Here are the three phases or periods of a football training program...
Pre-season phase - 7 months
In-season phase - 4 months
Transition phase - 1-2 months
Wow - over half a year to prepare! That's because it takes time to develop peak strength and power.
Let's have a look at each phase in more detail...
Individual exercises and sessions are covered in separate articles. This is how everything fits together into one, complete football training program
Pre-Season Phase of Football Training
The pre-season or off-season is by far the largest phase of the annual plan.
The goal is to develop optimum strength and power so that it peaks just prior to the start of the in-season.
Because this phase is so long you need to break into smaller cycles - often referred to as macrocycles...
Each macrocycle might last between 3 and 6 weeks (for the sake of ease we'll assume that each cycle lasts for a calendar month). The training objectives and methods vary within each cycle and there's an important reason for this...
Firstly, adjusting intensity and volume helps to avoid overtraining and burnout.
Secondly, certain aspects of fitness are built on the back of others. Explosive power conditioning for example follows maximal strength training, which in turn follows functional strength training.