Mystery Train
GOLD
This is part gripe, part legit question.
Every soccer season my kid has been through since AYSO, youngers club, olders club, Middle School, HS, the various coaches she's been through put the team through the fitness gauntlet just before season starts. Some coaches are more fanatical/brutal than others about it. And I understand that before her freshman year of college, it's going to be even more intense. But, like a lot of other details we keeper parents have commented on about goalkeepers and soccer coaching, I see an incredibly obvious and, in my opinion MORONIC mistake being made with regards to keepers that is rampant across all levels of coaching: Goalkeepers are put through exactly the same fitness regimen as the field players.
This makes very little practical sense, and I'd like a club, HS, or college coach to explain or defend this widespread practice. Why???? Do professional clubs do this? Why don't soccer coaches have a fitness program designed for the keeper? This isn't some lame effort to get out of doing hard fitness testing. I think ultra hard-core demanding fitness training is a must for elite athletes. But shouldn't that training be targeting the athlete's needs? Usain Bolt doesn't prep for the Olympics by running half marathons and Meb Keflezighi doesn't try to max out in the squat rack.
The only legitimate factor in why a keeper should have to do the beep test and try to run 3 miles in x minutes or do 800 meter interval sprints is for the simple spirit of team unity. Otherwise, it's not only pointless, it's potentially detrimental to the type of fitness that a keeper needs to establish to be at an elite level. Several of her coaches have at least taken the route of not holding her to the minimum standard required for the field players, but some of them do. Even the ones who let her slide still make her do all of the training with the team on those events leading up to the testing. That's ok, except she's a freaking competitor, and hates being last. So she busts her damn tail trying to raise her beep test score, when that sort of endurance does nothing for the type of short anaerobic bursts of explosion she needs to be at the top of her game. One of the big issues my player personally has is that she's got a lighting metabolism, so putting weight on her long frame isn't easy (yes, I know everyone should have such a problem) but she's got aspirations to play in college and looking around at D1 keepers, they are thick, muscular and powerful. The last thing my kid needs going into her hot recruitment years is to lose weight.
I would love to see her have to hit some sort of metrics on her leaping, on repetitions on a 40 yard dash, squats, the shuttle run, etc. A goalkeeper should have fitness tests comparable to basketball players. That's much more in line with the type of physical demand on their muscles and aerobic endurance.
Am I way off base?? Willing to be wrong on this point, but seriously frustrated.
Every soccer season my kid has been through since AYSO, youngers club, olders club, Middle School, HS, the various coaches she's been through put the team through the fitness gauntlet just before season starts. Some coaches are more fanatical/brutal than others about it. And I understand that before her freshman year of college, it's going to be even more intense. But, like a lot of other details we keeper parents have commented on about goalkeepers and soccer coaching, I see an incredibly obvious and, in my opinion MORONIC mistake being made with regards to keepers that is rampant across all levels of coaching: Goalkeepers are put through exactly the same fitness regimen as the field players.
This makes very little practical sense, and I'd like a club, HS, or college coach to explain or defend this widespread practice. Why???? Do professional clubs do this? Why don't soccer coaches have a fitness program designed for the keeper? This isn't some lame effort to get out of doing hard fitness testing. I think ultra hard-core demanding fitness training is a must for elite athletes. But shouldn't that training be targeting the athlete's needs? Usain Bolt doesn't prep for the Olympics by running half marathons and Meb Keflezighi doesn't try to max out in the squat rack.
The only legitimate factor in why a keeper should have to do the beep test and try to run 3 miles in x minutes or do 800 meter interval sprints is for the simple spirit of team unity. Otherwise, it's not only pointless, it's potentially detrimental to the type of fitness that a keeper needs to establish to be at an elite level. Several of her coaches have at least taken the route of not holding her to the minimum standard required for the field players, but some of them do. Even the ones who let her slide still make her do all of the training with the team on those events leading up to the testing. That's ok, except she's a freaking competitor, and hates being last. So she busts her damn tail trying to raise her beep test score, when that sort of endurance does nothing for the type of short anaerobic bursts of explosion she needs to be at the top of her game. One of the big issues my player personally has is that she's got a lighting metabolism, so putting weight on her long frame isn't easy (yes, I know everyone should have such a problem) but she's got aspirations to play in college and looking around at D1 keepers, they are thick, muscular and powerful. The last thing my kid needs going into her hot recruitment years is to lose weight.
I would love to see her have to hit some sort of metrics on her leaping, on repetitions on a 40 yard dash, squats, the shuttle run, etc. A goalkeeper should have fitness tests comparable to basketball players. That's much more in line with the type of physical demand on their muscles and aerobic endurance.
Am I way off base?? Willing to be wrong on this point, but seriously frustrated.