Football Players Energy System

Energy Systems Associated with Football Players

Easily one of the most demanding sports in the world and by far the most popular. Soccer or football to the rest of the world takes on a unique conditioning progam. A soccer player must possess the ability to stop, start, run, jump, pivot and sprint all in the same game. The conditioning program must emulate the conditions on the field or pitch, as the brit's like to call it. A solid nutritional program should accompany all soccer programs.

As a player depending on position, one must do many different skills. A player must condition to increase speed, sprint speed, leaping ability to execute at a top level in addition to remaining injury free.

The greater the player's aerobic power the quicker he can recover from the high-intensity bursts. These short bursts will be fuelled by the ATP-PC and anaerobic glycolysis systems. Then, during rest periods, a large blood flow is required to replace the used-up phosphate and oxygen stores in the muscles and to help remove any lactate and hydrogen ion by-products.

The quicker this is achieved, the sooner a player can repeat the high-intensity sprints, and thus cover more distance and be able to attempt more sprints. So the aerobic system is crucial for fuelling the low to moderate activities during the game, and as a means of recovery between high-intensity bursts.

Which system fuels the sprints?

As already mentioned, the ATP-PC and anaerobic glycolysis systems fuel the high-intensity periods. However, if we are to optimize training programmes, we need to know whether in performing the high-intensity bursts both systems contribute evenly or whether one is more important.

As the sprints a player makes are mostly 10-25m in length, or 3-5

However, results from these studies have varied. Tumilty and colleagues from Australia cite research varying from 2 mmol/l, which is a low lactate score indicating little anaerobic glycolysis, to 12 mmol/l, which is quite a high score. Most studies seem to find values in the 4-8 mmol/l range, which suggests that anaerobic glycolysis has a role.

The contrast in results is probably due to the varying levels of football in the different studies. Some use college-level players, others professionals. Some studies test training games, others competitive matches. This is likely to confound results. Ekblom, a researcher from Sweden, clearly showed that the level of play was crucial to the lactate levels found. Division One players showed lactate levels of 8-10 mmol/l progressively down to Division Four players showing only 4 mmol/l. Tumilty and colleagues conclude that the contribution of anaerobic glycolysis remains unclear, but is probably significant.

They suggest that the tempo of the game may be crucial to whether anaerobic glycolysis is significant or not. As Ekblom noted: 'It