The Best Exercise Plan for 6-a-side Football

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Putting together the right exercise plan is crucial if you want to do well on the pitch. It stands to reason, right? If you want to improve at any activity, you have to train your body and mind to maximise your potential, and 6-a-side football is no different. Even if you’re only playing for fun—and that’s as good a reason to play as any—you’ll get more fun out of the sport if you can see and feel yourself improving from match to match.

In this article, we’re going to take a look at some simple but effective exercises that you can do that will help you improve your performance on the pitch, not to mention your general health and well-being off it.

Last longer

6-a-side football matches are only 18 minutes a side, but those 18 minutes can feel like hours if you’re out of breath from the very start. Good cardio work is the key to building up endurance and being able to spend the whole of the match in high gear. Treadmills, stationary bikes, and cross-fit machines are all excellent ways to get the heart pumping and the lungs working for extended periods of time.

Move faster

While cardio will make sure you can move up and down the pitch all match without getting tired, you also need to develop your short-distance sprinting power. This is what will help you get to the ball before a member of the opposing team. Interval training on a treadmill is perfect for this. That’s 30 seconds of flat-out sprinting, followed by 30 seconds of complete rest, repeated for as long as you can manage it.

Block better

Being able to power through the opposition can make you an effective attacker for your team. Likewise, being able to brush off another player trying to get past you can make you awesome in defence. The key to both is to put on a little extra weight in your upper body—specifically your back, chest, and shoulders. You don’t have to have the body of an MMA fighter, but a little muscular development in those areas means you won’t get knocked about in the course of a game.

Kick harder

While there’s not much call for long passes in 6-a-side football, a powerful shot on goal is more likely to make it past the goalie. If you’re consistently positioned in attack, it’s important that you don’t skip leg day. A combination of squats, lunges, and presses should give you legs like rocket launchers, ready to put a hole through the opposition’s defensive line.

Cool down

This last tip isn’t strictly part of your training regimen, but it’s just as important as the rest of the exercises in this article. After your game, you might be tempted to hit the shower, get changed, and then go down to the pub with your team for a well-earned pint or two. While there’s nothing wrong with that, if you want to avoid feeling like you’ve been hit by a truck the following morning, take the time to slowly stretch out all your muscle groups. You’ve just had an intense 40 minutes of activity on the pitch, and, without a bit of stretching, you’re likely to end up with aches, pains, and cramps.

Get in touch

A regular and well-planned exercise regime will work wonders for your performance on and off the pitch, but, like we mentioned in last month’s article on a healthy diet, it’s not going to happen overnight. While the changes will take time, you will start to see small but noticeable improvements almost immediately. If you’re ready to put together your own 6-a-side football team, get in touch with Soccer Gods today and register your interest in joining a local league.

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