"Bring out the skills you usually honed!" These were the words of encouragement that Guardiola spoke to his players before the game.
"The time we spend here, maybe longer than we spend at home, we're a whole, we're more like a family." De Bruyne confided in an interview that he was genuine.
Guardiola is a passionate manager who is good at encouraging players
The purpose of competitive sports is to achieve excellent results in the competition, in the competition in an advantageous position, in order to achieve this goal, and maintain the stability of the results, scientific and systematic training is particularly important, training is to achieve the ultimate goal of competitive sports efficient means.
As De Bruyne said, professional players spend far more time with each other than they do at home. Players run into each other for a long time, get to know each other, implement the coaching philosophy, train hard, and thus give fans a wonderful game on the field.
Although the coaches on the pitch only need to be responsible for about 90 minutes of on-the-spot command tasks, but off the field, the workload of the coaches is often very large and complex, and every good football coach knows that it is the quality of training that determines the presentation of the game.
Without good training, the team is like a mess, not to mention giving the fans a good game.
So, how much do you know about the daily training of professional football clubs?
The cyclical nature of football matches and the periodicity of football training
The concept of the football training cycle is "a form of organization that rationally arranges football training work according to the formation and development law of the competitive state of football players and the schedule of major football events."
Next, we take the Premier League giants Manchester City as an example, talk about how professional football clubs scientifically plan the training of players.
The Premier League is held every year, starting in August of each year and ending in May of the following year after a long 38 rounds of league competition (the schedule of football matches). Professional football clubs will reasonably arrange the corresponding periodic football training according to the one-year schedule, combined with the competitive status of their own team players and the coach's coaching philosophy and football philosophy.
According to the theory of sports training, combined with the understanding of the football training cycle, we can generally divide the football training cycle into four categories, namely the super cycle, the large cycle, the medium cycle and the small cycle.
The super cycle, as the name suggests, is the cycle with the longest time span, and here, the most typical example is the quadrennial Olympic Games, which is a super large training cycle that needs to be considered at the national team level.
The big cycle, which usually refers to the length of a season in football, is about 9 months in the Premier League where Manchester City is located, and other leagues are much the same.
The medium cycle is an integral part of the large cycle, which in football I also call the "training phase", usually consisting of 2 to 12 small cycles. For example, City had serious problems at the defensive end at the beginning of the season, and Guardiola will spend 2 to 6 small cycles on the arrangement of training sessions to focus on targeted training on the formation movement in the no-ball defense.
This mid-cycle mainly solves the problem of movement and limitation on the defensive end.
The duration of a small cycle is usually one week and consists of six training days. (Below there will be a large pen and ink to introduce the specific scientific training arrangements for the micro-cycle of the small cycle.) ）
Each cycle is not simply repeated to each other, the latter cycle is based on the training of the previous cycle, and his requirements will be higher, so as to ensure the quality of training and continuously improve the ability to play.
Manchester City's small cycle training table
Preparation period
The two months of June to July are the preparation period for all teams in the Premier League. After the end of last season's fatigue journey, the team entered the preparation period of football training, the first task of the preparation period is to make the players gradually obtain competitive status, and mentally mobilize enthusiasm, psychologically fully prepared for the next new season of the Premier League.
The preparation period can be divided into two stages: general training and special training, in the first month of the preparation period, the team will usually focus on the general training stage, focusing on physical fitness training, and the amount of training will gradually increase, first adding the amount of exercise, and then adding the intensity of exercise.
A month after the preparation period, the team will also participate in some commercial friendly matches to warm up the team, and as the game arrangement gradually increases, the preparation period enters the second stage - the special training stage.
In the special training stage, the team can find out its shortcomings through the warm-up game and carry out special repetitive training, and really make good use of the particularity of training to combine with the game.
2019 Premier League Asian Cup, pre-season warm-up
Contest Period
'It was a strange day because we played yesterday and we have to play tomorrow, so it was really, very difficult for us. Manchester City sports therapist Eduardo Alvarez said while giving the players a massage.
As winter begins, when teams in other leagues are on transition leave, the Premier League has a devil's schedule, with only 48 hours between one game and another three times a week.
