Footballers often assume that more training is always better, and this makes a lot of sense.
Hard work gets praised by coaches and training staff, and that acclaim can be a huge incentive to do more.
More running. More gym. More skills sessions. More training. Because that means more time on the pitch, right?
But training only works if your body has enough opportunity to recover and adapt to it.
This is where training load becomes important.
Training load is more than training
Everything you do places some demand on your body.
A footballer’s week might include:
- Team training
- Matches
- Gym sessions
- Running or sprint sessions
- Individual skills training
- School or work
- Poor sleep
- Travel and other life stress
Your body doesn’t experience each of these things in isolation.
A hard gym session might be perfectly manageable during a quiet week, but the same session might be too much after two matches, three football training sessions, and a few nights of poor sleep.
Think of your training like a bucket
I like to think of every athlete as having a bucket.
Training, competition and other stresses gradually fill it.
Recovery creates more room, and this can look like quality sleep, adequate nutrition, rest days and appropriately easier training.
The size of the bucket isn’t the same for everybody either.
An athlete who has gradually built up years of training may tolerate significantly more than someone who suddenly goes from two sessions per week to six.
More training only helps if you can recover from it.
What happens when you’re doing too much?
Some fatigue and soreness are completely normal parts of training.
The problem is when an athlete continually adds more without structure or adequate recovery.
You might start noticing:
- Persistently heavy or sore legs
- Performance dropping
- Unusual fatigue
- Reduced motivation to train
- Poor sleep
- Repeated aches and niggles
- Taking longer than usual to recover
One bad session doesn’t necessarily mean you’re training too much.
I’m more interested in patterns developing across several days or weeks.
Sometimes doing less helps you perform more
Managing training load doesn’t mean avoiding hard training; pushing yourself physically is essential for improvement.
However, those sessions must be placed appropriately and every day doesn’t need to be difficult. Some weeks, two gym sessions with football might feel fine, but during a busy week of tournament play, one or even zero sessions might be more appropriate.
Recovery isn’t wasted training.
In fact, if you are hurting your in-game performance from overtraining, then that increased game-time you were hoping for gets hurt as well.
So many athletes fall into the trap of always pushing their hardest, always doing more. Being able to back off when needed is in itself a skill that must be developed to reach the next level.
