Footballers fitness.

I played football to a fairly high standard (Northern League)

Imagine doing very intense interval training for 90 minutes, very, very short sharp spikes, again and again and again, its relentless, and i imagine the higher you get the more relentless it becomes.

Make no bones about it, professional footballers are very very fit, but it’s a very specific fitness

add in 30c heat, the amount of water the players will be losing is huge, and they won’t be getting chances to fully replace it, they’ll be dehydrated after 30 minutes.

Fell asleep in the England-Tunisia game
Must be far more tiring sitting in the clubhouse than running around kicking a ball for 90mins 😉

May be tired but some are still more than alert enough to make dives and face holding a near apparent reflex action, in a calculated decision to appeal to the ref. 😉 And to eat other players for dinner 😉

Can they really only perform well for 60 mins and if so why?

Game went to extra time. If anything, the performance level went up.

Commentators, and trolls casual observers, make mistakes.

they all certainly ‘put a shift in’

If I never hear that phrase again with regards to footballers doing their job it will be too soon

That bolt geezer only manages 20 seconds before he’s tired. I’d imagine he could last longer if he went slower but then he wouldn’t win.

Same for footballers, although some have the position on the field, and the benefit of experience and skill to make the ball do more work.

A World Cup series of games is brutal.

That Bolt geezer also contests several rounds in a day or consecutive days. No rest days / holiday in Rio till the next effort.

Ok, imagine doing any sport in hot conditions as hard as you can for an hour? Tell me a sport where you wouldn’t start to tire?

darts, tiddly winks, chess ( maybe) 🙂

I don’t think they’d last long in our fives tournament tbh.

We should also remember that footballers are gifted footballers, many of them may not be gifted endurance athletes, just being able to run hard for 90mins wont make you a footballerist but being very gifted at kicking a ball can take you to the top, look at Gaza. Obviously you can train hard, but you cant put in what millions of years of evolution left out.

darts, tiddly winks, chess ( maybe)

I think we need to define ‘a sport’ a little better (not like it hasn’t been done before) 🙂

If we leave aside Hemingway’s famous quote and use a more apt test, we should get somewhere, or maybe not.

If you can compete at the highest level wearing a brimmed hat and smoking a pipe (including regular relighting and trying to set fire to your thumb etc.) then it is not a sport, merely a pastime or a game.

OK? 🙂

15 all some nights and even the ‘keepers had to do a stint put a shift in.

FTFY 🙂

Top flight football is so fast especially in the PL that you can’t not be at the top of your game fitness wise, if you aren’t you’ll get found out. One lapse of concentration due to tiredness and that’s it: Switzerland vs Argentina last night was a good example.

Did anyone see the montage of skills the BBC put together yesterday? It was staggering! The level of sublime technical ability at this world cup has been breath-taking at times.

Being an uber-fit, supreme athlete is the very minimum requirement. Your brain has got to be faster than your feet.

Edit: found it…. well… some of them. There was a longer one that was absolutely amazing 😯

I don’t understand! No England players feature in that clip. How did that happen?

If you can compete at the highest level wearing a brimmed hat and smoking a pipe (including regular relighting and trying to set fire to your thumb etc.) then it is not a sport, merely a pastime or a game.

If one cannot smoke a pipe while carrying out said activity it can hardly be said to be sporting, but rather a tiresome exercise in sweating like a navvy.

Being an uber-fit, supreme athlete is the very minimum requirement

I think if you try searching some stats you’d be amazed at the times they can cover a distance in. It’s very stop start and 90 minutes of real pressure.

What about the refs? Unlike the players they always have to be near the ball so cover the whole pitch and still have to be able to watch the actions of players. Then get a load of abuse for doing it.

I think the photo of Rooney points out the ridiculous idiocy of judging fitness based on photographs.

I think the photo of Rooney points out the ridiculous idiocy of judging fitness based on photographs.

Or, that skill can compensate for (relative) lack of fitness.

When was that Rooney photo taken? We all know he’s struggled with his fitness, and one example does not prove much.

