How much should I train?
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What does it take to be the best? How much time, energy, and resources does a young soccer player need to spend in order to develop the expertise necessary to reach their full potential? How frequently do young soccer players need to train in order to gain a 'competitive edge' in the sport?
These questions are on the forefront of every parent, coach, and young player's mind when deciding what, how often, and how much to train.
To help answer this question, we often turn to the personal experiences of those who seem to have 'made it:' professional soccer players and top coaches within the sport.
A popular opinion on this topic is the "10,000 hour rule", which posits that an individual must spend at least 10,000 hours deliberatley practicing their trade to become an expert.
However, as much as success leaves clues, it is more difficult for human beings to really know exactly what is causing their success. Players often over-simplify their success, attributing it to just a couple of factors, such as family support, individual "technical" training, and growing up on the streets.
Unfortunately, development is not as simple as boiling it down to just two or three factors. In addition, our personal experiences and testimonials are often oversimplified and extremely biased - we only understand our experiences based on current frameworks we possess. We see things that aren't there, and miss things that are there. Our memories are often unreliable.
It might be that the support of a specific coach contributed to the development of a player's expertise. But it could also have been the player's experiences with his/her family. It could have been their physical or cognitive growth and maturation, causing things to 'click' more smoothly. Maybe it was the influence of friends.
That's the issue: we don't know.
This is why scientific research can be an extremely valuable tool in uncovering the reality behind athlete development (and many other fields both related and unrelated to sport).
The scientific method can create a relatively unbiased experiments and measurements of variables causing certain outcomes. The data provided through these experiments can then either confirm or disconfirm common myths and conceptions surrounding player development.
From this evidence, we can draw principles to inform our methods, maximizing the likelihood of individual success within the sport.
So what does the science say about how much, and how often we should train in order to maximize the speed and trajectory of soccer development?
In order to grow and develop, such as learning, getting faster, stronger, etc., our bodies and minds must undergo a stimulus.
In other words, we grow by being put under stress.
For example, in order to grow intellectually, we must put our minds under stress by venturing into domains of knowledge that we have not yet learned. To grow physically, we must put our biological structures (i.e., muscles, bones) under stress through activities such as exercise.
The damage induced by these stressors are then repaired stronger and more robust by our immune system.
After our minds and bodies are put under stress, they adapt to be able to cope with the heightened demands.
However, stress does not automatically lead to growth.
In order for stress to promote growth and development, we must be equipped with adequate amounts of time and resources for our minds and bodies to recover and adapt.
During the recovery period following a stressor, our performance and ability to learn new skills decreases.
The pattern of stressors, followed by adequate recovery over time, leads to long-term growth and development.
On the flipside, stressors followed by inadequate recovery over time, leads to stagnation, risk of injury, and burnout.
There is a common misconception that children are like "rubber bands", meaning that they can train as much, as long, and as hard as they want without recovery, and still escape the negative effects of overtraining. In other words, it is often accepted that overtraining is not really a "thing" for young athletes.
This myth has been overwhelmingly debunked by scientific research in both psychology and exercise physiology. Whereas children may accumulate less fatigue and recover quicker from intense bouts of physical activity than adults, they, too, have a finite (limited) stress coping mechanism.
This means that overtraining, even (or especially) at young ages, leads to an increased risk of injury and burnout, and may be actively hindering young athletes from progressing optimally.
Lastly, it's important to consider the fact that every process in our body, including the balance between performance and recovery, is governed by our central nervous system.
This means that any stressor, including physical, mental, and emotional stressors, will affect a young athlete's ability to recovery and perform. Seemingly unrelated stressors, such as school and family life, can affect fatigue.
In fact, even coaching and parenting styles can put athletes under more stress, and, therefore, contribute to the accrual of fatigue, increasing the amount of time and resources needed by the athlete to recover and adapt.
So how much training is required for optimal growth and performance development?
Malcom Gladwell popularized the "10,000 rule" in his book Outliers, hinting at the idea that individuals must spend at least 10,000 hours deliberately practicing their trade (e.g., soccer) in order to develop expertise.
