Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game #16366

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Here’s a brand new performance programme that’ll make you stronger, faster – and significantly increase your match stamina… without requiring hours of extra drills on the football field.

Do you know that more than 200 million men and women share your passion for the ‘beautiful game’? Football is easily the world’s biggest sport.

But while modern marketing techniques boost football’s global popularity, out on the pitch and in the locker room old-fashioned training and conditioning techniques often still apply. Many footballers – and their coaches – continue to rely on the same methods that held sway over twenty years ago.

Of course that presents a big opportunity to those who can see it: there’s a real competitive advantage to be gained by any football coach, or player, who seeks out the very latest scientific thinking on sports conditioning and match fitness.

Introducing a ground-breaking new book on football training and conditioning.

Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game brings together under one cover the findings of recent sports science research into footballers and their performance. Over eighty pages of hard data and analysis on nutrition, preconditioning, injury prevention & treatment, and other aspects of fitness that you can use to raise your game – or that of your team.

Careful attention to these often-neglected aspects of sports conditioning can pay big dividends on the day of the Big Game – without you needing to do any more work on the football pitch, with or without a ball, than you already do.

Order your copy today and here’s what you’ll learn:

Pre-season training programmes that lay the base for a successful year

New thinking on sports nutrition to boost training and match performance, and assist in players’ recovery

Hydration techniques that help players avoid painful cramp on the pitch

How to identify those players most at risk from sudden cardiac death, and what steps to take to avoid this tragic event

How to keep hamstring injuries to a minimum

Practical measures that older footballers can take to keep injuries to a minimum

Off-season Pre-conditioning Techniques – 3 programmes that’ll get you ready for the coming year

‘Prehabilitation’ is the new buzz word describing the use of exercises that work on the major muscles used during your sport, as well as preconditioning the prime mover (agonist) muscles in a sport specific fashion. All footballers need to be able to carry out repeated sprints and changes of direction, while goalies in particular need to be able to throw the ball for long distances. These are all maximal effort activities and the body needs a sound base of strength in order to prevent resultant injury.

In Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game you’ll learn specific exercise routines that can be incorporated into your off-season training, to help ensure your readiness for the season itself. Three programmes are described in detail:

For throwing actions: this programme is particularly useful for goalkeepers and players taking throw-ins

For strengthening the knee: this programme will help to prevent knee injuries caused by the sudden changes of direction that are an integral part of football and other intermittent field sports. The exercises set out here should be performed twice a week on non-consecutive days

To enhance local muscular endurance for running activities: these exercises help you build lower body muscular endurance for running activities. This programme will help footballers delay the onset of fatigue during a match and will also to facilitate a faster recovery from sprints

This type of programme can easily be accommodated into most people’s training, with little detriment to other aspects of training, and will yield real improvements in both the short- and medium-term.

Sports Nutrition – providing adequate fuel for training, recovery and the Big Match

Football players’ attitudes to nutrition are the stuff of legend. No doubt some of the stories are just that, pure fiction. Nevertheless, we all know players who remain convinced that fish & chips are all they need on the post-match menu.

While nutrition has come more to the fore in recent years, there remains a fundamental mismatch between what players and practitioners view as important. Players believe in supplements, extra vitamins and minerals: anything that involves increasing muscle mass, and reducing energy intake to achieve ‘lean’ body composition.

Scientific research, on the other hand, demonstrates that players should concentrate more on appropriate energy consumption, and high carbohydrate and fluid intake.

Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game examines the issue of sports nutrition in detail, looking at how players and coaches alike can manipulate their carbohydrate, protein, fat, fibre, fluid and micronutrient intake to maintain health, promote adaptation to training and ultimately enhance or – in our particular sport – maintain performance over the course of a season.

For example, we examine the results of a recent study on energy and macronutrient intakes of elite footballers in several different countries. It concludes that some players may be consuming more than is required, given their typical weekly training and match schedules.

We also review the current thinking on such nutritional approaches as the glycaemic index, insulin index, protein supplementation, and the role of micronutrients.

You’ll learn what’s best to eat if you want to get the most out of your training and playing, and how to maximise your post-training and post-match recovery. And, as importantly, you’ll find out what to avoid.

Sports Hydration – how best to go about avoiding cramp

Hydration is one of the key areas where nutrition can have a direct impact on performance.

There is good evidence that players who become dehydrated are more susceptible to the negative effects of fatigue, including loss of performance and increased risk of injury. There is also growing evidence that excessive sweat losses, especially high salt losses, can be a factor in some of the muscle cramps that affect players in training and competition.

Recently, however, a number of clubs have recognised that hydration is important and that no single strategy suits all players in all environments. This has led to an assessment of individual needs so that a personal drinking strategy can be put in place.

In Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game we share details of a simple fluid loss monitoring strategy any club coach or player can put into practice for themselves – no fancy or expensive equipment is needed. And we help you identify which are the players who excrete high levels of salt – so you can put a programme in place to allow for adequate sodium supplementation.

These simple steps can make a difference between being able to score that vital goal in the last minute, and being a virtual spectator.

Football and the Older Player – what can you do to minimise physical wear and tear?

You may be at the peak of your football powers right now, having conditioned your body to be the ultimate machine for your position, but what will happen to that machine as matches, not to mention knocks, take their toll? Will that highly conditioned physique break down later in life because of too much football-induced wear and tear? And is there anything that you can do now to prevent potential decline in physical function caused by your football participation?

Sudden Cardiac Death – how can clubs identify those most susceptible to this tragic event?

Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game discusses the phenomenon of sudden cardiac death in some detail. We look at the most common causes, symptoms – and the problem inherent in screening for the condition. Finally, we suggest measures football coaches can take to identify people who may be susceptible to this problem – and what they can do to prevent premature deaths on the football pitch.

Tournament Play – how to get the best out of your team even under the most demanding circumstances

Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game takes an in-depth look at some of the key factors that go into creating a winning World Cup team. Next year’s playing season is designed to give the England squad more time to prepare for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. But will the rigours of a Premiership and European season for the majority of the English-based players have taken its toll on their readiness for the biggest tournament on earth?

Hamstring Injuries – what can you do to prevent this most common of football injuries?

We report on new, football-specific research that sheds new light on the role of flexibility training in keeping hamstring strains to a minimum. This survey of flexibility training protocols in English professional football clubs suggests that stretching does help to prevent hamstring strains. But which stretching protocols were found to work best across all the clubs surveyed, and how were they carried out?

Playing football is and should be a fun activity at all levels. However, it does appear that it can leave players with a legacy of ill health in later life, unless they take the appropriate steps to ensure optimal conditioning. Football Performance: How To Raise Your Game helps you do just that.