Pre-season football training plan for amateur players

June is the closed season for 11-a-side football in England, and friendlies can start from 1 July Cumberland FA 2023. Most grassroots clubs go back in July and kick off in August or September. That gives you a natural window: if you know your first league game, count back six to eight weeks and that’s when your pre-season starts.

Why six to eight weeks?

Fitness takes time to build and very little time to lose. In sub-elite players, an 8-week pre-season produced clear gains in aerobic fitness Rømer et al. 2024. Six to eight weeks also gives enough time to build up the Nordic hamstring and Copenhagen exercises safely, which matters more than any amount of hill running.

Starting late? A compressed four-week plan still works, but it should never skip the gradual hamstring and groin build-up. Doing three hard sessions of Nordics in your first week back is a good way to be too sore to walk.

Step one: test yourself

At the start, run a 1.6 km or 2 km time trial on a track or a measured flat route. Your average speed gives a good estimate of your maximal aerobic speed (MAS), which is what you’ll use to set interval running. Optional extras: a phone-timed 10 m and 30 m sprint, and a countermovement jump. Repeat the time trial in the last week of pre-season.

The shape of the plan

Aerobic fitness

Early on, use longer intervals: for example 3–4 × 4 minutes at about 85–90% of your MAS with 3 minutes easy between. As pre-season goes on, shift to shorter, faster efforts such as 15 seconds on at 100–110% MAS and 15 seconds off, in sets of 6–8 minutes. Midfielders need the most of this; goalkeepers don’t need interval running at all.

If your club runs small-sided games, count them. A meta-analysis found small-sided games matched interval running for aerobic fitness Moran et al. 2019. If you train with your club twice a week and both sessions are game-heavy, one extra interval session is plenty.

Strength

Pre-season is the best time to build strength because there’s no match to recover for. Two sessions a week, with a few days between them:

• Lower body: a squat or trap bar deadlift (3–4 sets of 5–8), a single-leg exercise such as split squats (3 sets of 6–10 each leg, weaker leg first), and a hip hinge such as Romanian deadlifts.
• Upper body: a push and a pull, 2–3 sets each. Footballers need less upper-body volume than a general gym plan, but holding off a defender still needs some.
• Calves and trunk: calf raises, side planks and carries.

Start the first two weeks lighter than you think, especially if you haven’t lifted since May. Then add a little weight each week while leaving one or two reps in the tank.

Nordics and Copenhagens

These two exercises are the most important additions to a footballer’s pre-season. Programmes including the Nordic were linked with about half the hamstring injury rate in a meta-analysis van Dyk et al. 2019. A Copenhagen adductor programme done three times a week through pre-season was linked with 41% fewer reported groin problems in semi-professional men Harøy et al. 2019.

• Nordics: start with 1–2 sets of 3–5 slow reps once a week, rising to 2 sessions a week of 2–3 sets of 4–8 reps by the end of pre-season.
• Copenhagens: start at the short-lever level (knee on the bench) and build to three times a week over 6–8 weeks. Move up a level only if the next morning brings no more than mild soreness.

Don’t do Nordics earlier in the day before club training, because they temporarily reduce hamstring strength Marshall et al. 2015. After training is fine.

Speed

Every week include some short accelerations (10–20 m) and, from week 3, a few runs close to top speed over 30–50 m with full recovery. These runs prepare the hamstrings for match sprints. Wide players and midfielders can add short repeated-sprint sets (for example 6 × 20–30 m) in the last weeks.

Warm up properly, every time

Use a warm-up built on the FIFA 11+ before club sessions and friendlies. In studies, teams that regularly did the FIFA 11+ had fewer injuries Thorborg et al. 2017. See our guide to the FIFA 11+ warm-up.

Fitting it around club training

Treat club nights as fixed. Put strength sessions on non-club days where you can, keep heavy legs away from the day before a friendly, and count game-based club sessions as conditioning. When pre-season ends and fixtures start, switch to the in-season gym programme.