Sam Iris, head of sport science at Manchester City, said: "After a game, it usually takes 72 hours to get fit, so it's unrealistic for you to ask them to basically recover within 48 hours. Therefore, they will be very desperate to supplement nutrition, desperate to recover, desperate to sleep. All the medical staff are helping them with soft tissue recovery training, but the risk of injury is still high and you can't avoid it. On another point, on a psychological level, you have to be positive and motivate each other. ”
The competition period is undoubtedly the most important and complex cycle in the football training cycle, in the face of multiple factors such as physical fitness, psychology, physiology, technical and tactical factors, the arrangement of the competition period can best reflect the level and ability of the coaches.
Let's take Guardiola as an example to see how the team's weekly training is arranged during the competition period.
Guardiola's weekly training program
As shown in the chart below, this is Manchester City's weekly training schedule. Let's assume that Sunday is a match day, and look at The Manchester City arrangement with a small circular training system.
After finishing Sunday's high-intensity race, it's time to Monday. Mondays are usually a time for restorative training and self-adjustment, and the team mostly does not train with the ball and train outdoors. The players will recover physically, mentally and physically through the time of the day, some players will go to the swimming pool to relax, and some players will go to the rehabilitation therapist for massage.
In addition, there will be some state-of-the-art medical rehabilitation techniques to help players recover, such as cryotherapy technology, which is used by all Manchester City players.
The rehabilitation team used fascia guns to rehabilitate Manchester City players
Cryotherapy is to let players enter a room at minus 54 degrees for a short time to help players alleviate inflammation and reduce fatigue, so as to achieve rapid recovery, and on the first day after the game day, all Manchester City players will use this advanced equipment.
It's Tuesday, and on Tuesday head coach Guardiola will summarize Sunday's game, and the technical analysis team will come up with a post-match report of the game to the head coach.
Guardiola will combine the post-match report and the problems he summarized during the on-the-spot command to explain the tactical performance of the match day and the status of the players and his own evaluation of the game in the tactical room of the Football Training Base of the City Football Academy.
City Football Academy Football Training Base
The problems summarized in each game will be solved one by one in the training session on Tuesday and the day, and the targeted training will be completed. "Mistakes made by players in the game – keenly captured by coaches – pointed out by coaches – corrected by both sides", such a flow procedure, if it occurs within 72 hours, can help players better understand and solve problems.
That is to say, in the small cycle, the coach has time to help the team slowly improve, and there is a connection between each training session and another training class, not a simple repetition and superposition of the sum of experience and targeted deployment.
For Wednesday's training sessions, Guardiola will follow his training schedule throughout the season's big cycle. Such as the tactical drill of grabbing the circle training and the overall offensive passing.
Each coach has his own mode of play, and his players will play strictly according to this model, and most of the training time will be around this mode to carry out regular training.
Of course, the monitoring of training is equally important, and each training session manchester City team will place cameras and professional data monitoring systems on the high platform of the training base.
The black circle is surrounded by technicians in charge of video surveillance at Manchester City's training base
Every training session is worth analyzing, six days a week, accounting for more than 80% of the players' touch time, and the team only analyzes the less than 20% of the games is not enough.
On Thursday, it was still following the training plan in the big cycle, the big cycle set at the beginning of the season. Guardiola will train the team's defense according to his own game pattern.
Although many coaches' training sessions will be designed in conjunction with the characteristics of the next opponent, adhering to their own football philosophy and the tactical play style set at the beginning of the season is to allow players to find their own means of adaptation in a complex and changeable game environment.
On Friday, the team will once again come to the tactics room of the City Football Academy to conduct a video analysis of the characteristics of the opponent and listen to head coach Guardiola explain to the players.
Manchester City Training Base Tactics Room
As on Tuesday, after completing tactical edification in the tactics room, Guardiola will immediately organize targeted training. The quality of this training session directly determines the team's winning or losing direction in the Saturday or Sunday match.
On Saturday, the coach will work on set-pieces, and each player will receive a video from the technical team before the game about the characteristics of the opponent, specific to the characteristics of the players in each position and the weaknesses of the team as a whole.
Transition period
In non-World Cup or Europa League years, at the end of May at the latest, it is time for Manchester City to give players a holiday.
The transition period, also known as the adjustment period, is the last stage of the three training cycles, the task of the adjustment period is mainly to eliminate the physical and mental fatigue caused by the athletes due to the first two stages, which will give the players an appropriate vacation (about 4 weeks on average, the specific time is also determined according to the time of the pre-season warm-up), which is conducive to the adjustment of the player's entire body and mind.
epilogue
"Bring out the skills you usually honed!"
It's the training that determines the game, and every top coach knows that.
The development of competitive sports so far has never been compared to whose inspiration has emerged, but the silent efforts of the entire team behind it.