Pre-Season Training for Footballers: The Complete Plan

Pre-season training for footballers: what a good program looks like

Pre-season training for footballers is a four to eight week block that systematically prepares the body for the demands of a full season: first you build an aerobic base and general strength, then specific strength and speed, and finally you sharpen everything through games and match-like drills. A good pre-season conditioning program has clear phases, raises the load step by step and plans recovery as seriously as the work itself. In more than 10 years of working with footballers in Bugojno and online across Bosnia, I have seen the same thing over and over: the difference between the player who burns out by September and the player who runs strong all autumn is almost never talent - it is how pre-season was done.

Why pre-season is the most important period of the year

What you build in six weeks of pre-season decides what you can do for the next ten months. During the season, with matches every weekend and tactical sessions in between, there is almost no room for serious fitness development - you mostly maintain what you already built. Research on training load consistently shows that sharp spikes in load after a period of rest dramatically increase the risk of soft-tissue injuries. That is exactly what happens to the player who rests all summer and then crams ten sessions into the first week. Pre-season exists to turn that spike into a staircase: each week slightly more, the body gets time to adapt, and you enter round one prepared instead of broken.

The three phases of a good pre-season

I split every good program into three phases. Their length depends on how long pre-season is, but the order never changes.

Phase 1: general preparation and aerobic base

For the first two to three weeks the focus is volume, not intensity. You do aerobic running, general strength in the gym, plenty of injury-prevention work and running technique. The goal is to make the body able to handle training, not to chase match sharpness already. Rushing this phase is the most common mistake of all.

Phase 2: specific strength and speed

Over the next two to three weeks volume comes down slightly and intensity goes up. Harder intervals, maximal sprints, changes of direction, plyometrics and heavier gym sets come in. Training starts to look like the demands of a match: short explosive actions with incomplete rest.

Phase 3: pre-competition phase

In the final seven to ten days volume drops further, freshness rises, and most conditioning moves into the game itself: small-sided games, situational drills, friendly matches. The body charges up instead of draining, so you are sharp for the opening match.

The aerobic base: your foundation for 90 minutes

Football is a repeated-sprint sport, but between those sprints the aerobic system pays the recovery bill. A player with a weak base runs the first sprint as fast as a fitter teammate, but the fifth, tenth and twentieth get slower and slower. That is why in phase 1 I build the base with a combination, not just long slow runs:

• Tempo runs: 2 to 3 times per week, 20 to 30 minutes of continuous running at a pace where you can still speak a sentence.
• Extensive intervals: for example 4 times 4 minutes of faster running with 2 to 3 minutes of easy jogging between, once per week.
• Large-space games: 7v7 or 8v8 possession on a big pitch, because a player with a ball tolerates far more effort without mentally checking out.

Long monotonous runs of 60 minutes or more train nothing a footballer actually needs and steal energy from the rest of the program. Base yes, marathon no.

Strength in pre-season: fewer exercises, higher quality

The gym in pre-season is not bodybuilding. The goal is strength that transfers to the pitch and tissues that resist injury. With my players I stick to a small number of high-impact exercises: squats or trap bar deadlifts for 3 to 4 sets of 4 to 6 reps, lunges and Bulgarian split squats for single-leg strength, Nordic curls for the hamstrings and Copenhagen work for the adductors - the two regions that break down most often in footballers. In phase 1 you lift 2 to 3 times per week with moderate loads and clean technique, in phase 2 the weights go up while volume comes down, and in phase 3 strength is simply maintained with one short session. I covered how I structure gym work for players in detail in my guide to strength and conditioning for footballers.

Speed is trained fresh, not tired

The biggest misconception in club football is that speed is built by sprinting at the end of an exhausting session. All that builds is slow running technique. I program maximal sprints at the start of training, after a proper warm-up: 6 to 10 sprints of 20 to 40 metres with 2 to 3 minutes of rest, once or twice per week in phase 2. Alongside that come accelerations from different starting positions and changes of direction, because football speed is not track speed - I wrote about this in depth in my article on speed and agility training for football. There is a bonus too: regular exposure to maximal sprinting during pre-season is one of the best vaccines against hamstring injuries later in the season.

How to avoid overtraining in pre-season

Overtraining in pre-season never comes from one hard session but from the sum of many things: two sessions a day, heat, poor sleep, poor food and zero planned easy days. With the players I coach I track a few simple signals and advise everyone to do the same:

• Morning check: if the legs feel heavy and motivation is low three days in a row, the load comes down - no negotiation.
• Sleep: 8 hours is part of the program. A player sleeping 5 hours does not recover from double sessions.
• Planned easy days: every week has at least one full day off and one light day. Every fourth week is a deload with visibly less volume.
• Gradual progression: load grows by roughly 10 percent week to week, not 50.

It is better to enter the season 5 percent undercooked than 1 percent burnt out. You can top up fitness in September, but a July injury follows you into winter.

Typical mistakes clubs and players make

I see these mistakes every single year, from youth setups to senior squads:

• A whole summer off, then a shock first week. Players arrive with zero training in their legs and immediately do double sessions. The result is tendon pain, muscle injuries and lost weeks.
• Pre-season as punishment. Running hills until players vomit builds fear of pre-season, not football fitness.
• All running, no ball until the last week. Conditioning without the ball prepares you for a different sport.
• No gym work at all. Strength is the foundation of speed and the strongest shield against injury, yet many clubs skip it entirely.
• No load plan. Sessions are planned day to day, so the hardest days pile up back to back.
• The player does nothing on his own. Whoever arrives at pre-season with 3 to 4 weeks of individual work already done gets through it easier and gains twice as much.

A sample pre-season week

Here is what a phase 2 week can look like for a player who trains with his team and has gym access:

• Monday: gym in the morning (lower-body strength, 45 minutes), technical ball work at moderate intensity in the afternoon.
• Tuesday: sprints and agility at the start of the session, then interval work through 4v4 small-sided games.
• Wednesday: easy day - technique, low-intensity tactics, mobility and prevention work.
• Thursday: gym (full body, emphasis on hamstrings and core), large-space possession in the afternoon.
• Friday: short, sharp session - accelerations, situational drills, set pieces.
• Saturday: friendly match or training match.
• Sunday: completely off.

Notice the structure: speed is trained fresh, hard days are separated by lighter ones, and no exhausting session sits right before the match. The order matters as much as the content - that is usually the first thing I fix when I build an individual pre-season program for a footballer in Bugojno or online.

The best results come from a plan built around you - your body, your sport and your goals. I coach people in Bugojno and online across Bosnia, from complete beginners to athletes. If you want a program made specifically for you, see how I work and get in touch.