FAQs

Strength: Most people underestimate the benefits of strength training and it’s importance for overall athleticism. Developing strength, as well as being strong in general, is super important for a few reasons…
1) It helps us run faster, throw further and have better control of our bodies
2) Being strong is one of the best ways to help reduce risk of injury
3) Strength training has a ‘spillover’ effect. Imagine a water fountain in which strength is at the top. As you get stronger and the fountain becomes full, the water spills over into other training components (such as speed or power).

Speed: This should go without saying. We’ve all heard the term ‘You can’t coach speed’. Whilst some athletes are naturally fast, other have to work exceptionally hard to improve their speed. The key point being that speed is a component that can most definitely be trained. The faster you are, the harder the person across from you has to work to make that touch.

Fitness: This is another one that we will all understand. To keep the analogies going – ‘You can’t drive a car without any gas in the tank’. We should all aspire to have a a big ‘gas tank’ to ensure we can not only keep up, but excel in every game we play. Touch is a fast game which requires shot bursts of speed followed by short periods of rest. It is important to have a good fitness base so that we can recover quickly and reduce errors on the field.

Prehab: Prehab can also be defined as:
– Warming up correctly
– Injury prevention
– Motor control/stability exercises

None of these are pretty drills that we look forward to, but they are essential to ensure our bodies are performing at a high level. Prehab exercises are fantastic way to help minimise the chance of injury, train the inactive muscles and teach our bodies to have better balance and control.

Power: Similar to strength, power training can often be confused and/or underestimated. Power training is great to teach the body to be explosive, which is useful for the unpredictable moments when you need to really accelerate or change direction fast to make the play. Strength and power work can work hand in hand and are often good to do in the same session.

Agility: We get a lot of agility training in already (whether you knew that or not). When we do opposed runs, warm up drills (such as ball tag or offside touch) or even designed agility drills at training, they are all forms of agility.  Agility training helps ‘keep us on our toes’, ready to change direction and mirror an attacking player. Agile athletes are unpredictable and able to evade their opposing players with ease.