Dom Edwards, is an experienced youth football coach, having held roles in both the boys' and girls' games within grassroots, academy, and university football. Dom uses his experience of working with the 12-16-year-old age group to share the importance of good hydration to help the developing player become healthier but also stronger on and off the pitch. This blog will give you some actionable advice that you can give to the young people you are working with.
The greater game (TGG) looks at a range of areas, including sleeping well, moving well, thinking well and the topic of this blog post; eating well.
TGG is trying to help young people to make better food choices and understand the effect good food can have both on and off the pitch. To do this we’ve set young people the following challenges:
- Increase the amount of fruit and veg to five portions per day.
- Reduce sugar and fat intake
- Increase amount of water drunk every day
The focus of this blog is on encouraging young people to stay better hydrated and looking at how this might affect them on the pitch.
Areas such as dehydration are really important when it comes to both on and off-pitch performance. We know that when a footballer is dehydrated on the pitch their performance level will drop massively. It can depend on how dehydrated an individual is but if you’re severely dehydrated your performance can drop by around 40%. This will stop individuals from being able to perform to their best but also from a team performance perspective, this will be a disadvantage. Off the pitch this is also important as dehydration is a factor in not being able to concentrate as well, failing to take on board information and feeling lethargic.
How do you know if a player is hydrated?
It can sometimes be quite difficult. Signs you can notice are feeling tired or lightheaded but really, as soon as someone is thirsty this is often a sign that they are dehydrated (perhaps only slightly) and therefore they need to take on some more water. You might want to consistently check in with your players at the beginning of training to make sure they’re ready to play, e.g. brought water etc.
How could you use this information in your practice?
Young footballers often don’t see something as simple as being hydrated as affecting them on the pitch but we can use our sessions to help them focus on their general health.
You could look to design your practices to incorporate some sort of disadvantage to show your players what it might be like when you are playing dehydrated. Conditions you could use could be to play with an overload (e.g. 5v4), start a team with a goal advantage or use different sized goals with the ‘disadvantaged team’ shooting toward a smaller goal.
Here are some questions and discussion points that you could use to help the players think more about their hydration pre-, during and post-training:
- When dehydrated your performance levels will decrease. Aim to arrive to training and matches hydrated so you can play to your best and help the team perform.
- Playing with a player down makes it a lot harder to play as a team – how much harder would your teammates have to work if you were dehydrated and couldn’t work as hard?
- Before the next session, how are you going to make sure you turn up hydrated so you’re not at a disadvantage?
To best support your team to hydrate better you might want to consider the following:
- Discussing the importance of good hydration with your team to help them to understand how it might help them.
- Regular drinks breaks throughout the session. TOP TIP - You could maximise the learning time of your sessions during these drink breaks by asking players to answer specific questions (based on the session topic) on a whiteboard or providing feedback to individuals on areas they have been doing well.
On your coaching journey so far have you considered the food and hydration of your players? If so, how have your players responded when you have spoken about this with them?
Have you ever noticed when a player is dehydrated or hasn’t eaten before coming to training?
Let us know below