The term "conditioned games" means games with specified rules or conditions. It does not refer to conditioning. Nevertheless, I definitively agree that youth soccer training (or tryouts) should not include running laps without a ball.
At NO POINT in a game of soccer is ANY player running at the same steady clip for 20 minutes or more (running laps)....just does not happen. Any 'coach' who has kids run mutiple laps is a 'coach' who doesn't know how to coach...a 'coach' who doesn't know what he's doing.
I'm with you at the youth level, at least during formal training time. Players at higher levels engage in formal fitness training with their team that does involve some jogging, but those players are devoting multiple hours every day to formal soccer training so they have time to devote to pure fitness activities. Youth soccer training time is limited and the players are nowhere near having fully developed skills, so none of that training time should be devoted to running laps in my opinion. If youth players go out and jog on their own to improve their fitness levels, I think that can be helpful, but it should be done outside of formal training time at the youth level.
These days at many top euro clubs the players, at the start of the pre-season, are required to be able to run 800 metres in 3 mins or less...take a 3 min break, then do it again...take a second 3 min break and run it a 3rd time. If they can do this they are deemed fit enough to go 90mins in one of the very toughest leagues in the world. So no running for longer than 3 mins...EVER...and these are TOP class pro's....not 11 year old girls.
Oh, really? You don't say....Is that what you thought I meant? Don't you think that specified rules or conditions could be placed to target the conditioning of the players, amongst other things? This is what I meant. You could condition their fitness or you could condition some other aspect of their play.
While you can make a strong case that running a few laps before and after a practice session doesn't have anything to do with soccer fitness, I don't necessarily think it's automatically indicative of a "moron" coach. Kids by and large don't walk or ride bikes to practice--they are driven there. I hardly think there's anything wrong with getting the blood pumping and loosening up a little with a few laps.
It is physically more draining dribbling the ball then just running without the ball. That is very true, but it is also true then 90 percent or more of the game is played without the ball. Some players only push themselves when they have the ball. So they have to learn to push themselves when they don't have the ball.
Care to elaborate? What, exactly, is so childishly amusing about pointing out that young people today don't get as much casual exercise as they used to?
I agree...but it is NEVER played running at a steady pace for 20 plus minutes at a time when you don't have the ball...and this is the problem with the 'lap running' moron 'coaches'....
So because kids don't get casual exercise anymore, soccer coaches who make kids run laps at practice aren't "morons"? There aren't better ways to make up for the lack of "casual exercises" during soccer practice? A well thought out and appropriately conditioned game is a much better substitute for lack of "casual exercise" than running laps IMO. If my kids have a coach who makes them run laps at practice, I will immediately pull them out of that team/club. BTW, my oldest son had one coach who did that and therefore I moved my son to a different club as soon as I could. What is a "casual exercise" anyway? I think most kids are very active almost everyday with one sport or another, sometimes even too much. My sons, for example, play only soccer and on the days they do not have practice or a game, they work with me (or I work with them, more accurately put). I don't see how and why they need "casual exercise" or running laps as its replacement.
And to add, it is not played running in circles. A piano player doesn't run laps around the piano to prepare his fingers and hands for a long play.
With my adult team we did a lot of running without the ball. But we did not do laps which is boring. We ran to some place and back. That is the time where I really learned a lot about our players. We would make small talk I would find out a lot about them as we ran. I believed it made us more of a team during those runs. these runs we're never timed, but the distance was a little more on every run.I think I can say that tge players and I had a good time on those runs. Talking took their minds off the boring business of just running On the practice field it was mostly all business.
Telling another parent that a coach you’ve never met is a “moron” based solely on the information that he/she has kids run laps is jumping the gun more than a little bit. There could be a lot of reasons for this. Maybe he/she is a little behind the times. Maybe he/she just has some bad information. Or maybe he/she is aware that young athletes today get less of their exercise from unstructured play than previous generations did. In the past, kids—and correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the kid in question 11 years old?—spent a lot more time climbing trees, riding bikes, playing tag and other games, jumping rope, and just running around and goofing off than kids do today. That means that kids today show up at rigorous, structured, supervised training sessions with bodies that haven’t had nearly as much time to develop general strength and flexibility. Young athletes are putting a lot of stress and strain on muscles, tendons, and joints, and they’re often doing it “cold” to bodies which haven’t been “loosened up” by what I call “casual” exercise. Quite possibly, but is there any suggestion that running laps was the ONLY “conditioning” the coach in question was using? And here’s where I think you really jumped the gun—“AT practice” or “before and after practice”? The poster you responded to mentioned that the kids ran laps at the beginning and end of practice. That suggests to me that the laps themselves aren’t for conditioning specifically so much as just general warm-up and warm-down for fitness. I have heard—and I could be wrong, this could be bad information, but that wouldn’t make me a “moron” I wouldn’t think—that it’s really not very productive to stretch muscles ‘cold’. You shouldn’t just drive to a practice after sitting around all day and immediately start stretching; rather, you just jog around a little bit to warm your muscles up first, and THEN do some stretching exercises. And after a vigorous workout, I’ve also heard (again—could be wrong; doesn’t make me a “moron” if I am) that it’s good to jog/run a little bit and then do some more stretching just to work out any “kinks” and restore normal kinetic range-of-motion before doing post-workout stretching. Hold on—so after all that, you finally admit you don’t even know what I meant? That’s kind of the whole point—kids today are going “zero to sixty” with exercise and conditioning. They are subjecting young bodies to a great deal of high-stress physical activity, and they are doing so while living otherwise more sedentary lifestyles than previous generations. There has been a rise in youth sport injuries, and I suspect part of this is the “shock” of going back and forth from inactivity to high-impact, high-(physical) stress activity with no “bridge” of low-impact, low-stress physical activity to loosen up muscles, and develop flexibility. Once again, there was nothing in the original post you responded to that suggested running laps “replaced” anything. And secondly, your sons are evidently very active and are out with you on a regular basis so I suspect they are pretty fit and—more to the point—they have developed good flexibility. However, many 11 year-olds—and again, I thought that’s who we were talking about—do not have that. Having them run a few laps to get the metabolism up and muscles a little loose before diving into the “real” training probably isn’t a bad idea. Anyway, you might still disagree with all of that, but I’m pretty sure there’s been a rise in youth sports injuries, and it doesn’t hurt to consider different explanations.
