A foundation for a successful soccer team is built in their fitness program. It is difficult to plan a fitness program especially in youth soccer. You may not have a consistent number of players at every practice and when players miss your sessions it can hurt the team. Because of the problems of attendance etc, your fitness should be a regular theme in your practice sessions. To be more prepared you must encourage your players to work on their fitness away from the practice field. This will give you a good idea of their commitment. It is good to give the players 'homework' which focuses on fitness because this gives you more time to work with the ball whenever you are on the practice field. Growing up I dreaded those long pre-season runs and by the time the coach threw the ball on the field my legs were too heavy to play. They were boring and frustrating. My strength was my fitness. What I lacked was technical ability. We were running for the sake of running. Yes, running is a major element of the game; running to get open, running to create space, running to recover etc but running with no purpose and doing running exercises that are more related to Iron man training is irrelevant to soccer. Our time with our players is limited and we must make the best use of our time spent with them by always relating everything we do to the game. We believe that soccer practice and soccer fitness is the same thing. Every practice should be executed in such a tempo that during  the practice you are working on all aspects of fitness related to the game. Never should the two, fitness and soccer be separated. If you add creativity to fitness training then your players will be motivated, work harder and achieve more. What would motivate players more than a soccer ball, competition or a goal? All the time you are working on soccer, you are working on fitness.

What is soccer fitness training?

Soccer fitness training is soccer training in which better conditioning enables the player to develop greater soccer ability because the player has more soccer capacity to train harder and recover more quickly.

Your players really do need to be in great shape to get to their maximum capacity. The advantages gained can include them:

• Getting to the ball sooner

• Solving problems quicker

• Play longer

• Concentrate longer

• Able to play under greater pressure

• React better to winning or losing the ball

• Gain more confidence and knowledge

It is important to work all of this into a good, useful, fun and realistic practice session. You must keep a good balance between work rate and work limit. Make sure the players are not over trained. There are many exercises done with the ball that can act as rest periods. A coach's topic for the evening should never be fitness alone. We sometimes see teams running long distances for 90 minutes or even longer. Never separate conditioning from the game of soccer.

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Below are some examples of incorporating fitness into your practice sessions. There are a few scenarios where some include a ball and some don't. The ones that don't are still great motivational exercises for your players.