As a coach you surely know that fitness drills are rarely appreciated among the players. Simply, players hate to run without a ball.

But you also know the importance of letting them know how beneficial fitness really is. You simply cannot be good at plating soccer if you’re not willing to condition yourself to be great. Would Maradona truly be legendary if he couldn’t run? Of course not.

One thing you could do to motivate your players is to allow them to play 2 goals after completing the drills. This will also make them more open to perform maximum during the drills!

Slalom Runs

Set up the drill by placing the cones all the same way, like on the image above. The first six cones should be placed 3 yards apart.

The distance between the sixth cone and the cone up to the right should be about 5 yards. And the distance between the cone up to the right and the bottom cone should be about 15-20 yards.

You may vary this drill by increasing the distance between the cones or remove the jogging part and restrict your players to run at their maximum.

Each of your players should perform this drill 5 times or more (depending on the age and fitness level of your players).

Random Runs

To accomplish this drill you will need 9 cones. Use one cone to mark the starting point.

The rest of the cones should be about 5-10 yards away from the starting point. Each cone should have a number.

You could mark them on the same way like on the image below but of course if you want to mark them on some other way then fine. It is up to you to decide this 🙂

The players should stand around the starting point. Begin the drill by randomly shouting the name of one of your players and the number of the cone, for ex: John 5.

What John needs to do is to perform a quick run to the cone with number five, sprint back to the starting point and then shout, DONE!

Directly after that you should shout some other player’s name. The drill continues for 5-10 minutes. Let your players rest 2 min and then repeat the drill.

Jog & Sprint

Set up the drill by placing 6 cones on the same way like on the image below. The cones should be 15 yards apart.

However, if your players are younger than 15 years old you should limit the distance to 10 yards.

Your players should be standing in a line behind the cone marked with “Starting Point”.

The first standing player in that line should first perform a fast run, then jog, then sprint and so on.

After reaching the starting point again, he should place himself at the end of the file.

This soccer drill will improve your players sprinting abilities which is a crucial part of soccer fitness.

A player that is slow will have hard to perform well regardless of which positions he is playing on.

You may vary this drill by increasing the distance between cones (depending on the age of your players) or restrict your players to sprint without allowing them to jog.

Station Runs

For this drill you will need 6 cones. Create a rectangle and place the cones 5 yards apart (see the image).

The cone up to the left is used as starting point for the drill. You should line up your players in front of the cone.

Now, demonstrate the drill by yourself by performing a fast run to the first cone. Once reaching it you should lie down and perform 20 sit-ups.

After that you should run fast to the second cone and perform 10 push-ups.

Then, run fast again to the third cone and perform 10 knee jumps, run fast again to the fourth cone and perform 20 sit-ups again, run fast to the fifth cone by performing 10 push-ups again. Jog back to the starting point.

Summary

All in all, you should not focus too much on the fitness aspects of soccer.

Even though fitness and conditioning are important aspects of playing soccer, it’s important not to focus too much on them.

Try to develop the basic soccer skills (e.g. shooting, passing, heading etc) as they are the true core of soccer game!