Break the boredom and enjoy some Game Changing football and fitness workouts that you can do at home! Here are some of our top tips to get you started.
Game Changing Home Workout Tips
1. Getting into a Routine
The most difficult part of home fitness is that there is often no one to motivate you quite like your coach, trainer or gym instructor would!
It is important to incorporate some normality into your daily routine. This includes allocating time for your workouts, helping to keep you focused, motivated and feeling refreshed, as well making sure that your fitness and football skills are up to scratch when the season begins!
Planning your sessions at the beginning of each week may be useful, having a specific focus for each one e.g.:
- Monday – 8am, 30min HIIT workout
- Wednesday – 12pm, 45min Pilates and Flexibility
- Friday – 6.30pm, 1hr 30min Skills Practice and Weights Session
- Saturday – 10am – 30min jog near home
Use your plan as a guideline and remember not to be too hard on yourself – this a strange time for everyone and it is okay to ease yourself into your ‘new normal’ until you get into the swing of things.
2. Finding Your Perfect Home Workout
The hardest part is getting started! There are so many great football and fitness workouts out there and it will take some trial and error to discover which are best for you and which you enjoy most.
Our best tip is to match your goal to a plan – e.g. if you want to focus on conditioning, choose workouts that focus on key components that you’ll need in your football training and on the pitch such as building speed, endurance and agility, as well as any skills you hope to improve. Now is the perfect time!
3. Football Skills Workouts
If you are part of a football club, keep an eye out for workouts from your coach on your team’s social media pages. Follow your favourite players and clubs on social media to see what they are doing, or develop your own at home skills practice!
- Master touch, control and passing, by repetition against a wall
- Set yourself daily challenges e.g. to achieve 20 keep ups, target practice or dribbling through cones – using household items if needed, gradually increasing the difficulty
- The best thing about working out at home, is that anything goes! Don’t have a football? Use a few pairs of socks rolled up! Don’t have weights? Use water bottles or a rucksack filled with cans! Don’t have goal posts in the garden? Change up target practice and use a wall!
- Check out our #GameChangersNI football challenges on our Facebook, Twitter & Instagram pages each week! Be inspired and look out for some familiar faces in the form of Northern Ireland Senior Women stars Megan Bell, Marissa Callaghan and Helen McKenna and Northern Ireland U19s Game Changer Joely Andrews!
4. Fitness Workouts
There are lots of great apps, as well as many free workouts available on YouTube and social media, to complete yourself - or get the whole household involved!
- The Irish Football Association – Johnny Pedlow, Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Northern Ireland Senior Women’s team has produced a series of videos to keep fitness levels high during lockdown
- Women’s Health have a whole page dedicated to every type of workout you could wish for, as well as 9 great activities for kids to keep children “fit and you sane” during lockdown!
5. Workout Virtually with your Football Team
You’ll almost feel like it’s training night with the team, with virtual workouts on video apps like Zoom! Keep team morale high and get your friends or football team involved in virtually training together in your own home!
Workout complete? It’s time to check out 10 of our favourite Women’s Football Films!
We like to keep things interesting so let us know if you have any Game Changing Football Workout Ideas! Head over to our social channels for more ideas and to take part in our football challenges #GameChangersNI