Fitness Testing at beginning of season

[Anonymous]

Are your teams doing it? If so, what are the tests and what is considered passing? Admittedly nosey, but would be interested to know who does what.

[Anonymous]

Our ECNL team does fitness testing. It is a total money grab by the sports performance/physical therapy company that administers it. They tell you all the things you suck at and how you can improve with their elite athletic program.

[Anonymous]

Our team does the beep test, the 40, and a two mile.
All administered by the team.

[Anonymous]

First week of pre-season our ECNL club does beep test to measure endurance and a shuttle run to test quickness/explosiveness. Then after a lot of strenuous fitness activities throughout the next a couple a of weeks they will retest to measure progress.

[Anonymous]

The fitness trainer would come to one of our training sessions at the beginning of the fall season. It was a pointless waste of time. They did not take any of the kids name or info ( weight, bday etc). They said they were gathering data for the age group and would come back throughout the season. They never came back.

This year, we were told we had to take 1 week mandatory fitness training. This is an additional cost outside of our league fee. Oh, right! I forgot this is how SYC operate. They promote and then get a kickback.

[Anonymous]

Arlington ECNL has fitness preseason (likely what others described, beep taste, shuttle run etc) and suppose to take the test again after some weeks to measure progress.

Included in the club/ team fee which is around the same amount as last year.

[Anonymous]

what age?

[Anonymous]

Juggling in a box, mile run, field length sprint- those are what I am seeing this week. u16

[Anonymous]

So which kid ever failed the fitness test and was refunded their money and asked to leave?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So which kid ever failed the fitness test and was refunded their money and asked to leave?

I doubt this has ever happened.

[Anonymous]

For those doing beep test and other runs, like mile or 40, are there “passing” scores? Does “failing” actually mean anything or is this just a metric coaches keep for their own purposes? My oldest only had to do beep test and this was 3-4 years ago and nothing came of results of it, and now my youngest is starting up and has beep and mile run. Wondering what it all means if anything.

[Anonymous]

It varies from club to club and coach to coach.For some it’s a self-reflection tool for players to measure their own progress, have a mindset of constant improvement, where to focus their self training, and a way to measure player progress over time.

For some (bad, lazy) coaches it helps them identify the most athletic so they can turn their focus into making those players into soccer players. It’s obviously short sighted but when you have minimal ability to coach or develop, it’s easier to sell good athletes as soccer players than the alternative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It varies from club to club and coach to coach.For some it’s a self-reflection tool for players to measure their own progress, have a mindset of constant improvement, where to focus their self training, and a way to measure player progress over time.

For some (bad, lazy) coaches it helps them identify the most athletic so they can turn their focus into making those players into soccer players. It’s obviously short sighted but when you have minimal ability to coach or develop, it’s easier to sell good athletes as soccer players than the alternative.

When they are older it shows commitment. It’s assumed that you’ll come into the season having stayed fit and prepared in the off season.
There’s no guaranteed playing time, showing that you did the work in the off season never hurt anyone.
The Manchester United Run or the Stanford Fitness tests are named for the programs that use them. I guess they have lazy coaches?
In 9 year olds it’s about forming habits, in 16 year olds it’s about seeing if you have kids who have those habits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It varies from club to club and coach to coach.For some it’s a self-reflection tool for players to measure their own progress, have a mindset of constant improvement, where to focus their self training, and a way to measure player progress over time.

For some (bad, lazy) coaches it helps them identify the most athletic so they can turn their focus into making those players into soccer players. It’s obviously short sighted but when you have minimal ability to coach or develop, it’s easier to sell good athletes as soccer players than the alternative.

When they are older it shows commitment. It’s assumed that you’ll come into the season having stayed fit and prepared in the off season.
There’s no guaranteed playing time, showing that you did the work in the off season never hurt anyone.
The Manchester United Run or the Stanford Fitness tests are named for the programs that use them. I guess they have lazy coaches?
In 9 year olds it’s about forming habits, in 16 year olds it’s about seeing if you have kids who have those habits.

Fitness testing says very little about your commitment. It just says that your fitness level improved from the previous year. Maybe a player does no training but had a growth spurt which improved the fitness score. Or maybe they are committed and train every single day but the growth spurt made the fitness score worse. Or maybe they just have great genes and keep getting faster. Commitment is better measured by behaviors at training, in games, communicating with coaches. A simple fitness metric does not tell much about commitment

[Anonymous]

Fitness testing is useful if you implement it 3 times per season and incorporate results into player feedback sessions, which should incorporate the changes in scores and comparative results with your teammates.

It is useless, if it is done 1 time per season and there is no feedback beyond a simple score or time.