How to prepare your body for football

To play football at the best level you first need to be physically fit and to do so you need to be willing to work on your body. There are 3 things that you must work on to stay healthy on and off the field: stamina, flexibility and your diet.

1) Stamina

90 minutes might seem easy to play but when you are on the pitch they seem to be really long unless you don’t enjoy it. Thus the first and most important rule is to enjoy the game. The minute you start doing so you’ll see that you won’t get tired that fast.

Football players require high levels of fitness that enable them to run long durations with small rapid sprints throughout a 90 minute period. For you to survive these 90 minutes you need to build up on your stamina and only running can do that.

Every day before you start with practice, always remember to warm up your body and the best way to do so is to go for a run. What most payers do wrong is that they run a certain amount of rounds but that’s what you shouldn’t do. You should focus on the time you run and the speed you run at. Always start slow say 20% of you maximum speed. Run for 4-5 minutes at that speed and then speed up to 40%. Run for about 5 minutes again and speed up to 60%. Now run at this speed for 3 minutes and then drop back down to 40%, after running for 2 minutes on 40% go up to 80% for 2 minutes and then the last 30sec-1minute maximum speed. With time you shall see your stamina increasing and once that starts to happen, you can run longer at higher percentage rate.

Another form to increase stamina is high endurance drills, they help you generate speed and stamina in an over all prospectus.

Beginner’s guide to football warmups – Running plan

Speed	Minutes
Start Slow- 20% of your maximum speed	4-5minutes
Speed up to 40%	5 minutes
Speed up to 60%	3 minutes
Drop back to 40%	2 minutes
Double it to 80%	2 minutes
Maximum speed- 100%	30 seconds – 1 minute

#2 Good Flexibility

It is most important that a footballer be flexible. Flexibility helps you stay injury free and that’s what your goal should be as no one wishes to be interrupted with an injury when they are playing well.

To gain flexibility you need to stretch well before every training session (after your warm up), stretch for at least 15-20 minutes concentrating more on your lower body but not neglecting the upper body at the same time. To gain flexibility you should try and push your self in each and very exercise. Results are slow but guaranteed.

Also yoga helps you tremendously to learn more about your body, it majorly helps you with your flexibility. The more flexible you get, the more confortable you will be on the field.

One of the things that professional athletes never miss is a “cold down session”. After your game you should always have a cool down session for at least 10-15 minutes. This helps reduce the strain on all the muscles you just put to use and thus reduce the tendency of cramps and pulls in your muscles. If you ever have a problem of cramps or stiffness, have a glass of slated lemonade as it contains salt in it.

#3 Diet

You need to take a healthy and complete diet to fulfill the requirements of your body as football player. Your body requites carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins and minerals to cope with the demands of the game. Thus a complete diet is at most important to fulfill any sportsman’s needs. If the body does not get enough of what it asks for then you will not be able to give your 100% in any sport.

There are many myths that claim that you should not eat a lot of food if you’re trying to reduce weight but it doesn’t work like that. Anyone who’s trying to reduce or gain weight just needs to keep in check what they are eating (quality) over how much they waiting (quantity). Always eat enough. Never overeat. Have ample amount of food (both quality and quantity) that fills you enough so that you need not have anything else for the next 2-2.5