Winter is coming, the weather is getting worse, and the competition is temporarily stopping. That’s why the most teams temporarily stop their training.
My opinion is that you can continue training until it’s no longer possible at all or its no longer safe enough. For example the field is too hard because it’s freezing for a longer time, or that a lot of snow has fallen.
What I do ?
I change my exercises and training duration in the winter break period, so i can keep on training with my team, without getting any extra injuries at my players.
Normally I give a training session of 1.5 hours. When it’s winter break, my training sessions only takes 1 hour. When you have more trainings session in one week. You can reduce them to like 1 training session in a week.
I also change my exercises. So I do less exercises with high chance of injuries. Think of practice match (like 7 vs 7).
But which exercises do I use?
I focus on passing exercises and completion exercises on goal.
With these exercises you improve the scoring percentage of the players. With passing exercises in combination with sprint exercises i keep the condition of the players at the same level during the winter break.As a result, the players often have a better condition after the winter break then teams that haven’t trained during the winter break.
You can also have an indoor session. During this session you can draw on a whiteboard running lines and explain some match situations what the player needs to do. Sometimes we also do indoor football. For this we rent a hall / gym and here we play (for example) 7 vs 7 and we explain game situations and running lines.
But my players are always free between Christmas and New Year to celebrate this with their family and friends.
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