It doesn't matter what the reasons are, to me. There are still better ways to exercise the kids. With 2 or 3 times a week practices the coach has to use every opportunity to teach the kids something. What do they learn from running laps? It has nothing to do with soccer......teach them soccer. It's irrelevant if it was the only "conditioning". The fact that it was used for some type of conditioning is enough for me to criticize it. Same goes if it was used for other reasons, say punishment (even more moronic). Even worse. It makes no difference again if there were done at the beginning or the end, for warm-up or cool-down. No one said anything about stretching "cold" muscles though. But there are better ways to warm up the muscles for stretching than having kids running laps. Have you heard of dynamic stretching exercises? It's a trick question, my friend. Actually, a rhetoric question. Running laps is not the cure for that though. No there wasn't, but you spoke of running laps as if it was a replacement for "casual exercise". Flexibility is not developed with running laps. And my aim is not to develop my sons' flexibility, my aim is to help them become better soccer players. Therefore they practice soccer, not running laps. They practice with the ball. When working on technique in an appropriate intensity, they also get the necessary conditioning they need for soccer. There has been a rise in youth sports injuries because all kinds of morons coach youth players without knowing how to coach them. They have the kids running laps, for example. That's my whole point, thanks for make it and confirming it for me.
All those morons coach top USSF pre-academy and academy teams. My kid wants to succeed at soccer, so he is buying in to it. No choice (if he changes teams). A "funny" update - nearly a full game two weeks ago - he played defense and saved their acorns quite a few times. Somehow, scoring goals counts less to this coach.
All those morons coach top USSF pre-academy and academy teams. My kid wants to succeed at soccer, so he is buying in to it. No choice (if he changes teams). A "funny" update - nearly a full game two weeks ago - he played defense and saved their acorns quite a few times. Somehow, scoring goals counts less to this coach.
All? Really? I can assure you that none of the DA coaches at my son's club have kids running laps. They do a warm up routine devised by the professional team's fitness trainer, this goes for the younger non DA teams also. So your son has bought into the USSF DA system, it seems to be the most direct route to the pros in this country. What route would you prefer him to take? Trying his luck in Europe, South America, Mexico?
I'll also note, of the 5 D1 soccer programs where I have personal knowledge of players who do/have played there, every single one has a fitness test related to just running to determine if they can even travel with the team. 2 miles in under 13 minutes, or the beep test etc.
So... I'm watching the Holland vs Germany u21 euro game the other day....at some point the screen showed that the Germans collectively had run 2km MORE than had the Dutch....at the time Holland was leading 2-0 (eventually won 3-2)....I prefer the Ajax/Dutch approach....let the BALL do the running and for this to happen you need: A) A ton of skill...(you will never achieve this by running laps) B) A REAL understanding of 'game sense' and field awareness. ...running laps provides neither.
Sorry for the double post, apparently I can't delete it. In case you are wondering, my family doesn't have the money to send my son overseas. All teams that are in the top five in my state and the top DA's in the area (one is ranked #1 boys club in the country) run laps before and after practice. If there is a semantic problem here, that I said "run laps" and really it was more of a jog, I apologize. It certainly isn't a walk. Most kids sit in the car for an hour or more before training or a game, and they have to loosen up. I had always been taught that soccer training without a ball is useless. USSF ranks the aforementioned "top DA" in my area as one of the top trainers. Apparently, USSF evaluators don't care about the laps or ignore it. I suppose it is just a matter of drinking the Koolaid. My kid does well in terms of fitness so he doesn't care as long as practice isn't shortened by time jogging.
I honestly thought that's all you meant--a few minutes loosening up before and after practice by jogging around the field a couple of times while the coach sets up cones & such. Around here, a lot of club teams share fields and have to wait for the practice before them to finish, and maybe after as well, so the the coach cannot set up early. I never see doing that as "conditioning" in and of itself, just a warm-up/loosening up before the real training/conditioning begins. So, for me, I knew what you meant. I'm thinking y.o.n.k.o. and england66 were really picturing extensive, hard running of laps so maybe that's where the confusion came from.
You are wrong in your assumption what I was picturing. Still, there are better ways of "loosening up" than running laps even if it's a jog. I don't care if the best boys team in the country or the top 5 teams in some state make their players run/jog laps. That's not justification to me. If someone else accepts it as such, then that's their prerogative. I choose to disagree.