Experiment - can we help semi players remotely to stay fresh?
My colleague Peter Loffeld and I had been talking for some time about a hypothesis. Whilst I am a football coach with years of knowledge of football periodisation, Peter has an expertise in physiotherapy, injury rehab and return to play. We wondered if we could help semi pro players remotely to stay fresh around their semi pro football commitments and their day jobs. We wondered if our combined skill sets could help players.
We recruited 3 players for a 6 week trial. Two were male, and one was female. During this 6 weeks the 3 players reported in each day through a wellness questionnaire we created, and we offered support through both WhatsApp and a Zoom check in every 7-10 days or so.
To begin with we gathered information about their backgrounds. We needed to know their age, the level of football they are playing at, injury history and what sort of other job they do during the day.
The daily wellness form asked questions around fatigue, does anything hurt or is sore, sleep, training session intensity if they had trained, if they had been to the gym, hydration, and stress (we never know what else could be going on in players lives).
The players
We deliberately chose three players from different environments because we wanted to see whether the same approach could work across different circumstances.
Although every player completed the same daily monitoring, each came into the project with different challenges, different lifestyles and different objectives.
Player A
Player A was playing Step 4 football. He is 24 years old and plays on the wing as a regular starter for his team. He was training Tuesday and Thursday nights with a game on Saturday. He is also a school teacher and he has a sideline as a 1 to 1 football coach (around 6 hours a week). He was going to the gym 3 times a week and doing what he felt was the right thing to do (so had no set programme from his club).
When Player A joined the project, he represented the reality faced by many semi-professional footballers. He was balancing football around work, had previously experienced knee problems and, like most players at this level, wanted to improve without constantly wondering whether he was doing too much or too little.
During our first conversation it became obvious that another training programme wasn't what he needed. The real challenge was to help him understand that his body needed a chance to recover so he could perform towards his potential in both training and games.
Over the following weeks our conversations rarely centred around adding more work. Instead, we talked about recognising when training would genuinely improve his performance and when recovery was likely to have the greater benefit. The player needed to understand that his job demanded him to be on his feet a lot, and if we added in the individual training sessions he was delivering, it was actually adding up to a lot of work.
One thing became increasingly clear. He wanted someone to help him understand the process so that he could make better decisions himself. Doing more isn't always better. Being fresh for the matches was more important.
By the end of the trial, that appeared to have happened. His feedback wasn't that he had become fitter or stronger. Instead, he explained that he had developed a much better understanding of when to push himself and when to back off. He described the conversations as being just as valuable as the monitoring itself because they helped him understand why he was making certain decisions. He also felt this type of support would be particularly useful for semi-professional footballers trying to balance football with work and everyday life.
Player B
Player B arrived with a completely different challenge. He was a step 2 footballer, who had been at Step 1 for a season. He's 19 years old, a forward who trained twice a week in the evening at his club (Tuesday and Thursday nights). He was mostly used as a substitute, but just after this experiment began, his club found themselves away from the relegation zone and as a result was hoping to play more minutes. He was going to the gym three times a week following a programme the club had given him, and he also was playing a little 5 a side with his friends once a week. He had had some injury issues, notably a rupture of the medial and lateral meniscus, and partial ACL tear in February 2025. He had no other job, as he had been full time at his previous club.
So after spending much of the season on the bench, he was suddenly expecting a significant increase in match minutes. At the same time, he was attending the gym regularly and playing additional football away from his club. Before making any recommendations, we needed to understand what his total workload actually looked like.
Our early conversations focused on everything surrounding football rather than football itself. We discussed his gym programme, his five-a-side football, hydration, recovery and how his increasing match exposure might influence everything else he was doing during the week.
The biggest challenge was to help this player be ready for a potential increase in playing minutes, as it's not easy to go from 0-100mph and not feel an effect. We looked at what he was doing in the gym and made suggestions to him. We also questioned did he really need to play the extra 5 a side right now with his friends?
As the project progressed, something interesting began to emerge. Rather than talking about training harder, this player started talking more about listening to his body. He became increasingly aware of how he felt each day and began thinking about recovery before problems developed rather than afterwards.
At the end of the trial, one piece of feedback stood out. He said the biggest change had been how much more attention he paid to hydration. On the surface, that sounds like quite a small observation. In reality, I think it reflected something much bigger. He had started paying attention to his body in a way he simply hadn't before.
He also felt that the combination of daily monitoring and regular conversations worked well together. We collected information, but the conversations gave that information meaning.
Player C
The third player was a 23 year old female, who was a regular starter for her team, who played in tier 5. She also trained twice a week with her team (Tuesday and Thursday) and played matches on Sunday. She was going to the gym twice a week and occasionally playing some 7 a side too. She is a teaching assistant and on her feet a lot. She was also reporting that her hip was tight, as well as a "knot" like feeling in her left calf. She also reported some shoulder problems.
This players objective was straightforward. She wanted to arrive on Sunday feeling as fresh as possible.
Like many players, she'd never really considered how decisions made on a Tuesday or Thursday could influence how she felt on match day. Throughout the project, our conversations centred around sleep, weekly planning, recovery, training intensity and making sure every decision during the week had one purpose — helping her perform on Sunday. Peter also gave her advice for the sore areas she was reporting.
Two interesting aspects came to the forefront quite quickly. One was sleep and the second was what she would do pre training on a Thursday.
Thursday was a long day for her, as on top of her classroom duties she would then run the after school club for the kids. When that finished she would go home and prepare food for her whole family, usually a pasta influenced dish like a pasta bake. By the time she had eaten with her family, it was time to goto training but she noted at this point fatigue and a lack of motivation to go. We suggested some alterations to the menu, to help her feel less sleepy, which she reported had a big effect.
Regarding her sleep, she simply wasn't getting enough hours to allow her body to recover from each day. If she was a phone battery it seemed like she was often operating at below 70%. We would send her messages in the evenings telling her to goto sleep!
The player to her credit, followed the advice and reported totally different feelings. She changed a lot of her food and she slept more. As a result this player was fresher and contributed loads more to her team in her Sunday games.
By the end of the project, she said she would recommend the process to other footballers and was keen to continue using this service.
Conclusion
All three players had different external factors, which was ideal for this experiment. All three players faced different challenges, and all three reported that our remote help was very useful to them in making changes to help them recover and be fresh to train and play. Two of the players have very busy days, and now both understand the importance of recovery, sleep, and nutrition, as well as knowing when to push themselves and when not to, on order to allow their bodies to recover and refresh. The intention was to help these players arrive at match day feeling like a million dollars, and it was pleasing to note the difference from the start of the experiment to what we came to at the end for all three players.
Football Fresh
During this experiment, Hugo wondered if we could turn this service into a phone app. After some discussions, it was decided that there was a place for it. We want to give football coaches a free platform where they can monitor players wellness, and so coaches can adapt players loads during training sessions (where necessary) in order to help them be fresh to be picked for every game. After all it is our job as coaches to help our players. We all want our players fit, healthy and available for selection in every game.
If players individually want to work with Hugo and Peter, like these 3 players did, then this will also be available as an alternative service, available through the upcoming app. Watch this space .....
