Soccer training still seems to be based on just “more soccer” – the conditioning is often just small-sided games or small area games. The biggest sport in the World in my opinion, still hasn’t embraced modern strength and conditioning training.
(Exception – the Athletes Performance guys have done a great job in trying to modernize soccer training)
There’s a reason they don’t have men play women. Because men are stronger. Therefore strength is a factor.
The theory that “running with the ball” is different than running without it, is fine. Until you realize that’s NOT always what happens – good players kick the ball forward and sprint to it, or receive a pass at full speed. Plus there are headers, defending etc.
It’s not all ball work.

The biggest sport in the World should be leading the sports science and strength and conditioning fields and it’s not. It’s barely keeping up.

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The average career length of an NFL player is about 3.5 years. The NFL recently said it was much longer than that but if we use the term average – it’s about 3.5 years. A first round draft pick averages about six years, but let’s face it, a first round draft pick isn’t exactly average.

Other than athletic talent though – what are the secrets to athletic longevity? What allows an athlete to play longer?
If we can accept the fact that training programs, smart nutrition and advances in recovery/rehabilitation could lengthen a career (and have dramatically when we compare todays careers in sports to careers thirty years ago), then we’re effectively saying that the biggest difference in a career could be smart training and nutrition.

How can we take this idea and start developing better exercise and nutrition programs for the general population that could actually enhance quality of life?

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I spent some time talking with Results Fitness physical therapist Amy Wunsch recently. Amy has been working on my hips, which after years of martial arts are surprisingly tight, despite all the stretching I do.

Amy pointed out that my joint was “congested” and she needed to mobilize it with traction work and various techniques. She said that no matter how much I stretched, my muscles would never be able to over-ride the joint.

Here’s where I started thinking — if the joint capsule is locked up, and the muscles can’t over-ride that – then movement will be impaired. If movement is impaired, muscles aren’t doing their job. If muscles aren’t doing their job, then as the single biggest contributor to resting metabolic rate – metabolism must be lowered.

Could we raise metabolism with joint mobilization and then corrective exercise?

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I’ve asked a lot of people this question as regards bodybuilding training and no one has come up with an answer. What was the last great advance in bodybuilding training? I can only come up with Arthur Jones (HIT training) and the subsequent work by Mentzer and Yates in that area. Jay Cutler, the current Mr Olympia’s program looks very similar to Lee Haney’s (Mr Olympia in the 80′s).
Thirty years and I can’t come up with a single change in training methodology. Now, bodybuilding has progressed for sure, but maybe only in the nutrition and supplementation (and pharmaceutical) categories.

Training in almost every other area has evolved, but pure hypertrophy training, bodybuilding, has remained stagnant.

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Something that works very well for fat loss, as evidenced by bodybuilders and fitness competitors is multiple meals per day. We’ve used that approach for years at Results Fitness and it always has worked.  We have clients who have skipped breakfast for years, and just adding breakfast speeds up fat loss significantly.

Over the past year though, we’ve experimented with intermittent fasting. It works too.
Two seemingly opposite approaches work pretty well. That’s a sign that both can’t be the “answer”. So what are we missing?

Both are ways of controlling caloric intake. Maybe it’s just what people can handle better? Or maybe it’s something else.

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At this point, if you’re not taking resveratrol, curcumin, fish oil and vitamin D3 supplements I don’t know what you’re waiting for. This year alone has seen 163 studies on Vitamin D supplementation, 281 studies on fish oil, 458 on resveratrol, and 401 on curcumin all showing beneficial effects.

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I wrote an article a couple of years ago about how the fitness profession over-reacts and then under-reacts.
Right now the over-reaction has to be as regards shoes. Yes I’m sure we originally over-reacted and had super air/gel filled six inch thick padded soles, but I think that the zero support “minimalist” shoes is probably an over-reaction too.

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AC
PS – for more of my random thoughts go HERE
PPS – Make sure you download the free manual and videos from EliteFTS HERE

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