This week’s exercise in our ‘Train Like The Pride’ presented by Nike series looks at sprinting strength, an important factor in football at all levels.
Following on from our previous two videos, this week's session is taken by physical performance coach Ruth Waghorn, who works with the England Women's development teams.
And we also have a Lioness helping to demonstrate the exercises, with Keira Walsh featuring in this week's video.
Why?
Sprinting is a frequent and important part of international football, which can induce high levels of fatigue across the hamstrings and ankles. Developing sprinting capability can help reduce the cost of these actions to improve performance and reduce the risk of injury.
Sprinting capability is the ability of the ankles and hamstrings to cope with the repeated sprinting demands of international football. It can be split into two different qualities: ankle reactivity, which is the ability of the ankle to produce high forces with minimal ground contact time, and hamstring strength, which is the ability of the hamstring muscles to produce and absorb force.
What?
This first phase is an introduction to sprinting capability and the aim is to start to build up your strength to prepare for the later phases.
There are two different sessions in this phase, one session is biased towards strength and power, the second session is biased towards muscular endurance. The strength and power session is designed to build the ability to tolerate intense actions such as maximal sprinting. The conditioning session is designed to condition you to be resilient to repeat these actions.
Watch the video below and make sure you join in.
Train Like The Pride is back – and this time we're focusing on your sprinting strength! ⚡️ @Lionesses midfielder @keira_walsh runs you through what's in store this week:
— England (@England) April 22, 2020
If you’re just starting out, you can see our first two videos in the series via the links below.
