Maximising Pre-Season Fitness

[TheMattB81]

I am interested to know what is the best way to build up fitness during pre-season to try and reduce fatigue in players half way through the season. 

When arranging friendlies, what is a suitable amount, and how far apart should they be? 3 days, or a week apart?

I tend to schedule my friendlies, 5 or 6, 7 days apart and rarely make subs unless there is an injury. However i am not sure if this is the best way to do it. For example, would it be better to have a friendly every three days or so and sub the whole team off at half time and rinse and repeat for each game. 

 

 

[likesiamesefish]

I normally arrange 6-10 friendlies and play them Wednesday - Saturday throughout pre-season and my team is always fit come the start of the season. For the past twenty or seasons or so I've been ending my pre-season a week earlier and then having a three day friendly league over the Fri-Sun before the first game of the season and this works as well.

Make sure your team is unselected on the squad view or the ass man will play those you've got picked and I'd also recommend setting up a bunch of friendlies for the U23 / reserves team as well.

Edited February 11, 2020 by likesiamesefish
changed month earlier to week earlier

[Snorks]

I arrange friendlies, 6-9 of them, on a Weekend - Wednesday - Weekend schedule. Not too bothered about home/away, but if in lower leagues might look at the financials of each. My 'ideal' would be 3xgames against bigger opposition to play my 'underdog' set up', 3x games against similar opposition to play my 'standard' set up and the last three friendlies against weaker teams to bank 3 wins and build the morale going into the season.

My team selection s based purely on match conditioning. The lower the match condition of each player in each position gets the 'start'. Changes during the match are, again, done by match condition. 6 friendlies should be enough to bring a squad of 25 players up to 91+ conditioning for the first game of the season. It wouldn;t be unusual for me to make 11 substitutions in one game (generally the GK gets the full 90)

As far as training goes, fairly intense fitness/physical work for the first  weeks of pre-season, but once the friendlies start, back off a little. Most of the time I will leave it to the AssMan to sort out and only adjust the odd session here or there. 

[Hovis Dexter]

I have a squad which includes two players for each position giving me team A and team B. I arrange eight or ten friendlies, start the two teams in alternative matches and at about the 60th minutes substitute all the players. I find that this gets the whole squad match fit for the first competitive match.