Laps Not Required!

By Vince Ganzberg, Indiana Youth Soccer Director of Education

As I travel the state, I often observe other coaches while waiting to work with a group of players. While more and more sessions have young players moving around with the ball, there are still far too many sessions where young players are moving without the ball. Running laps and sprints really isn't necessary for young players, because they are developing fitness on the field every day.

Endurance training without a ball doesn't make too much sense for players who are 6-12 years of age. One reason is that Peak Height Velocity (PHV) isn't effective until 13-and-a-half years for boys and 11-and-a-half years for girls. PHV is a unique point in each child's life in which they reach their maximum growth rate and enter a critical stage of development where the effects of certain types of training can be maximized. Prior to PHV, players will benefit most from activities focused on fun and fundamentals.

Recently, I received a Garmin GPS watch as a gift, and I wondered if it could be used to track the amount of mileage a player covers in a well-planned training situation. This watch is more accurate than a pedometer because it uses satellite technology to track duration, pace (mine is pretty slow) and total mileage. I had an idea to put these on a couple of players at different ages to see how far they actually do run in a normal practice. My goal was to identify how much speed and endurance training is inherent in a regular training session without adding laps, sprints or other "without the ball" activities.

Below are a couple of training sessions that I did with both a U12 girls' team and also a U8 girls' team. In each session, I selected an "average-to-above-average" player for the age group to wear the Garmin watch during the session. I think you may find the results surprising.

In the U6-U12 age groups, I hear a lot of "Go faster," "Get moving," and, "You are not running enough!" coming from the parent sidelines. So, I decided to share the results of my Garmin experiment with the parents at the end of the U8 session. They were surprised at just how much ground the average seven-year-old player could cover in a training session. It was good to see the parents' reactions and hopefully, helped them better appreciate how much effort their children were putting forth in training and in matches.

I plan to continue using my Garmin watch to collect more information on training characteristics of more players of all ages and genders to see if this data is consistent. I am curious to see how far a five-year-old runs, a 10-year-old, and eventually older ages in a training session.

So LOSE the laps and LOSE the sprint tests. Have players active in training and they will eventually reach the fitness level needed to play a match. The players are moving! They are becoming FIT! They just don't know it.

And any time you can create an environment where players have fun while working on something (without them even knowing they are working on it), it's a bonus!