They don’t really do a huge amount of fitness training compared to many sports. I’d argue whether:

each and every player in the Tournament will be exactly about a million times fitter than any of us could ever hope to be.

Hyperbole aside, there’s a huge amount of skill in football, and it’s an apples:oranges comparison, but I’d wager some of the folk on here are ‘fitter’ than a number of the WC players.

but I’d wager some of the folk on here are ‘fitter’ than a number of the WC players.

+1

Although of course it depends on how you’re measuring fitness. Vo2 max, 10km run time, 100m sprint time, etc…

Hyperbole aside, there’s a huge amount of skill in football, and it’s an apples:oranges comparison, but I’d wager some of the folk on here are ‘fitter’ than a number of the WC players

Depends how you measure fitness – fitness to cycle long distances or fitness to play 90 minutes of competitive football or 80 minutes of rugby? The cyclists may have better endurance/aerobic processing but they simply would have the conditioning for the sprinting or the muscle stamina for the tackling/rucks/mauls. As you say different fruit – but all equally as valid.

What about the refs? Unlike the players they always have to be near the ball so cover the whole pitch and still have to be able to watch the actions of players.

I said this before – the refs cover a lot of ground, similar distances to the players, but it’s in a more controlled way. Lots of sprints, for sure, followed by recovery, but they don’t tend to do so much in the way of direction changes, pushing off in different directions at full tilt, twisting, etc.

And also (and trust me- this gets easier, not harder as you go up in standards) a decent ref can read the game and make moves to be in a certain area in preparation for the ball getting there rather than following it there. At lower / local league level the ball can go from end to end to end unpredictably based on no-one having the ability to control the ball and keep possession for more than a microsecond. Couple that to the 5’s and 9’s having only got in from the night club 3 hours ago and still fancying a punch up, and they were physically the hardest games i ever reff’ed, doing repeated 75 yard shuttle runs just to be vaguely close to the action when finally it all kicked off!!

Then get a load of abuse for doing it.

Of course. But you get travel expenses, and a pint afterwards, and everyone’s your mate, at least they are for as long as it takes them to realise that no you can’t be bribed and that yellow card will be being reported to the county FA in the morning and they will be getting a fine for it.

… and I have lots of friends who could run a marathon faster than any Olympic champion rower – but are they fitter?

… and I have lots of friends who could run a marathon faster than any Olympic champion rower – but are they fitter?

Exactly. My Mrs beat Steve Redgrave. Don’t fancy her chances if they were racing boats though somehow.

So, basically, we’re all agreeing this needs to get recommissioned for a new series:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstars

… and I have lots of friends who could run a marathon faster than any Olympic champion rower – but are they fitter?

Which was, in effect, my point (albeit made in a roundabout way), I suspect there are folk on here who could run a marathon quicker than most WC footballers, which is perhaps a more relevant comparison of fitness – ultimately the measure of fitness in a footballer is running (you can put some cones chicanes in the marathon course so they have to change direction suddenly too!).

Saying that every single WC footballer is a “million times fitter than any of us could ever hope to be” is elevating them above their stations IMO, and that’s the last thing most footballers need!

Remember seeing a thing about ballet dancers vs footballers – footballers won hands down. (Ballet dancers were stronger but less aerobically fit)

Oh and fat Waz covers more ground than any of his team mates in virtually every game even carrying a few layers of steak bakes.

… and I think I was trying to expand the definition of fitness beyond simple aerobic efficiency.

Interesting: most elite soccer players have a VO2 max in the low 60s:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23118070

Also interesting:

“Relative to body mass, VO2max among the professional players in this study has not improved over time. Professional players tested during 2006-2012 actually had 3.2% lower VO2max than those tested from 2000 to 2006 (P = .001).”

I think the photo of Rooney points out the ridiculous idiocy of judging fitness based on photographs.

Indeed

Here’s something to try. Go out tomorrow on your bike at midday for 60 mins and do sprint intervals with zero rest. I wonder if you’d feel tired?

With zero rest they wouldn’t be intervals .