Football: the role of functional training in pre-season preparation

Although summer football enters a sort of parallel dimension dominated by market negotiations and social networks in the media, in reality the insiders already from July take the field for what can be considered a fundamental phase in the construction of the whole season: pre-season preparation.

Both at professional and amateur levels, this phase is indeed revealing itself decisive in creating the athletic conditions necessary to support the frenetic pace of modern football, which can produce both positive and negative repercussions (based on the quality with which it is tackled) even after months, and therefore in the middle of the sports season. If one considers that in fact an international level footballer can get to exceed 60-70 seasonal matches between the league, national cup, continental competition and national selection, one can realize the importance in the athletic approach to the preparation phase to avoid physical complications during the sports year.

From the famous "Zeman steps" to today, pre-season preparation in football has undergone numerous changes over the decades, thus adapting to the transformations undergone by the game itself. Functional training however, it is carving out an increasingly indispensable role within these dynamics, proposing itself as a sort of link between the development of conditional strength and technical gestures. In fact, a complete functional training cannot do without a phase of analysis of the athletic and technical performance required in the discipline in question, in such a way as to be able to identify the main specific motor patterns and intervene accordingly. The movement in this sense it is in fact the unit of measurement adopted by our body to achieve a goal, and it is precisely on it that we must therefore work, rather than on the single muscle contraction.

Fundamental to be able to proceed with strengthening exercises, however, is a solid foundation joint mobility, which, together with a first approach to the various specific tools of functional training and Core training, mainly characterizes the preparatory phase of the season.

Mobility, stability and coordination in fact, they are fundamental elements for maximize an athlete's performance capabilities and for this reason tools such as the Flying suspension training, Flowbags,  Med ball or Kettlebell they can make it possible to lay the foundations for the subsequent construction of more advanced functional training, which will instead characterize the competitive phase of the season in a greater way.

La pre-season preparation from a functional point of view, especially in its very early stages, it must therefore be accompanied by an important work of Joint Mobility, so as to increase flexibility and coordination, enabling a full awareness (and therefore control) of one's body by the athlete. Working with heavy loads on inappropriate postures can be not only ineffective but also counterproductive and harmful, and it is for this reason that the first training sessions must serve precisely to evaluate and correct this type of criticality in the players.

Specifically, sessions of Primitive Functional Movement, especially during the pre-season preparation, can be very useful for working on joint mobility, on the global joint stability   coordination of the players, then enabling them to a full receptive capacity during the subsequent training phases, in which they are administered workloads of progressively increasing intensity.

This approach, associated with the work of functional strength and specific individual and tactical technique based on the coach's schemes, is essential not only to present yourself at the start of the championship in optimal conditions, but also to be able to sustain the frenetic pace of modern football during throughout the season, guaranteeing players high performance on the pitch and avoiding the nightmare of musculoskeletal injuries from indirect trauma and from stress/overload.

Below are some examples of the development of the specific functional training system for football, Soccer Functional Training, which examine the various coordination and conditional skills in training circuits that start from the basis of Joint Mobility and lead to a development in specific movements for role in the field.