Who Uses a Soccer Training-Log?
For more then 110 years, soccer players have been recording their information from their soccer workouts. First signs of this practice can be dated back to English Runner Alfred “Alfie” Shrubb (12 December 1879 – 23 April 1964) who kept detailed notes of his training in a diary format as a professional runner.In the early eighties at the same time personal computers were being introduced and some soccer players started logging their information in first versions of a spreadsheet software. This is still one of the most common used formats for recording information about soccer workouts today.
Over the same period of time as the personal computer revolution, sport specific training-log type software’s started appearing in desktop formats. In the late nineties some soccer players started using online training-logs when the Internet evolved to include databases that allowed users to store information online.
The definition of Diary implies somewhere you keep your secrets, which might still be the case. As Olympic soccer players are very concerned about their training data being shared with their competitors.
The word training-log implies more of a record keeping of a soccer players training that might not be as secretive as the word diary. A recent trend with online social media in both amateur and professional soccer players are posting their training data from their training-log online for everyone to see through their blogs. In a sort of fan interaction way where an amateur soccer player can view their favourite soccer players training data and compare it against their own to gauge their fitness level.
While the idea of recording your soccer workouts has been around for more then a century, what hasn’t been clear is what information a soccer player should record from their workouts that will actually help improve their soccer performances. The variances of subjective fields appearing in training-log books, spreadsheets and online training-logs in the market varied quite a bit from each other leaving the soccer player confused as to what’s the best way to record a soccer workout is and what value it has to the soccer players training from an objective way.
Many articles have been written on the benefits of keeping a training-log for the purpose of reviewing the data for self-coaching and monitoring injuries. In my experience I found the Soccer player Training-Log to be a one-way training tool that soccer players often stop using after a period of a couple of months.
While I was monitoring a group of soccer players training habits I found their general consensus to be one of “what’s the point”. Soccer Players in general were not crazy about the idea of having to record all the analytical data from their workouts, health and meals each day. It was as if they did not see value in it and or understand the connection to their training. From the data I did have from the soccer players , the coaches and sport scientist were loving it and wanting more.
Even though their is an abundance of Soccer Player Training Logs in a variety of formats on the market today. A majority of soccer players are not recording their training data in any form in a diary, log or journal. And for those that are, most were only doing at their coaches request and would wait for a reply based on the results from the data sent to their coach.
I believe the future of the Soccer Player Training-Log will be a component of the soccer players training that can be connected to a Coaches Training Planner for planned versus actual analysis. If a soccer player is self-coaching or being coached by a professional, this combination of tools will be the evolution of the electronic Soccer Player Training Journal. A tool that allows a soccer player in any sport to measure the effectiveness of the previous days soccer workout with or without a coach.
This might encourage the large percentage of soccer players not recording their soccer workouts today to change. If the soccer player can get a computerized output of their previous days workouts effectiveness it might intrigue them to enter the data required to obtain the objective results.
| Try This: | I recommend using a Free Soccer Training-Log to track your soccer workouts. |
