worst case scenarios (WCS) are the most intense physical activities experienced during match-play and they are analyzed via shorter match periods in different time windows (commonly, from 1’ to 10’). WCS are mainly used for establishing benchmarks for designing drills that are believed to reproduce what is happening in competition, thus implying several conceptual assumptions,

At FSI Football, we know that there is nothing better than first-hand experience, that’s why we’d like to share our intern’s experience at one of our partner clubs. What do you say?