Let's be honest coaches, how many of us know how to properly develop fitness? Most of us just defer to what we experienced as a player, and/or what other coaches do. Whether it's isolating fitness, not managing the demands of game-like training, or a mix of both, a lack of understanding can lead to under or over-training with damages ranging from underperformance to career-shattering injury.
As coaches, we should develop better actions and more actions to improve overall performance. To do this, it's essential to build player-understanding of how they coordinate within a team against opposition, then guide individual decision-making and the execution of decision-making... in that order! By doing this, we create better actions from which we can develop more actions. Simply put, a player can't perform actions more frequently if (s)he doesn't understand how to perform them.
Fitness is defined as the ability to sustain actions (Quality and Quantity) over the course of a game as it relates to the Playing Tempo being implemented by the coach within his or her "Game Model" (or playing philosophy), & the standard of the opposition.
For example, if you'd like your team to press the opposition immediately after established possession is lost consistently throughout games...
You must coordinate all of your player actions on, around, and away from the ball in a tactical framework for that type of moment, then progress to guiding individual players to good solutions within that framework when the moment arises. As players become more efficient in this, you can begin to gradually increase the frequency of actions by manipulating player numbers, field space, and work/rest of activities. This gradual process will result in better actions and more actions.
In this way, fitness doesn’t make you win a game, but through a lack of fitness you can lose a game. So, the next time a coach says to you, "We may not be the most talented team, but we are the fittest," have a little giggle.
If you would like more specifics on how to get your players to perform better actions/more actions, I highly recommend reading Raymond Verheijen’s “The Original Guide to Football Periodisation.” It will go much more in depth with regards to when/how you should overload/underload training sessions, and even when to rest as it relates to the timing of friendlies, league games, tournaments, etc. So needless to say, it's extensive, but Verheijen makes application VERY manageable!
Coaches, we are lifelong learners. Let's embrace that! We owe it to our players!
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