As 90% of all Women's Football right now is still in it's infancy, it is far away from the smooth running machine that is men's footy.
We train Tuesday, Thursday and play Saturday - every single week.
With the introduction of 100's of women's teams across Australia in 2017, their scheduling has been a roller coaster.
From leagues not releasing draws until literally weeks before the season starts to ground availability to player availability, it has looked to me that teams have been simply "filling the spaces" allowed between men's footy.
This isn't good or bad, it's just a fact of women's football life right now.
What it has resulted in though is "uneven schedules" where getting back to men's it's pretty evenly spaced between games and training nights but for women's footy you might only train on a Wednesday night, or maybe Monday and Wednesday which is very close to your previous game or far away from your next game.
This post is all about optimising your training week.
I asked about everyone's training schedules over in my Women's Football Training Group and here were the different answers I got baring in mind most draws hadn't been officially released yet:
- Tuesday/Thursday Training + Friday Night Games
- Wednesday/Thursday Training + Saturday Games
- Wednesday/Friday Training + Sunday Games
- Tuesday/Thursday Training + Sunday Games
- Tuesday/Thursday Training + Saturday Games
- Wednesday Training + Sunday Games
- Monday/Thursday Training + Saturday Games
That's a lot of variations so you simply can't apply the men's schedule into a lot of these as it will interfere with recovery from games or preparation for games.
As I discussed in my previous blog You Don't Get Better at Footy Training Part 1 and Part 2, you can only cover so much in 2 - 3hrs of training per week which is even less when you're a beginner as skills needs to be 90% of your training, but that leaves huge "performance gaps" in your game in regards to strength, speed, endurance etc.
Trying to mix all these into a single drill is the worst thing you can do - it may look efficient but it's actually the complete opposite.
So now that you are well aware of the need for extra training to fill these 'gaps" I hear you ask "where can I fit it in?"
Below I've laid out where to fit extra training in each of these schedules listed above:
- Tuesday/Thursday Training + Friday Night Games - Sunday/Monday
- Wednesday/Thursday Training + Saturday Games - Monday/Tuesday
- Wednesday/Friday Training + Sunday Games - Tuesday/Thursday
- Tuesday/Thursday Training + Sunday Games - Wednesday/Friday
- Tuesday/Thursday Training + Saturday Games - Monday/Wednesday
- Wednesday Training + Sunday Games - Tuesday/Thursday/Friday
- Monday/Thursday Training + Saturday Games - Tuesday/Wednesday
I haven't included it in the schedules above but I also prefer to do some training the day prior to a game, not hard, but more a stimulation type session with absolutely no fatigue so that would be an extra day for each schedule as well.
The type of training you'd would do on your extra days would be completely dependent on what your footy training usually entails but I think we can assume it's skills and lactic based running, because well, coaches persevere with this stuff for reasons I do not know.
This means that you're extra training will need to include pure speed sprint work and gym/strength work.
Also be aware that your extra training does not replace your footy training, it needs to complement it so you need to have the properly designed program that takes all this into account when prescribing volume, intensity and frequency - no Crossfit/F45/HIIT classes do not fit this bill at all and never will!
You know what? Click here to let me do it all for you...
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