Why footballers should lift
Football asks for sprints, jumps, duels and sudden changes of direction, all of which a stronger body does faster and survives better. Across sports, a meta-analysis of 25 trials with 26,610 participants found that strength training programmes cut injuries to about a third, while stretching programmes made no measurable difference (Lauersen, Bertelsen and Andersen, 2014).
In football itself, the FIFA 11+ warm-up, which builds in Nordic curls and other strength and balance work, reduced the overall injury rate by 39% across four trials in recreational and sub-elite football (Thorborg et al., 2017).
Pre-season and in-season
- Pre-season (6 to 10 weeks): two full-body sessions a week. 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 6 reps on a squat or hinge, plus single-leg work and an upper-body push and pull. This is where strength is built.
- In-season: one heavy session a week is enough to keep it. Professional players who kept one session a week held their gains in strength and 40 m sprint over the first 12 weeks of the season; those who trained once every two weeks lost some of both (Rønnestad, Nymark and Raastad, 2011).
- Keep in-season sessions short and heavy: fewer sets, the same weights, and stop 2 or 3 reps before failure so you leave fresher than you came in.
Where the session goes in a match week
Put the heavy session at least three days after the last match and three days before the next one. A meta-analysis of 77 studies found hamstring force and sprint performance still measurably down 72 hours after a match (Silva et al., 2018), so the day after is for recovery and the day before for staying fresh.
With a match on Sunday and two gym sessions, the week looks like this:
| Day | Plan |
|---|---|
| Mon | Recovery: easy movement, no gym |
| Tue | Team training |
| Wed | Strength session: heavy legs and upper body |
| Thu | Team training |
| Fri | Light session: upper body or short jumps |
| Sat | Rest or a short team session |
| Sun | Match |
Play on another day, or twice a week? The match-week planner works it out for any match days.
The exercises that matter most
- A squat or trap bar deadlift, for the strength behind sprinting and jumping.
- The Romanian deadlift, for hamstrings that are strong through their whole length.
- The Bulgarian split squat, because football is played one leg at a time.
- The Nordic hamstring curl: kneel, have your ankles held or hooked, and lower your body forward as slowly as you can. Start with 2 sets of 5 once a week and build up.
- The Copenhagen adductor exercise: a side plank with your top leg on a bench, lifting the bottom leg. Start with the knee on the bench, the shorter and easier version.
- Calf raises, and an upper-body push and pull to hold your own in duels.
Mistakes that cost players
- Heavy leg training the day after a match, when the legs are at their weakest.
- Training to failure in-season. It adds fatigue without adding strength you need.
- Dropping the gym once the season starts, and losing in a few months what pre-season built.
- Upper body only. Legs are what a footballer uses most, so they are what the gym should cover first.