Continuing on the previous post about fitness statistics from?Prozone 3?I’d like to share some more info…this time on some sprint running statistics. The average combined total for field player’s on a team in the MLS is making an average of 500 sprint efforts in a game (slightly more than FAPL’s 487 and 10% less than the 549 in nPC). The average total sprint distance covered for these respective groups is 3,166, 3,099, and 3,535 respectively. That means that the average sprint distance for an MLS player is a little over 6m…emphasizing the need for being both mechanically proficient and physically capable of fast accelerations.
*A sprint is defined as any run over 7 m/s.
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Mike Young
Director of Performance at Athletic Lab
Mike is the Head Fitness Coach for the North Carolina Courage and North Carolina FC. He is also the owner and Director of Performance at Athletic Lab sports performance training center. He previously served as the fitness coach for the Vancouver Whitecaps and Carolina Railhawks. He has a PhD in Biomechanics, an MS in Coaching Science, and a BSS in Exercise Physiology and has coached Olympic and professional athletes in Skeleton, Track & Field, MLS and NASL Soccer, PGA Golf, NFL Football, MLB Baseball and Olympic Weightlifting. He has lectured around the world and authored 2 books and dozens of research and coaching articles.
Latest posts by Mike Young (see all)
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Youth soccer clubs need to take a look at these stats. i was a high school track coach and had the opportunity to assist a lot of h.s. soccer players with speed development.
After retirement, I got involved in a youth soccer club. Whenever I brought up the idea of including speed development as a part of the training, I was shot down. From what I have observed, speed development is the most neglected component of youth soccer training.
Hey Ben. Awesome seeing you on here. It’s unbelievable isn’t it? I’ve trained some age-group academy level club teams and even at that level, many of the coaches think fitness is just vomit-inducing gut-check training. Most think if you hurt more it has to be better and that recovery periods are wasted time standing around rather than opportunities to keep quality high when necessary.
There is a major need to get this out to coaches. I know of a few coaches who will be interested in your blog and I will forward info to them. I’m old but still interested. Congrats on what you are doing.
Mike,
Ben Mesler sent me your site. I’m a U10 coach in Buffalo. Can you recommend some age appropriate fitness/speed drills to do at practice and some that the kids can do on their own at home? At this age, should it be all about speed or should they also be working on endurance and building up to 2-3 mile runs? Or longer? I’d really appreciate your insight.
Jim
[…] are the other 2 installments in this series: Futbol Fitness Statistics (sprint statistics) Futbol Fitness Statistics (total distance run) Ronaldo training […]
Hey Jim-
Thanks for stopping in. I was born in Buffalo. I’ll try to touch on specific fitness / speed drills as I move forward. They’ll be a little hard pressed to do speed work at home unless they have a large back ground. “Quick feet” type of work doesn’t really train speed. For U-10s, 2-3 mile runs are good 1-2x per week. They won’t need much more since they’ll be getting a lot of aerobic stimulus from practice.
[…] are the other 2 installments in this series: Futbol Fitness Statistics (sprint statistics) Futbol Fitness Statistics (total distance […]