In Sweden there’s been kind of a trend to do a lot of long distance running during the first part of the pre-season, and then as you progress towards the regular season you start to decrease the distance the players are running.
When you first think about it, it looks like a pretty decent idea, right?
Well, it isn’t. I am so tired of hearing coaches talk about “creating a conditioning foundation for the players so they have base to stand on” when the season starts. But here’s where it gets weird in my opinion.
I’ve always had a relatively high success rate against penalties, certainly managing to predict the right way even if the pace beat me, and again I fancied my chances. As a goalkeeper I was a natural loner and this situation always suited me to a tee…….me against them. I eyeballed the striker and watched his body language; I was diving to my right. At what height he hit the ball was then down to pure chance but I knew that I was playing the percentages in my favour and all I had to do was get in the way. With the eyes of my new teammates piercing the tension, not to mention the sub keeper in the dugout who’s place I’d pinched upon my arrival at the club; I knew I was under pressure. The striker placed the ball after I’d eventually given it back to him and started to pace out his run up. I was in no doubt which side he was shooting and as he struck the ball I took my initial step into the dive. BOOM! The ball cannoned off my knee, in fact the same knee as earlier, and rebounded to the relative safety of their full back on the touchline where he was dispossessed by our striker with a well timed sliding tackle. It is always a buzz when your team mates crowd round for the obligatory high fives and pats on the back, but even more so when you’ve just clawed yourself out the hole in which you dropped yourself in the first place. We subsequently went on to win the game 2-0 and as a direct result topped the table of which we would eventually finish second after a long arduous season.
I have been the head coach of my current team for about 1,5 years now, and during that period, we have done a total of 3 sessions (!) where we exclusively focused on conditioning, not related to regular soccer training. Those 3 sessions where done as a Plan B because our training field was covered in snow.
Our philosophy on conditioning for soccer players is that everything can (and should) be performed on the soccer field, during regular soccer training. And most of those sessions can be done with the soccer ball.
I was simply a trainer back then as I had little knowledge of either how to coach or indeed what to coach so we simply did drills that I had seen in books or on the television. It was all ‘old skool’ stuff but very effective for the level we were performing at, and it served me well for my future career. I was fastidious about being able to catch the ball and this was possibly the strongest forte of my game. I attempted to catch absolutely everything possible in training, there are always the inevitable shots that require a palm or a tip away but anything in my proximity I would strive to get hold of, again this is something that I have taken into my coaching – I want to see an attempt to catch the ball in the first instance. It doesn’t overly worry me if you drop it in training as long as you react to the fumble, but if you didn’t try to catch then how would you know what was possible in a game? There are many mantras that I adopt for each and every session and the goalkeepers that I work with quickly become aware of the levels expected of them, I find that by setting not just targets but achievable targets, motivates the goalkeeper into upping their performance and development quicker than a simple pat on the back and a “well done”.
Sitting on the sidelines in discomfort and watching my team was hard, especially as I had been put there by an innocuous challenge, but it certainly sped up my progression into coaching. My posterior cruciate ligament was torn and I was sidelined for a season undergoing regular intensive physiotherapy sessions and a rehab programme. I was well on the road to recovery when I hit from behind when stationary in a road traffic accident and clattered my knee against the dash board due to the inertia caused by the other driver and extensively damaged it again, undoing the months of hard work I’d recently put in. that was it, my playing days were well and truly gone. As with everything I do, if I’m doing something then I aim to be the absolute best that I can be at it and hence I undertook as many coaching qualifications as I possible could fit in in a ridiculously short space of time. I aimed to provide each goalkeeper that I worked with as much insight into the game as physically and mentally possible as I embarked on my new fledgling career as a goalkeeper coach. Having received no specific coaching personally I wasn’t dogged by the “Do it this way” mentality that follows the majority of coaches and I was free to develop my own personal style, ideas and methodology. I am a huge student of how people work and watch many, many coaches in their mannerisms and style and took the bits that would suit me and adapted those that wouldn’t until I found a style that works. And it is with this style that I lead you into the magical world of Coaching the Goalkeeper by Bob Warby
Resource Author Francisco Rodriguez H.
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