2.Sudden interruption of official engagement

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The unexpected interruption of official match commitments may be crucial to further evolving and defining the goals of your team.

Keep in mind that the match or matches that your players will not play will reduce the volume and intensity of training they would receive during the in season micro-cycle and will increase if the interruption of match cancelation is extended.

Planning of your micro-cycles changes completely their targeting and your priority is to maintain your players' status in all four aspects of performance

• Tactical abilities
• Technical skills
• Mental / Psychological skills
• Fitness capacity

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Regarding physical characteristics, we should be aware that the negative effects of de - training (not sufficient training stimulus to maintain or improve performance) start from the very first few days.

Aerobic capacity is affected by the first 10 days when VO2max (the body’s ability to taken in and utilize oxygen) is significantly reduced with the reduction rate reaching about 4 -10% in the fourth week! From a cardiorespiratory point of view, within 4-8 weeks of de - training, blood volume and pulse volume is reduced.

Muscle glycogen levels also drop, leaving less in the tank to draw from. Fat metabolism also decreases, resulting in increased fat storage.

When capillary density and oxidative enzyme activity decrease, oxygen delivery to working muscles is impaired. As well, muscle mass, EMG activity (nerve innervation of muscle fibers) and the number of fast twitch muscle fibers decrease. There is a marked reduction of mitochondrial ATP production.With all of the above declines in cardiorespiratory, metabolism and muscle function, endurance performance declines.

The results of the strength training are minimal to very limited in the first 2 weeks. The effect of de - training is mainly on the loss of muscular endurance. The body's ability to apply a force repeatedly for several minutes or hours of continuous movement.

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And when you start training with the team what?

So, increase during the microcycles, the total duration of small side games within the training units, in which the players work all four aspects of performance at the same time, aiming to cover the "lost ground" of the official matches.

Also increase the training days with small side games at 3-4 per week and frequently switch (day by day) the arithmetic correlations from 1v1 to 3v3, 4v4 to 7v7 & 8v8 to 11v11 covering the whole range of training stimuli depending on your coaching sequence.

In the field of strength training, place at weekly schedule the team of muscular endurance (circuit strength endurance programmes) stimuli at least for 2 times a week.

Try to keep football players on match form mainly through training. Friendly games usually work as a chore for key players and you will need to find more functional alternatives. Time to participate in friendly games will be difficult to allocate for everyone and the four-legged performance will be underperforming with visible signs in the immediate future.

Try to keep the players in the form of competition mainly through training. Speed ​​up your team through day-to-day life. Friendly games usually work as a chore for key players, re-entry time is too short and you should find more viable alternatives. Friendly games time will hardly be sufficiently distributed for everyone, the program will be hard pressed to close such games with unprepared players, and the quadruple performance will be visibly underfunded shortly afterwards.

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