Soccer Drills for Conditioning

Conditioning is one of the least fun but most important elements to emphasis within your practice plans. Whether your players want to or not, spend a significant amount of time at practice using drills that emphasis running and movement.

Although your overall practice schedule should emphasis conditioning drills, it would be a good idea to run a practice that specifically targets conditioning once every 2-3 weeks. On a day where conditioning may be the emphasis, start players out with a quick lap, followed by a good stretch. After they have finished stretching, send them on an 8-10 minute run. Once they come back, give them a short water break, before moving into 4 half-field sprints.

Once the sprints have been finished, immediately lead into a quick jog around the field, followed by 2 more full-field sprints, a jog, and two more sprints. Give them a quick water break, and then back to it, no time to rest.

Depending on how hard you want to "push it," maybe you run some non-stop movement drills, or maybe you slow it down a bit, it depends on a lot of different factors. Run some combination of dribbling drills, shooting drills, small-sided or scrimmage drills for everything but the last 8 or so minutes of practice, and close it out with 15-20 8-18 yard sprints. Although your players will hate you for it and complain the entire practice, they will thank you when they are in better shape than their competition, especially late in the game.