This concept may fuel the idea that children must do as much as possible, as early as possible to gain an "edge" in their sport. If they don't, they may fall behind.
According to the data and evidence in long-term talent and athletic development, this is simply not true.
In fact, the researcher whose work was the reference for Malcolm Gladwell has openly stated that the data has been misinterpreted, and that focus should not be placed on the accrual of a certain amount of hours of training.
To get good at something, you do have to do it a lot. But more is not always better.
In Exercise Science, the Principle of Diminishing Returns states that past a certain amount of training and effort, we do not see more results.
Instead, our results flatline, and if we continue to train, we accumulate more fatigue.
We call this "empty training."
Whereas it is impossible to prescribe an exact amount of time that is optimal for each and every player, there are well-researched guidelines we can use to reliably predict how much may be appropriate for each athlete.
One of those factors is the growth and maturation of the individual.
Scientific research very clearly highlights the dangers of early sport specialization, referring the amount and type of training in sports from early ages (e.g., pre-puberty), which includes increased risk of injury, burnout, and mental/emotional disturbances.
This calls for developmentally appropriate guidelines regarding training dose.
Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, one of the leading experts in Early Sport Specialization and Developmental Training recommends that a young athlete's training load in hours per week should not exceed their number in age (up to 18).
In fact, some of the top player producing countries in the world, such as the Deutscher Fussball Bund (German Soccer Association) limits the amount of time a player is allowed to play during tournaments according to their age. What's interesting is that these restricted amounts of playing time are outlined for tournament play, which is arguably more performance- than development-based.
If playing time is limited during performance-based activities to minimize overtraining and allow enough recovery to return to baseline performance levels (i.e., maintenance), what should be done during development-based activities, where the goal should be to allow enough recovery to move above past baseline performance levels (i.e., adaptation)?
In defense of "more is better", many people use quotes similar to this one from Johan Cruyff:
They then claim that kids just need to play as much as possible.
This often expresses itself as 11 year old children training and "guest-playing" on 2-3 teams at once, sometimes training and competing in multiple training sessions and games in a single day.
First of all, quotes from a professional player is a largely oversimplified and often unreliable source of evidence (as outlined at the beginning of this article).
Second, a deeper look at this quote through a scientific lense can reveal some important principles.
Cruyff claims to have trained only a couple of hours per week in a structured, coach-led environment, and a couple of hours per day in an unstructured, player-led environment.
Remember that fatigue and recovery are not just physical, but also mental and emotional.
Would a player need more recovery after training in a high-pressure environment led by coaches who often rigidly demand & prescribe? Or after playing a competitive game with some friends on the street?
Based on the evidence, we hypothesize that a player could get away with playing more soccer in unstructured, player-led environments.
They don't need more coaching. They don't need more structure. At least not until older ages (often around ~16 years of age).
If fatigue is affected by our central nervous system, then we need to focus our recovery on things that allow physical, mental, and emotional recovery.
When it comes to recovery, it's more about what you don't do, as opposed to what you do.
Time off, sleep, relaxation, and proper nutrition are some of the top things athletes (and people) can do to not only recover, but maximize adaptation from training.
Some research is even suggesting that leisure time, where athletes are not focused on their sport at all, but rather just enjoying and experiencing life, may a be a key for psychological recovery, reducing risk of competitive anxiety, contingent (performance-based) self-worth, and burnout.
However, the same way you cannot "outrun a bad diet", no amount of recovery can make up for overtraining.
With this in mind, we should focus on the quality of our training, as opposed to placing more emphasis on the quantity of training.
Instead of finding 2 or 3 teams to train and play with, we need to fill our training time with training activities and coaching that will give us the largest return on investment.
We discuss the quality of training for skill development in this article.
Instead of training more frequently, we need to provide a quality, highly focused & intentional, intense training stimulus, followed by an equally deep recovery period.
Less, but better.
Higher highs (intense and focused training).
Lower lows (deeper recovery).
