FIT Training - Sunday, Mar 3

3:15PM - 4:15PM @ Fit Studio (St Paul)

As part of our agreement with FIT Studios, the girls are taking part in six Crash Training Sessions in March and April. Today was the first session and the girls met at the St Paul studio from 3:15PM - 4:15PM to work with Aaron "Levy" Leventhal and his trainers. I could not be there as I was committed to working with the U10s and U11s at Lake JHS in Woodbury for Futsal Training, and I would catch up with the girls later that day as they came to Lake for their Futsal/Street Soccer Sessions at 5PM.

From Aaron Leventhal, Fit Trainer

After working with the girls on Sunday we have begun to design a team specific program to help the girls peak for their outdoor season, specifically their trip to Virginia.

As we have spent time training speed, agility, strength on Saturday during the winter, we have decided to focus mostly on game fitness and peak performance by the end of March.

On Sunday we administered a sub maximal v02 test, we split what is called the “cooper test” between 2 girls. The goal is to cover a 2 mile distance in 12 minutes, we which means that each girl would need to cover 1 mile in her 6 minute interval. Performance levels for this were fine, but we are concerned mostly about this aspect of the girls training right now as it relates directly to game performance at high levels.

In other words, we want to make sure that their ability to maintain high levels of intense work for an entire game. 2 reasons for this are simple and they have turned out to be the main goals for this crash training course.

1. If we do not have high levels of intensity that we can maintain for a certain amount of time, full game in this case, our skill level will drop as we fatigue. At this level we do not want to waste time building this type of fitness through playing actual games, we want to have it in place before we go into our first game.
2. Injury prevention is most important in this type of crash training. Most common serious injury among girl soccer players is ACL/MCL injury. We are dealing with joint stability and lateral strength. It is important to make sure that we are able to maintain strength and stability under the demands not only of the intensity of the game but the volume as well. In other words, the girls are more susceptible to injury when they are asked to perform outside their level of fitness and they become fatigued. We want to make sure that they are able maintain stability in this state of fatigue. We do this through challenging the girls in unstable environments while fatigued.

We have decided to include maintenance work for the certain aspects of the girls training. Thus, making sure that we continue to keep high levels of speed, strength, and power.

Our focus on the mechanics of running will be our first activity in most sessions and will serve as a dynamic warm up. In other words we are using specific movement to warm up as opposed to static stretching, as we feel that we can teach form and use specific movement more specific to our training than static stretching.

We also will include a cool down component to the training using foam rollers to help with tight muscle groups. This will serve as the recovery and regeneration portion of the training.

We are looking forward to working with the girls and expect to have a great time with them and get a lot of work done in our sessions. The best advice we can give the girls at this time is to make sure that they come prepared for 60 or 90 minutes of focused training depending on the session.