Here is a warm up I observed at St. Marys (Southampton) whilst watching England U21′s versus Norway U21′s. Hopefully these diagrams and videos will give you an insight to how Stuart Pearce prepares his young lions. Apologies for the quality of the videos!!
SET UP
The warm-up was split in to 4 sections: DYNAMIC WARM UP, GOALKEEPING, BALL WORK AND SPRINTS.
Here is how it looked from the stand, and (below) a diagram to illustrate which area was used for each element of the warm-up.
Initially the players came out (already bibbed up) and worked in groups of 3 gently passing the ball over small distances (less than 10 metrres). Nothing too intense, just a general loosening up. After about 5 minutes they were organised in to the DYNAMIC WARM UP.
DYANAMIC WARM UP
The players then used the yellow area to begin their warm up, this started by jogging in a line from end to end. They then broke to perform a series of static stretches led by the coach (unsure who). The players were moved through various movements
- Jogging
- Side Stepping (changing sides)
- Jogging and Jumping (headers)
- Knees up
- Heel flicks
- Twisting their torso and shoulders (whilst jogging)
- Carioca ”Grapevine“
- Backwards
- Shadowing – 2 steps left, 2 right
The players broke to perform their own stretches, and moved to the grid on the opposite side of the pitch.
BALL WORK
The players were then introduced in to a opposed session by Steve Wigley. Here the 20 players were organised into a 8v8 (YELLOW v BLUE) with 2 support players in WHITE. This meant that the team in possession had a numerical advantage to support the play.
I have seen the full National team do this with 5v5 and 2 floaters, presumably because this was such a big squad the coaches wanted all players involved. A small clip can be seen below.
This session lasted about 15 minutes before the players broke in to small groups again. The strikers were taken away to work on their shooting. See the clip below, focus on this side of the pitch nearest the camera. Here the 4 players fed in to the coach, and shot at the second goal. This was only for 5 minutes, probably 15 attempts each.
After this all players were taken to the far side of the pitch in to the SPRINT and SAQ area. The players were asked to move from end to end, and progressively this got quicker, until they reached a full sprint. The coach also added a few quick feet patterns before they broke in to a run.
GOALKEEPING
Martin Thomas led the goalkeeping session. I was lucky enough to taught by Martin on my UEFA B course, he is a great coach with a fantastic sense of humour! Martin first warmed the goalkeepers up with some basic shot stopping. This was progressed by having the second choice keeper on stand by to finish if the shot it parried.
The next session was cross taking, here one goalkeeper crossed whilst the other was worked. The coach stood in the six yard box to distract the goalkeeper, whilst he took the ball. Thomas made this progissively more difficult and pointed out where the keeper where his “start point” should be, and a what point to “take” the ball.
After this the goalkeepers worked on the goal kicks, from the hands and feet. All players were then led inside, less than 10 minutes before KO.
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